The very small sub-genre of the military stuck in a horror situation is a fascinating one, to say the least. Military horror gives the audience and the creators a unique view into train people operating in a scary situation instead of woefully unprepared civilians. You can take it in the original The Crazies route where it is a military procedural dealing with a very real horror situation, or the Day of the Dead route where it is the final days of a military unit and tensions are rising. While the plot of Black Ops has some interesting moments in the second half, it only comes after a slow plot with characters that only have the shallowest level of character development, feeling at times like there have been board games with more dynamic characters.

After returning from a mission to collect documents and assassinate a camp full of soldiers, including one prisoner, there is a sour taste left in the mouths of many members of a black ops team. When they arrive at their debriefing compound they are frustrated to find that the elevators are no longer in service and they must begin the long journey up the stairwell. After climbing far too many steps to be physically possible for the building there is a blaring alarm and the power goes out. The soldier sent to restart the power returns to them a bloody mess and they begin to run, trying to outrun the ever-encroaching darkness, looking to escape the neverending stairs.

As the team continues up the flight of stairs they eventually come across a portal to the start of their mission and come to the conclusion that they are in a hellish situation because they killed the prisoner. From here it is easy to see that this is going to be a time-traveling adventure to undo their past mistake, one character even drawing a connection to Back to the Future. The problem is by the time the story begins to use the time travel in fun and interesting ways, the film is over half over and everything else has been boring and bland. This is a film where not a single character has defining characteristics besides their physical attributes and there is nothing engaging about any of them, so the audience has no reason to care about them.

I talk about Black Ops being repetitive for the obvious reason that it is about reliving a moment over and over in hopes of changing it. While I give the film credit that they do one very interesting travel to the past that has moments from earlier that only makes sense now given context, there is no reason we couldn’t have had more. The budget would make perfect sense as to why they could only make one or two moments unique but at that point, there should be a story rework to make room for more instead of the bare-bones plot we received.

Movies like Black Ops are the hardest to review without being disappointed. There was a clear vision and plans for this film but because of the budget or shortsightedness, we received the lesser version. This director has shown that they have the scope to take on a large feature such as this, I just hope his next film feels fully realized.

4 out of 10