Iron Sky movie poster
D+
Our Rating
Iron Sky movie poster

Iron Sky Review

Now available on Blu-ray and DVD (Buy on Amazon)

You knew they would be back. You stay up late thinking about it. It's a horror we all fear. Nazis. Plotting their return, their revenge. They've had seven decades to perfect their plan, and in the B-grade action movie Iron Sky, we see what those book-burning bastards have put into motion.

In Iron Sky, plot is irrelevant, but it has something to do with Nazis from space and their attempts to infiltrate the United States of America, and bomb the hell out of it. It also begins with an African-American astronaut stumbling across the Fourth Reich's secret lair on the dark side of the moon and subsequently being turned into a white guy. Yep.

As absurd as the movie sounds, Iron Sky isn't nearly as absurd as it should be. It's the worst kind of B-grade movie: it isn't bad enough to be funny, but it isn't good enough to be fun. The result is a dull and instantly forgettable movie that squanders a great B-grade concept.

The big problem is that director Timo Vuorensola takes the movie way too seriously. The whole concept is silly, ludicrous and ripe for all kinds of awesomely stupid moments, yet Iron Sky plays things too straight for its own good. The film at times attempts to be a political satire, but it isn't smart enough to do it correctly. The movie fails to take advantage of many of the Nazi stereotypes. Even the special effects are too good for their own good.

The other problem is that the Nazi invasion doesn't happen until the third act. The first hour of the movie is spent on random subplots that primarily revolve around a beautiful Nazi schoolteacher (Julia Dietze) discovering that the Nazis aren't nearly as friendly and loving as she was raised to believe, and her awkward interactions with the black-turned-white guy, who for some reason becomes a homeless person (Christopher Kirby).

Iron Sky isn't nearly as awful as expected, but that's not a good thing. The movie could have been a great candidate for a Bad Movie Night screening, but it needed to be sillier, funnier and more ludicrous to be worth a viewing.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.

D+
Our Rating