Review: Corbin Nash

• 18 Apr, 2025
• Paisley P. Peinforte
• Hits count 53

If I told you Corey Feldman, Malcom McDowell, and Rutger Hauer starred together in a vampire action film, you could be forgiven for becoming excited. After all, with stars of that calibre in a production, what could go wrong?

Everything. That's what. 

The other day my friend Matt ( @mattbjorkman.bsky.social)  (go follow him if you're on Bluesky!) told me there was a film he was very angry at because of how bad it was. Intrigued, I decided to give it a look over. I now regret this decision, and so I must inflict my pain upon you all. 

Corbin Nash is a Spawn-meets-Blade production that felt like it was based on the bad fanfiction the emo kids I used to hang out with in Secondary school would write. It desperately wants to make a statement. And that statement is pants.

This movie starts off with an introduction from Malcom McDowell that is ponderously slow, feeling like something right out of 2005 Geocities fanfiction.

"This is a city of sinners, and far worse. Where the damnned and the forsaken walk the streets. The angels? They left a long time ago. The Lord has prepared his people for a great slaughter... and he has chosen their executioners. There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, put here to to devour the weak from off the Earth. Their blood will be poured out into the dust and their bodies will lay rotting on the ground. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Though light survives, and the battle between good and evil persists, angel or demon, all will appear before the judgement seat of God. Yet blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, so that all may receive what is due and be saved. Of those who have sinned against the Lord, I will make you as helpless as a blind man searching for a path. As it's only in the darkness that we find ourselves or find our maker's wrath."

Two minutes and nineteen seconds, that ran. Out of a ninety-four minute movie. Two point five percent of the movie, for a speech that was less informative than the sheer infodump that was the opening to the Alan Smithee cut of David Lynch's Dune. As I was typing it up I kept marvelling at how it simply refused to end.

We finally get stuck into the film at 3:30 as our "hero" is left to die out behind a bar. A woman runs up to him and yells "oh my god it's you!" as she finds him, without providing any elaboration, as if we are supposed to know who the hell he is and why we should care about him.

She squats over his prone form as a flashback commences. But not to what caused his injuries, oh no. For that, we'll have to go deeper.

We're introduced to our protagonist, Corbin Nash, who is your stereotypical chiselled hardbody policeman, boxing against another policeman.

The movie really wants us to know he's a policeman. In fact he is so police that he even has the logo of his police department tattooed on his arm just in case he loses his uniform. Which probably happens a lot, because he is shirtless for 90% of the film. This might not be a bad thing, except for the fact that I have to look at this movie all the time in order to see him.

Hilariously, we also see he has his surname emblazoned on his chest in HUGE letters, just in case anyone watching might dare forget his name. It's sort of like the shit version of a superhero wearing their logo on their chest, except in this case it just looks like his mum slapped his name on his chest much like one might sew a nametag onto underpants so he could remember what his name was in case he ever forgot. (On rewatch, I think I get it now. His dad was a baseball player, and I guess Baseball uniforms have like the name on the front or something?)

After some banter we immediately cut to a bar where he's speaking to an old man and being watched intently by another old man. (Whoever said there was no country for old men was clearly lying). 

Old Man #2 (Rutger Hauer (!)) reminds us that Nash's parents are dead, (presumably of embarrassment for being attached to this film) and then tells him a backstory out of nowhere about how Nash is the chosen "hunter" destined to fight evil, which sounds like such a bunch of contrived garbage even Nash doesn't believe it. Then old Man #1 re-appears just to emphasise that yes, this is totally 100% true in the worst case of "tell, not show" that I have ever seen. Even at this point in the movie I could tell this infodump was too soon. The protagonist is just sat down at a bar and lectured to, as opposed to something happening to him that might lead him to unlock the backstory either by explanation or flashback. (These men are never seen again after this scene, so yay for gratuitous appearances by aging stars in need of paycheques?)

We cut back to the present for a moment as the woman who found Nash has taken him back to her apartment to get his sounds treated. But she's tied him to the bed!

For sex? No. For her own safety... from him. But why? She never explains except to say someone told her to do this. Someone who is never named.

Things move on and we now see the villains and oh my god. The villains. One named Drake and the other-- (did we even catch his name? I can't recall, this film was so bad). And our first shot of Drake... well.

