Film Review: THE OLD MAN AND THE DEMON SWORD: A Wild and Crazy Movie that Looks Like it Was Made on a Shoestring Budget [Fantasia 2024]

The Old Man and the Demon Sword Review

The Old Man and the Demon Sword (2024) Film Review from the 28th Annual Fantasia Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Fábio Powers and starring António da Luz, Luís Aleluia, João Loy, Tânia Bento, João Pedro Lopes, Paulo Espírito Santo, Marlon Fontes and Sara Fernandes Fontes.

The Old Man and the Demon Sword is an ultra-low budget feast of insanity. Filmmaker Fábio Powers has put together a film so wild and offbeat that it may make one think they’re hallucinating. This movie is unlike anything that has ever been released but it’s unlikely that the film will ever be released theatrically. That’s because the movie is barely over an hour long and offers one too many oddball twists that undermine the integrity of the premise.

If you’re going to make a movie about an older man and a demon sword, you may as well just go with it instead of justifying the craziness of it all with a plot thread towards the end which feels misplaced and a kick in the butt to those scenes which precede it. That being said, there’s some fun to be had here if one wants to see something like a martial arts movie where the lips don’t match and scenes get more peculiar with each progressing sequence. Powers tries hard and that’s why it’s hard to dislike The Old Man and the Demon Sword but it’s ultimately the type of movie that only a mother can love. One may still like it, however, because of its uncanny ability to stand-out from the pack.

When a man with a puppet pops up in the middle of this movie which is set in a Portuguese village, the viewer may feel like the whole film is a hallucination that one gets from binge drinking or smoking too much you know what. But, the sweet nature of the leading turn from António da Luz as an older gentleman who was once a construction worker named Tonho speaks volumes to the audience about the need to use one’s imagination and embrace life regardless of the circumstances one finds his or her self accustomed to. António da Luz has charisma that manifests itself through the performance the actor gives in the film.

The movie provides humor through the voice of a demon sword that Tonho uses. João Loy does the voice-over work for the role of the sword. It looks like a dragon and talks in fast sentences that will have the viewer laughing at first until they realize that this gimmick the movie is employing is actually what it is. Well, kinda. This is like the Filet-O-Fish McDonald’s commercial where the guy sees the fish on the wall start singing. The sword of the movie’s title originally belonged to a monk (João Pedro Lopes). It soon becomes Tonho’s job to take on the forces that challenge him and the aforementioned sword. The results are what Terry Gilliam might have directed in his backyard in the search of material for a feature film.

If you ate a brownie before watching this movie, you would wonder if you were given a legitimate one because the film takes you places that only a minuscule budget and a wild mind can. A woman in white pops up as if she’s come from the deranged mind of Ari Aster but to a movie that operates on more harmless territory. Tonho is an intriguing character as played by the perfectly cast António da Luz. But, the picture shows us battle sequences and humorous ones with no real plot destination in mind. There is a twist the movie has up its sleeve but it could feel like a last minute, tacked-on attempt to justify the film’s existence as a bizarre experiment that will have some appeal to those who like cheesy high-concept ideas without the budget to back them up.

The Old Man and the Demon Sword is nothing less than an attempt at a wise and humorous tale of a man who may be past his prime but has a style all his own that ages like fine wine. The movie’s director even appears as a character known as “freak” in the credits. What does that say? If a demon sword can bring out a keen side of an old guy’s personality, who am I to stop the director from making a movie about it?

Rating: 6/10

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