4Digital, out 14 September

A down-on-his-luck archaeologist returns from an expedition to the caves of rural Kentucky, after unsuccessfully trying to locate a mysterious relic that his family has sought for generations.

Let’s be honest, the strap line here is ‘Captain Kirk and Seven of Nine fight Satan’. Promotional materials suggest it’s a mix of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Descent and The Exorcist. If only. This is one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time, and one can only assume that the participants did so purely for the money.

There’s a whole sub-genre of monster movies which feature Star Trek cast members – I immediately think of Robert Beltran and Chase Masterson in Manticore, James Doohan and George Takei in Some Things Never Die, or Walter Koenig and Tim Russ in InAlienable. And yet none of these are so godawful as this teaming up of William Shatner (Kirk), Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) and Jason Brooks (erm, Star Trek 2009 as an unnamed Romulan Helmsman). What’s really sad is that it’s written by the late Next Generation producer and scribe Maurice Hurley (this is more Shades of Gray or The Child than his Q Who).

From its bizarre opening credits with random clips of the main actors doing uninteresting things, and the Immediate full reveal of the titular demon, to the exposition-heavy but nonsensical dialogue, it’s just a mess. Shatner takes 33 minutes to turn up, and even then it’s a bizarre ranting monologue about death. Poor Jeri Ryan does her best to look interested, and think God Picard came along after this to save her from such z-grade material.

The family go to a tomb to recover a relic which has been cursing their family – they’re related to conquistadors apparently – and they treat this like a jolly camping trip, even though they know people have previously been murdered there. But the selfies and banter soon end then when a troop of monsters in Predator/Lordi/Slipknot knock-off suits start terrorising them. Luckily Shatner turns up at the end with a souped-up Nerf gun with magical bullets, but can he save his son?

Verdict: A movie that’s so bad that you might want to watch it just to check this new low in horror entertainment. Just rubbish. 1/10

Nick Joy