"I am beautiful. I am an angel. I am a cold-blooded fucking killer!" he exclaims in the most 2000 LARP way possible.

At first I didn't know if he was supposed to be a clown, or a shitty ripoff of  Dio Brando from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (an evil vampire possessed of extreme physical beauty)- but no. No. He just seems to exist to be a trigger for transphobic reaction from the other characters.

This movie tries so hard to be "Transgressive" with its liberal use of nude women and the gender-defying Drake, but it just comes off as cheap grindhouse schlock that's an insult to even the concept of Grindhouse cinema.

Nash is obsessed with solving a series of disappearances that have been going on all throughout the city. In the process of going around knocking heads, he comes off as the most angry and grimdark person imaginable, just completely dour and without any redeeming character at all. And he's supposed to be our HERO. Are we supposed to be cheering for him just because he's a policeman? I'd like to think society has had enough of that mindless hero worship.

After brutalising a poor man who was honestly trying to inform him of the supernatural nature of the crimes being committed ("I don't believe in monsters!" he roars monstrously as he punches the man, which I bet the filmmakers thought was a brilliant piece of metafiction but just comes off as making the hero look like a psychotic asshole), Nash is told to "Go see the blind man... he sees everything."

Groan.

After getting some sage advice from Malcom McDowell's overly long-winded character, Nash and his partner manage to track down Drake and his partner, who predictably beat the shit out of them, leading to the one genuinely hilarious moment of the film for me where Drake's partner knocks out Nash by literally slamming him in the head with a human body in a bin bag. (I'll take what I can get at this point, all right?)

The vampires capture Nash, but for some reason let his partner run free. (Just one of the many leaps of illogic we'll see in this film). Nash is now locked in some kind of prison with other captives, who are being used as part of a fight club / food pantry situation for the vampires. Why this is is never made clear, except that it serves as a reason for Nash to engage in some fights in a grotty WWE RAW Underground-esque set.

The sound effects in the prison are just a neverending loop of women's screams and I could swear door-opening and closing effects from the 1990's Doom video game.

Some of the fighting action here is good, but it's literally thirty seconds out of an hour and a half borefest. If the whole movie had had this level of action it might have been tolerable, but alas it was not to be.

The fight scenes rapidly become predictable and boring, and Nash, without hesitation, kills one of his fellow prisoners in this fight, who was gang member, declaring "he had it coming."

Our hero, everyone.

So, we must be 45 minutes in, and we are still in flashback territory. Seeing this film I am just reminded of the infinitely superior Blade, which took all of ten minutes to give us the background of the titular hero and did it with flair.

This movie so far is just... dull. The narrator bangs on about how this is all a massive struggle between good and evil, and God's vengeance upon the wicked, but really so far all I've seen is a dour cop who likes to beat the shit out of people and has rage issues. It's like The Punisher but without even a paper-thin tragic backstory to explain the violence.

Seriously, this movie is eliciting a "this is so lame" disaffected response from me. I can't even be bothered to become upset or angry at how pointless and incompetent it all is.

We cut to a scene where Drake and his partner are dancing in a dirty, old apartment with a nude woman tied to a wall behind them, intercutting the footage with severed mannequin heads and I can't get over how pretentious it's trying to be, but it just comes off as feeling like a bad pastiche of an art film. 

It's like the writer / director has seen art films where the villain exposes their soul for the audience in a raw, unguarded moment, and then cribbed a few notes and tried their best. It's like watching a robot paint Picasso. It can imitate the brushstrokes, and maybe even the composition of the painting, but it won't understand the soul of the piece or how the parts of the imagery should combine to convey a message.

Well, I shouldn't say that. A message was conveyed. And that message was "this movie is bollocks."

They're just copying all the artistic tropes without understanding how or why they work. It's like Tommy Wiseau's The Room trying to be Lynchian like Twin Peaks and failing, but I daresay his work was at least trying to convey a vision of some kind.

The flashback continues with more fighting, and in my head the voice of Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000 is screaming "I don't care about any of this! END! ENDDD!"

More fighting. Now with ECW style wrestling rings that have barbed wire ropes. What does any of this do for the plot? nothing.

My friend Matt was angry watching this film by this point for how stupid it was. I just sat there, bemused. The only way I could be angry was if I had paid to watch this movie. Well I guess I am paying for it with a part of my lifespan. Sigh.

