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Red Room (1999) Review

July 20, 2013 by Eric S. Leave a Comment

Original Title: Akai misshitsu (heya): Kindan no ôsama geemu

Synopsis: How low would you go to win a million dollars? Just how desperate are you for the cash? Desperate enough to enter the Red Room?

Quick Review: You got to give it to the japanese: they know their shit when it’s about showing weird twisted human depravity.

Red Room is a typical game of survival where the last one standing wins 10 million yen. 4 People are playing the game (a married couple on a verge of a divorce, a schoolgirl and a young business woman) and they all have their own reason to be there.

What happens during the next 65mn (average running time for japanese direct to video movie) are game/torture scenes that mix soft porn and gore (especially in the last 15mn). It is not as outrageous or bloody as some other similar movies out of japan but twisted enough to make you look forward to the next sick game.

Red Room is an extremely cheap looking movie (that makes Death Tube looks like an hollywood production) with 4 people in a room for most of the duration of the film, but this format actually works in favor of the movie’s whole atmosphere.

Thanks to its short running time, enjoyable and sometimes imaginative games (great uses of a blow-dryer and a bulb) and above average acting, I did enjoy Red Room and would definitively recommend it to fans of Japanese twisted movies and survival games.

My Rating: 6/10

Director: Daisuke Yamanouchi

Origin: Japan

Warning the trailer below is definitively NSFW and spoils most of the movie!!

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) Review

June 5, 2013 by Eric S. Leave a Comment

Synopsis: (from IMDb) Inspired by the fictional Dr. Heiter, disturbed loner Martin dreams of creating a 12-person centipede and sets out to realize his sick fantasy.

My Quick Review: What a gruesome movie. After all the backlash Tom Six got with The Human Centipede, he made a movie filled with everything that was missing in the first one and only suggested (teeth being pulled out, knee being severed, skins being ripped apart, people eating shit….). And to top it off we have barb wire on c..k and a baby being killed (by its own mom!!).

This is like a big Fu.k you to all the critics of the first movie: “you wanna see disgusting, I’m going to give you the worst you’ve ever seen” And yes, the movie delivers some of the most disgusting and sick perversions ever put on film (not THE worst though).

I still prefer the first one in the sense that it feels more true to the filmmaker’s vision and nobody can top Dieter Laser’s performance. Nobody? Well, first time actor Laurence Harvey is quite close to perfection in his performance as Martin the madman obsessed with The Human Centipede. With his peculiar physique and creepy mannerisms you could not dream of a better lead villain. Say what you want about Tom Six, he knows how to choose his villains.

Th first movie was more psychological, the Human Centipede II is a gore-fest, I’m wondering what’s in store for The third movie. Can’t wait for it!

My Rating: 5.5/10

Origin: USA

Director: Tom Six

Year: 2011

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The Human Centipede (First Sequence) Review

June 4, 2013 by Eric S. Leave a Comment

Synopsis: (from IMDb) A mad scientist kidnaps and mutilates a trio of tourists in order to reassemble them into a new “pet”– a human centipede, created by stitching their mouths to each others’ rectums.

My Quick Review: Finally after 3 years of postponing it, I finally watched The Human Centipede yesterday. And I have to admit I am baffled. Not by the movie itself but by the surge of negative reviews that seem to have followed after the release of the movie. Was The Human Centipede victim of its hype? It seems that horror fans were disappointed by the lack of gross out scenes that they were expecting after reading the pitch and, at the same time, many critics trashed the movie for being too disgusting/gross and so on and so forth (probably without even having watched 1mn of the movie. It feels like Texas Chainsaw all over again when in 1974 Tobe Hooper was accused to have made the most disturbing and violent movie of all time (when actually all of the kill scenes were shot off camera).

The same is true for The Human Centipede. It has a very disgusting concept at its center (sewing people together from ass to mouth) but it’s never gratuitous. Most of the surgery scenes are off camera and there is no close up on the eating/digesting part of the process. So if you’re expecting a lot of gore and visual horror, you will definitively be disappointed.

What Tom Six is showing us is not depravity but the result of an emotionless mad scientist project. And this is the main force of The Human Centipede: it’s main character. Dieter Laser is absolutely fantastic as Dr Heiter and IMO is now amongst the great villains of Horror Movies History. His polarizing performance is unforgettable and brings all the creepiness needed to sell his character. The movie works because of him.

So, you could always find some faults to the film (other than Dieter Laser, the rest of the acting is quite poor; it is lacking a bit in the gore department) but as far as Indie Horror goes, this is definitively a win for me. I’m now really looking forward The Human Centipede II, which was written by Tom Six as an answer to this movie’s critics.

My Rating: 6.5/10

Year: 2009

Director: Tom Six

Origin: Netherlands

Click Here to Own The Human Centipede and Watch It Now!

