The evolution of the Dungeons&Dragons films is strange. It started with a Hollywood crapfest, filled with special effects, comic relief and known actors, but having no story, continued with something that felt more like a D&D plot, but was acted abysmally and finished with this, which has a good storyline, interesting characters and is truly entertaining. Somehow, the third movie is the best. But hold your horses, not all is rosy.The first thing that you notice is that the plot is complex: characters are evolving constantly, there is no clear delimitation of good and evil and there are several chapters of the story that are each strong on their own. This is probably due to the script being adapted after a book, even if a D&D one.The second thing you notice is how badly is Jack Derges acting. I understand that he is a newbie actor, but he sucks. Probably brought on because of his looks, he can't act to save his life. However the other actors more than make up for it: Eleanor Gecks is beautiful and has that witchy charm that was required while Barry Aird is indeed making the film interesting. He totally acted and looked like a young William Sadler in this.Of course, there are some painfully bad scenes as well, however not that many. The spells were original and entertaining, the fights were few, but decent, and again, there was a story and characters that I could feel and root for. The budget was low, but if Grayson and his dad would have been played by better actors, I think this would have been a good movie, one that people would have been glad to see and recommend. It certainly doesn't deserve the low rating on IMDb.

It is a surprise to find a decent, alluring story within this series of films, though I didn't find the 2nd film as bad as others say. I did see a bad trailer for this latest edition, so I wasn't expecting much at all. The production team here found a winning combination mixing more macabre, darker sensibilities with the fantasy, finally,(!) for this seems a better understanding of how it would be. Acknowledging that this entry is of a modest budget, I did find it to be more compelling than the other entries. My only real criteria, is that the ending appeared to be rather hasty, and also, I found the casting the knights father flawed in that he didn't appear old enough. It is a shame that market constraints for this kind of film are so limited, I would love to see this at a longer running time, and explore these themes as novels are able to do, but given the constraints this production does create an intriguing moral predicament for this knight, and maintains an interesting atmosphere that adds much resonance to the story. Also the acting and the CGI effects are decent, the dragon in particular was surprisingly well done. Here's to a new direction in this series, I hope the creators can explore more fully.

I'm a former playtester and RPGA member for D&D, so when I can watch these free (I was burnt for theater money for the first one) I DVR them and check them out. The plot was so weak that I took a break in the middle to do something else and came back to it.First, they pepper in D&D references (actual supplement book names are used) and rare races. Where this starts out as a nice nod to fans, it is done so much that the movie loses direction. Each party member is a different race, the enemies are not well defined, and magic items mentioned are either not shown off (vorpal sword) or seemed to be added for one scene-- which starts to bog down the movie.The dialog is fairly bad, the assassin is less "the professional" and more standard socio-path. Some characters grasp for depth through a two minute exposition, but the character actions do little to support more than flat characters. Some of the acting reaches decent considering the hurdles.Oh-- the sexy Shadar-kai has the worst fake tattoo ever to be in a movie. It looks like a child's Halloween attempt.The movie is better than the first, and about even with the second as they have different faults.

I really do not understand the low scores on this movie...Yes, it is low budget, and yes it lacks the shine of those expensive movies...So? The plot is OK, love story is more realistic than in many many other movies, even the characters are believable. I usually find many annoyances in films, even the best ones, but whats very weird, nothing really annoyed me in this one.I have played D&D games, and many other RPGs, but I don't think thats of any relevance, this is a decent movie for all who like these sword & magic fantasy flicks.For a low budget movie, even the CG effects are very successful. And there's some more eye candy in the form of a Gothic hot chick ;D I had somewhat low expectations for this one, and I was very positively surprised, so 8/10 for this one, and thanks to other who have commented, wouldn't have watched it without you.If you are into this kind of movies, try it, you might be surprised too...