Echoes of Anubis

Critic Reviews

In the mire of modern cinema, 'Echoes of Anubis' emerges as a turbid attempt at blending the supernatural with personal transformation, yet sadly it drowns more in its own pretensions than in the depths of the Nile it so poorly seeks to mimic. Director Guillermo del Tortoise, known for dabbling in the dark arts of storytelling, seems to have lost his spellbook, eliciting nothing more than a few sparks against the blackout of imagination that plagues this film. Channing Tater-tum brings his artistic range somewhere between wooden sarcophagus and stone sphinx, offering an emotionally stifled performance as the fire-fighter turned accidental archeologist. While Josephine Gull valiantly strives to ignite the narrative with her portrayal of Dr. Sophia Renn, even her flame sputters in the thin oxygen of the script. The inclusion of Doughy Breadnolds adds little but overbaked melodrama, and one wonders if the 'dark connection' his character struggles with is mere symbolism for the actor's stifling contract. As for the tagline – 'Some masks, once donned, never come off.' – it feels ironically apt, as the film itself struggles to remove the mask of mediocrity it has secured so tightly to its face. There were promises of depths within this film, of shadows and substance, yet what we receive is a mere echo of what could have been, a faded whisper drowned out by the noise of its own trying. In the end, 'Echoes of Anubis' is as dusty and forgotten as a relic best left untouched beneath the sands of ambition's deserts.