7 Days Review

May 11, 2013 by Eric S. Leave a Comment

Original Title: Les 7 Jours du Talion

Year: 2010

Director: Daniel Grou (Podz)

Summary (from IMDb): A doctor seeks revenge by kidnapping, torturing and killing the man who raped and murdered his young daughter.

My Short Review: 7 Days is at time hard to watch but nonetheless a tremendous scoreless movie experience transcended by the performances of the 3 main leads.

7 Days puts the viewer in a tough spot as we follow the journey of a father whose 8-Year old daughter was just raped and murdered. When the movie begins with the father discovering the body of his daughter in a very graphic way (the camera closes down to the ravaged body of the young girl) we can’t help but feel all of the emotions of the distressed father (I have a daughter myself so I could definitively relate).

The movie does well to explore the parent’s relationship in the aftermath of the murder (they are not openly blaming each other but you can feel the resentment is in the air) and, once the police has caught the perpetrator, the father decides to take matter in his own hands (indeed 15 to 25 years of jail does not feel like a just sentence at this point). He kidnaps the molester and brings him to a cabin in the woods to torture him for 7 days.

At that point the movie could have become a simple torture porn movie ala Grotesque but director Daniel Grou prefers to focus on the psychology of his characters: a father who does not find comfort into afflicting pain to the man who raped and killed his daughter (but at the same time needs to believe he is doing the right thing), a cop whose wife was just murdered as well (and can hardly cope himself, admitting that having the murderer in jail is not good enough to make him forget and move on), the murder/victim who, in a very heartbreaking scene (“i do not need more pain, I need help”) almost makes us feel compassion for him, and the family of other victims divided into the ones looking for revenge and the ones trying to forget.

Of course there are some cringe inducing and very graphic torture scenes but again 7 Days is all about the characters and brilliantly so.

My Rating: 8/10

Click Here to Own 7 Days and Watch It Now!

Evil Dead (2013) Review

April 25, 2013 by Eric S. Leave a Comment

Year: 2013

Director: Fede Alvarez

Starring: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore

Neoli’s Review: If it’s gore you want, you’ve come to the right place. Evil Dead, the 2013 remake by Fede Alvarez, has plenty of gore to last you for a long time. This is torture porn at its darkest and grittiest—which means fountains of blood, lots of body parts you wouldn’t dare imagine being mutilated, and senseless killing all in the name of demonic possession.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen any of the original Evil Dead series started by Sam Raimi in 1981—just the bits from the trailers. 1981 seems such a long time—an innocent, carefree pre-Internet, pre-smartphone, and pre-tablet time—where it’s easier to believe in demon stuff and the scare factor is unspoiled. Now, there’s Wikipedia, and reviews, and sneak peaks, and other spoilers, and yet despite all these, Evil Dead the remake still manages to deliver pure horror.

The premise is simple: five friends—David, Mia, Olivia, Eric, and Natalie (look, their names even spell D-E-M-O-N!)—retreat into a cabin in the woods (They’re helping Mia recover from drug addiction.) (If it sounds like the premise of The Cabin in the Woods, that’s because The Cabin… cheerfully references Evil Dead, although if you remember, in The Cabin… Marty with the collapsible bong has no intention of quitting weed.)

Anyway, inside that cabin, they stumble upon the book of the dead which they still read aloud despite its warnings not to (because of course if they didn’t, there would be no horror film). Violent demon gets unleashed, and what happens next is a series of possession where each one of them falls victim and tries to kill the rest.

The result: massive gore and bloodbath. Apparently, being possessed by a demon compels the possessed victim to cut and disfigure him/herself. Meanwhile, the others—desperate to escape from being possessed—will also do anything, even if it means sawing their very own body part (Kinda like that scene in Saw VI, but sans the demon part). What makes Evil Dead infinitely horrific is the permanence of its mark: even if you get out alive, it’s not just simple scars you’ll get; you lose an arm, you’ll rip your face, you’ll slice your tongue.

Scenes from the Evil Dead the remake doesn’t stray far from the original. There’s still the tree rape scene. And just like the original, they never run out of dangerous tools to harm their friends and themselves with—electric knife, nail gun, hammer, knife, crowbar, shotgun, even a box cutter, which from now on will haunt moviegoers with that scene of Mia slicing her own tongue in two like a demon’s forked tongue.

They say if there’s one thing missing from this remake, it’s the campy, black humor of the original—see, they didn’t take things seriously back then. With this Evil Dead reboot, everything is solemnly gory. Needless to say, Evil Dead is not for the squeamish and the faint of heart. Do not dare watch if you’re pregnant or have a heart ailment. This is not the film that will renew your faith in humanity. You’ve been warned.

Neoli’s Rating: 8/10