Back in his cell, Nash is still trying to figure out what the hell is going on and some one says this all "feels like something else. Something impossible." and all I could think of is "something impossible... like liking this film."

THEY'RE STILL IN THIS FIGHTING AREA. It's like they paid for three or four sets and by god they were going to wring all the value out of them they could.

Nash finds himself in a dark room, conversing with a disembodied void-voice. Well before the conversing, we literally have him scream "waaaaaaaaaaah! FUCK!" at the void. Truly the height of cracking dialogue.

"Who are you?"

"The one that dwells amongst the darkest of souls."

Well all right then.

"If you fall far enough, you will see me."

Oh god, is the voice supposed to be Satan? Are they trying to be Spawn here? 

That's it, isn't it? The writer was like "I can do Blade and Spawn on a five dollar budget" and shat out this piece of A03-wannabe bollocks. (That's unfair to A03 writers who can do MUCH, MUCH BETTER than this drivel, I know.)

Cut back for a moment to Nash, bloodied and beaten in bed at the present time. I had utterly forgotten what we've been seeing so far is a flashback, that's how long it's been.

...

Drake and his partner meet Malcom McDowell's character at a park bench and they have the most tortured, overwrought dialogue exchange I have ever heard. Some selections:

"You take pleasure in doing wrong."

"Thy throat is an open coffin."

"You abandoned the night."

"But I'm not the one who's Blind here." (sayeth the blind man)

It's like when my Emo friends would LARP back in school. This was the kind of Chunni bullshit they'd spout with sincerity and gravitas. And they did it better.

This movie is so bad I had to ask Matt the ultimate question. How does this stack up to Morbius?

 

And I have to agree with him. Morbius, in all its shit, it 1000% better than this film.

Cut back to WWE fight club flashback. Now Nash is tasked to kill his cellmate, which he's all broken up about because this guy was another fresh white bread face and not another faceless tattooed gang member.

In what's probably another shit attempt at symbolism, his friend has the word "truth" tattooed on his clavicle. 

I do not know how much more ham-handed one can get. (On rewatch, I think I get it. He is the literal "moment of truth" for Nash - will Nash kill his friend or not?)

Nash refuses to kill a white man, and so the vampires drag his buddy off and tear him apart, splashing Nash with a bucket of blood bukkake style. 

And all I can do at this Incredibly Serious™ moment is laugh because all I can think of is the blood-drenching scene that kicks off the blood rave in Blade, and I am reminded of that infinitely superior film.

Again, This whole movie is like if Todd McFarlane was asked to do Spawn with the budget of £1.

Nash is talking to the void again. Which leads to his hilarious line:

"I ate them, but do not be troubled."

Oh my god. DO NOT BE TROUBLED, "HERO".

A goth vampire girl then attacks him (please note, Mr. Peinforte, she looks very much as I would if I am denied food at the appropriate time) 

and he is mobbed by other undead as we finally, FINALLY, end the flashback at one hour and eight minutes into a one hour thirty-four minute movie, going back to the apartment where the woman who rescued him powers him up by straddling him and feeding him some of her blood, which causes him to pass out.

A whole HOUR of flashback to get us to the point of his transformation. A competent script editor would have rewritten all of this to follow Nash through his investigation and the fight club, then to this injury and his revival as a vampire, with the moment he faces The Void as the time his background lore is dropped. But alas this was not to be for us.

Cut to Drake and his partner, who are shocked to hear that Nash is alive. His partner declares "we should have burned him."

They go find him, passed out, in the apartment.

"He's finished," Drake declares. And they leave him there, exiting the room.

WHAT HAPPENED TO BURNING HIM!?

Someone attacks Nash in the room, who wakes up and murders him before jumping out the window. Drake and his partner, two supernatural beings RIGHT OUTSIDE THE ROOM, of course hear nothing.

Brilliant writing, everyone. 10/10, no notes.

Drake has another legitimately funny moment where he uses the body of the man Nash killed like a puppet at the peephole of a door. He kidnaps the woman who saved Nash. (Was she even named in the film? I'm not sure she was).

Nash, meanwhile, is standing on rooftops shirtless, roaring. Seriously, all this man does is yell and scream and punch and kill. There's no human dimension to him at all.

