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.
Tag Archives: Foreign
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.
The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) (2016)
Park chan-wook is no stranger to delivering some of the best character studies that also pack a sense of sexual perversity, and pain within its seams. “The Handmaiden” is one of his most epic in scope dramas that also manages to be one of the most erotic romances I’ve seen in a while. “The Handmaiden” is pure ambition that succeeds in delivering something of a labyrinthian narrative of crime, salvation, and romance that begins as a simplistic drama. It takes a brilliant artist like chan-wook to handle a film that morphs in to various themes and experience various tonal changes without it completely falling apart, but Park chan-wook handles it by making each new turn around the corner absolutely suspenseful.
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.
Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura) (1963)
Boris Karloff is deliciously spooky as the narrator who unfolds a trio of stories in Mario Bava’s immortal “Black Sabbath*.” Each tale involves people whose demons come back to haunt them in one way or another. Mario Bava is excellent in depicting various shades of terror, devoting bold and stark palettes of colors to each segment that add to the EC Comics vibe that Bava inadvertently conveys. “The Drop of Water” is the best and arguably most iconic of segment in horror movie anthologies, involving the classic comeuppance of a grave robber. In the early 1900’s, nurse Chester is called to a large house once owned by an elderly woman who was also a medium. After the elderly woman dies while seemingly in a trance, Nurse Chester arrives to discover the gruesome visage of the woman and helps to dress up her corpse alongside her incredibly terrified house maid.