The folks at Sinema Saliba manage to concoct an interesting indie experimental anthology film around the theme of Frankenstein and rebirth with a series of short films that dabble in narratives revolving around mortality and death all of whom vary in tones of artistic to the utterly absurd. Director Matthew Saliba pulls out all the stops for this anthology picture that deconstructs the tale of Frankenstein and sets the framework down in assorted set pieces and flavors that help this movie feel like a varied buffet of vignettes that will manage to perfectly entice the viewer’s imagination and rethink the concept of the mad doctor and the monster.
If you look at “Demoni” from a critical point of view, then you’re not going to enjoy it too much. Who is the messenger of this whole event? Why does the main character envision him before the whole horror goes down? Why is he handing out invitations? What makes these people so special who have the invitations? Why did he pick these people? What was his goal? Who built this movie theater everyone attends? Who funded it? Was it Satan? Why choose a movie theater to take over the world? Why is this demonic movie that plays in the theater cursed? Why is the prop mask that belongs to the movie capable of turning someone in to a demon? Why, if you want to take over the world, do you hide the prop behind a glass? Is there security in this theater?
One of the saving graces of “Kick Ass” is the casting of Chloe Moretz, a young girl who manages to completely and utterly steal the show from every single cast member here including Clark Duke, and she’s managed to spawn an unlikely legion of admirers who came to the movie to see a little girl mutilate everyone in her path. While “Kick Ass” never quite manages to muster up the sympathetic story it did in the comics, Matthew Vaughn completely wins over the crowd with Hit Girl aka Mindy, the most interesting character in the bunch who is given the most interesting conflict in the film as this character whose own life manages to play out like a typical hero origin. Little girl loses her mom after her dad is framed for a crime, she’s trained by him to become a killer, the dad dies and she avenges him in cruel and unusual ways. I assumed the girl would hit the big time after seeing her steal scenes from Joseph Gordon Levitt in “(500) Days of Summer” but here Matthew Vaughn shows that he takes the character very seriously and never dodges her sheer brutality in the face of schmoes who happen to come across her blade.