As Matt put it:

We finally get an explanation for what it is Nash and his brother are doing. "They work as collectors in what they call the meat trade."

Calling back to the backstory of his dad being a baseball player, Nash says he's finally ready for "The game... the only game worth playing."

This dialogue I tell you. It's like someone read My Immortal and took it as an instruction manual.

FINALLY ready to finally take down the Super Vampire Bros. and rescue the woman who was kidnapped, Nash starts grinding down a baseball bat to create a vaguely sword-shaped wooden stake. 

We are 1:18 into a 1:34 film (1:30 without credits). So we have about 12 minutes to pay this excruciating build off. Can Corbin Nash deliver?

He then proceeds to spend the next three minutes easily killing random goons with his vampire superpowers before heading right for the bosses. Zero tension. Zero resistance, Zero learning about his powers or anything. Just a paint-by-the-numbers sequence that, despite the "action" still feels languid and boring. Just another thing to get though as the end of the film draws nigh.

Nash walks into the apartment where Drake and his brother are. In a "shocking" moment I bet the writers thought would be transgressive and racy, a mob of naked female vampires try to feed on their hostage. Yay. How titillating this all is.

Less than nine minutes left.

Punch. Headlock. Restraint. Punch. Escape. Headbutt. Punch. Staking a generic nude vampire woman. Untying the hostage. Getting knocked down and punched. Block.

Less than five minutes remain in this EPIC conclusion to the Corbin Nash saga.

Punch one of the bosses. Free the girl. Withdraw stake from the nude vampire corpse.

Slash.

Drake attacks Nash by jumping at him. Nash kills him. Easily. By simply pointing his stake at him and impaling him on the landing. No big set piece boss fight, monumental struggle or super powers needed to kill this older, experienced vampire here! Our main boss, everyone. 

As Drake dies, he tries his best for an artsy death, begging his lover to tell him he's beautiful and to avenge him.

A little over three minutes left. Surely now that the stakes have been raised SO HIGH (no pun intended, but it should have been!)  the finale will be an explosion of action!

His partner agrees, revved up for vengeance - 

and Nash immediately shanks him in the back with the stake, killing him before he can even make a move, dispelling ANY AND ALL DRAMATIC TENSION.

Yes, in real life that would be the smart thing to do. In the context of an entertainment piece, where this was the final final boss of the film, it was the stupidest thing to do.

And that's it. At 1:27 the game is done, with climax firmly denied. The edgiest of edgelord edging here.

So how do we spend those final minutes that weren't spent having a titanic boss battle?

With another McDowell monologue, of course!

"Loss. That's the hardest part about being human. Eventually in time, we learn how to let go. But there's always hope son, there's always hope. Because in the darkness we were able to find ourselves", the movie pretentiously croons.

"A lot of people are going to die". Yes, because this film will have murdered them.

"And so it... so it begins." Oh no film, don't you threaten me with that bad touch.

"Behold, for an angel fell like lightning from the heavens, sent to us from God himself. For now our lord will send his vengeance, disguise my sin, to fight fire with fire, for even the demons will believe and shudder. He is their final judgement. He is... the End."

And with that, mercifully, the film is over.

God, what a narrative failure from top to bottom. I do not exaggerate when I say this was a pile of garbage. It was so bad I don't think even the likes of Rifftrax could save it with sarcastic narrative accompaniment. They'd just be saying "Oh god", "oh no", and "come on!" for the whole running time.

Corbin Nash was not a The Room or Birdemic that was so bad it's good and you can keep coming back to it for a laugh at its bizarreness.

This was a dour, serious, poorly written attempt at budget Spawn and Blade that failed completely at every level, and just ended up falling flat on its face. Like its spiritual cousin Morbius, it was competent visually (mostly), but bankrupt narratively.

All told this review is about 3500 words long, which is 3500 more than it deserves. Corbin Nash is not worth your time, or your consideration- not even for a bad movie night. Let this review be a warning to you. 0 out of 5 stars.

No, Negative one out of five. Like the Vampire Bros. neglected to do, fucking burn it.  

If you still want to torture yourself, the trailer for the movie is here, and if you are a real masochist, the film is free to watch on Tubi here. 

Don't say I didn't warn you. 

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