Crapshoot Cinema: Tomb Invader (2018)

Tubi

Picking an Asylum movie for Crapshoot Cinema is kind of cheating because their movies are always varying shades of terrible, hilariously or otherwise, but when I found out they did a movie called Tomb Invader, my curiosity was piqued. How badly could The Asylum rip off Lara Croft?

Pretty badly, it seems, although it’s closer to Indiana Jones than Lara Croft. Per the Tomb Raider Wiki, Tomb Invader was released two days before the 2018 Tomb Raider reboot to capitalize on the latter’s publicity.

Alabama(!) Channing, or Ally, as she’s called, is an archaeology professor at Emerson University, and in her spare time she fetches artifacts out of tombs and various places, managing to defend herself against any toughs who get in her way. We can only assume she’s paid commission. Her mother died on an expedition in China when she was five, but she’s left behind little clues and codes that Ally still remembers.

Ally and her friends, Helena and Bennie are at lunch one day (well, technically an empty table) when a woman named Isabelle comes up to them and claims to be a reporter for the paper. Which paper? We don’t know. Long story short, Isabelle hands Ally a box that contains her mother’s long-lost diary and Ally, Helena and Bennie are off to China to seek the Heart of the Dragon, which apparently will bring peace to all of China.

Along for the ride are Nathan, who’s more of a bounty hunter than an archaeologist, and Tim, the billionaire who flew everyone to China. Both of them have their own ideas about the Heart of the Dragon. The temple that they’re about to enter is pretty advanced, too. Light-up buttons, Industrial Age gears and levers, and booby traps that have machine-like precision. Ah, the good old days.

While it’s not as bad as some movies Asylum has put out, Tomb Invader is most definitely an Asylum film. It leans boring. The plot is pretty bare. The movie tries to pass off California as China, never mind that there are oak trees and star thistle everywhere. The stunts are certainly non-existent for a Lara Croft rip-off or even an Indiana Jones one. No one dangles from the ceiling, for one thing, or leaps across deep, dark chasms, for another. And Asylum’s trademark shutters are noticeably absent.

Still, there are some pretty typical Asylum howlers, such as in the scene outside the temple when the camera swings like a pendulum. Or one of the scenes when Ally confronts Tim, who always seems a bit weaselly, about his duplicity, and says, “You just flew us halfway across the country.”

China, Ally. You flew from Somewhere, USA to China.

That’s Asylum all over. Sigh.

I really wish Tomb Invader was funnier, but it is what it is. I almost miss those shutters.

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Tomb Invader is currently sreaming on Tubi. Rated TV-14.

My grade: D+

Principal Cast: Gina Vitori, Andrew J. Katers, Samantha Bowling, Evan Sloan, Shawn McConnell, Lindsay Sawyer, Val Victa, Jordan Williams, Kate Watson, John Wusah, Tammy Klein, Sam Ganguly, Arleta Jumes, Chants Davidson, Charles H. Choi, Gaston Lopez, Jessica Martinez, Thomas Kim

Directed by James Thomas.

Written by Nick Zephyrin.