Receiving its World Premiere at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival, The Old Man and the Demon Sword counts on its audience. It targets a fanbase of Troma-inspired low-budget aficionados to have the ability to revel in its premise. Using almost exclusively non-actors and a ‘film school final project’ aesthetic, plus a title that is the whole plot, director Fabio Powers bombards the audience with a barrage of low-resolution CGI effects. On top of the practically built sword, which admittedly is well crafted, the whole film feels like a discount video bin find from the early 90’s that should work much better in front of a rowdy crowd.

In a remote village in the Portuguese mountains, a traveller is beset by shadowy creatures known simply as Fears. After losing the battle, his possessed sword lands in the hands of the town-drunk Antonio (Antonio Jorge), as he is the only person who can see the physical manifestations of the fears and the sword. He converses with the sword (voiced by Joao Loy), and that conversation sends him on a rambling adventure – which almost everyone around him dismisses as drunken mumblings – to oust the Fears and escape a mysterious barrier that surrounds the city.

After looking at the designs of the Fears and the sword it’s easy to see the director’s influences. Heavily leaning towards a Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers feel, especially the ornate talking sword, while incorporating a bit of Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block with equal parts Power Rangers Putties to realise his shadowy Fears. But the biggest homage comes in the final minutes as the film, unsuccessfully, tries to repeat the same feel of one of the most subversive endings in Japanese horror over the last 10 years. I won’t spoil it here, but it does not work at all.