Following his father’s death and an accident with a client, Salah starts down a revenge path against racists and those who have wronged his father and himself. Written and directed by Dan Pringle, this vigilante-horror film delivers plenty of vengeance and bloody violence with some original ideas on how to get rid of the bodies. It has themes that will hit close to home for some such as racism, familial duty, wanting for a better life, etc. Of course, what makes the film interesting is the less than common (and advisable) path the lead takes towards his goals. His vengeance is violent, bloody, and rather merciless.
Author Archives: Emilie Black
Terror 5 (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]
In this Argentinian horror film, multiple tales crisscross and overlap, creating a whole that shows chaos in a city. Students torture teachers, party goers discuss snuff films, a couple is being spied on in a motel room, men standing watch have an interesting night, and mourners meet creatures in a cemetery. Written by Sebastian Rotstein with collaborative writer Nicolas Gueilburt and co-directed by Sebastian and Federico Rotstein, Terror 5 works these 5 stories together and interconnects them in a way that makes the whole work. The characters are varied but mostly young people, most likely to appeal to their demographic and for parts of the story to make more sense.
Kammati Paadam (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]
After a friend’s frantic call, Krishnan returns to his childhood and teenage years’ village to find his friend and what happened to him. Through a series of flashbacks, their lives are shown through school age, teen years, early adulthood, etc. With a script written by P. Balachandran with collaborative writing by Ajithkumar and G. Sethunath and directed by Rajeev Ravi, the film weaves back and forth through time showing more and more of lead Krishnan’s live as well as his friends and love’s lives. The way the years are mixed together with different actors for only a section of them requires one to pay attention to film as only details such as more white hair show the time passing. Even with this, the film is fairly easy to follow until the search for Ganga really heats up and more characters are added.
Miruthan (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]
In the small town of Ooty, India, a toxic spill transforms people into blood-thirsty, fast running, wire-stunt performing zombies. Director Shakti Soundar Rajan takes a fairly typical zombie story, mixes in an unrequited love story, a dash of political observation, a Bollywood musical number, wire-stunts, and a good sense of humor about the whole thing to create a zombie film that doesn’t feel like it’s just hitting the tropes and its marks mechanically, it’s fast paced and fun while adding a special touch to its subject. The idea of mixing Bollywood style film with zombies might not seem like an obvious choice but here it works of course, the humor being quite on point adds to this and to the enjoyment overall.
Fetish Factory (2017)
In a private burlesque parlor in Hollywood, performers and VIP clients face off with a zombie attack. Directed by Staci Layne Wilson from her own screenplay based on a story by Lony Ruhmann, Fetish Factory mixes burlesque dances and performers with end of the world and zombie tropes for a fun result. Staci Layne Wilson takes the zombies sub-genre that is all over the place lately and focuses it by bringing her personal touch to it and adding a varied group of beauties to fight them off. Granted, this in and of itself is nothing new (we’ve seen hotties and strippers fight zombies before) but her usage of actual burlesque performers and actresses adds to this in a way that changes from the usual boobs and blood route these films take.
Evil Games (Scherzo Diabolico) (2015)
A man who receives very little acknowledgement for his hard work decides to get things to change by kidnapping a young woman and holding her captive until he sees results to his plans. Unbeknownst to him, things are about to take an unexpected turn or two. Evil Games is written and directed by the mind behind 2016’s White Coffin, Adrian Garcia Bogliano. Here he builds another kidnapping story but with much different characters and reasoning. In Evil Games, the story is seen from the kidnapper’s side as he takes the time to build his story, his background, and his reason for doing this before getting to the kidnapping itself.
A First Edition with a Lot of Potential [Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2016]
This year’s edition of Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival was their first and from the online reactions to it, it should be back next year bigger and better.
As this is one of the festivals Cinema Crazed could not attend, I managed to snag some coverage anyway (yeah!).
Without further ado, here are the links to the 5 features I was lucky enough to be able to see.