Director – Terry Ingram, Screenplay – Brook Durham, Producer – Jamie Goehring, Photography – C. Kim Miles, Music – Michael Richard Plowman, Visual Effects – Filmgate AB (Supervisor – Fredrik Averpil), Insight Film Studios VFX (Supervisor – Richard Mintak) & Race Rocks Digital Inc. (Supervisor – Ian Cumming), Special Effects Supervisor – David Barkes, Prosthetic Makeup Effects – Life to Death (Designer – Ryan Nicholson), Production Design – James Hazell. Production Company – Insight Film Studios/Plinyminor UK.
Cast
Arnold Vosloo (Odysseus), Randal Edwards (Homer), Steve Bacic (Eurylochus), J.R. Bourne (Perimedes), Stefanie von Pfetten (Persephone), Michael Antonakos (Christos), Sonya Salomaa (Athena), Leah Gibson (Penelope), Perry Long (Old Homer)
Plot
Odysseus and his men have spent twenty years travelling back to Ithaca following the battle of Troy. After they are attacked by creatures and their ship wrecked, they wash ashore on the Isle of Mists. The creatures are driven away by the appearance of a mystery woman. She says she is trapped on the island and wants to join forces with them so that she can leave. However, Odysseus receives a vision from the goddess Athena who warns that the mystery woman is Persephone, queen of the underworld, who has been imprisoned on the island, and that her treachery awaits them.
Odysseus and the Isle of Mists was a fantasy film made for cable. It was one of several similar fantasy works that were made for cable and dvd/video release around the era including the likes of George and the Dragon (2004), Minotaur (2006), Grendel (2007), Merlin and the Book of Beasts (2008), Sinbad and the Minotaur (2011), Pegasus vs Chimera (2012), along with several adventure films adapted from fairytales and a number of dragon-themed films.
The film cherry picks elements from the Greek Myths. It claims to be an untold adventure from The Odyssey and set during Odysseus’s return voyage home. The opening scene replicates the story from The Odyssey with Odysseus and his men making it past the call of the Sirens by placing wax in their ears and Odysseus having himself tied to the mast. Various other stories are recounted throughout. Perhaps the most novel touch is the addition of Homer as an actual character who is now a scribe along on the journey writing down what occurs.
The arrival on the island and encounter with Persephone has similarities to the story of Odysseus and men on the island of Circe, although this is played out with a different character – Persephone, who according to Greek myth is the daughter of Zeus and became the consort of Hades and the queen of the underworld after she was abducted by Hades. Persephone does receive brief mention in The Odyssey – although we never meet her – during the scenes where Odysseus is bidden to travel to the gates of Hades. Odysseus may have ‘dreaded’ her but in actuality Persephone was a more benevolent deity who was worshipped by the Greeks as the goddess of the spring.
(l to r) – Odysseus (Arnold Vosloo), Eurylochus (Steve Bacic) and Persephone (Stefanie von Pfetten)
Odysseus and the Isle of Mists has been shot on a lesser budget. The CGI creature effects are passable to strictly average for this type of film – the best that might be said is that they do what is required of them and don’t stay around long enough for the deficiencies to become overly apparent. Apart from the ship scenes and a couple of others, almost the entire film has been shot outdoors. There are no constructed sets during these scenes – most of the film consists of the crew lounging around a table of food that Persephone has set for them out in the open, there are not even any accompanying tents as you usually might get.
This does have a certain effect on the drama of the story. A large part of the problem is that we get a decent introduction and build-up with the men travelling through the mist-covered forest of the dead. However, once they arrive at Persephone’s encampment, the film grinds to a standstill and mostly has them sit around and debate what to do – these scenes form a good two-thirds of the running time. There are occasional encounters with creatures and debate as to whether Persephone can be trusted or not with Stefanie von Pfetten acting all cliché seductive and mysterious, before the film conclusively tilts to the not side. It amounts to nothing more than another generic fantasy film of this cable era.
Terry Ingram is a director who has mostly worked in television. He has also directed the stalker film The Stranger Game (2006), the psycho-thriller Ties That Bind (2006), the dream horror Nightmare (2007), the ghost driver film Phantom Racer (2009), the monster movie Ice Road Terror (2011) and Chupacabra vs the Alamo (2013). Since the latter half of the 2010s, Ingram has made a crapload of romance and Christmas tv movies.
