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Horror
begins in a beautiful winter setting where a helpless teenage
girl is abducted by a man in black clothing while a black goat
watches from the sidelines. The man carries the girl to his
home where it becomes apparent that he and his wife do this
kind of thing often. Slowly it's revealed that the kidnapper
(Vincent Lamberti) is some type of evil reverend named Salo
Jr., who keeps his daughter Grace (Lizzy Mahon) a drugged prisoner.
At roughly the same time five inmates of a drug rehabilitation
facility escape from their incarceration in a stolen van. The
leader of the group, Luck (Danny Lopes), has been inspired to
join Reverend Salo Jr. and takes the others along. On the way
they begin eating psychedelic mushrooms which Luck claims the
reverend gave him the day before. Just before the crew arrives
at the Salo residence Grace has a vision of her dead grandfather,
the Reverend Salo Sr. (famed TV "mentalist" The Amazing
Kreskin), who warns her about her father. Grace is very confused
by the fact her grandfather is dead and only barely seems to
understand her predicament. When Luck stumbles into Grace's
room his 'shroom-induced hallucinations paint her parents as
diabolical floating jack o' lanterns —
he shoots
them both dead with a pistol stolen from a guard at the rehab
clinic. From then on he and the remaining characters attempt
to figure a way out of their situation and out of the Salo house.
Have you ever found yourself watching a film and thinking "Jeez!
I could have done a better job than this!" That's the
feeling I experienced at several points during Dante Tomaselli's
latest horror movie, cleverly titled Horror.
Of course, I am in awe of folks like Tomaselli with the chutzpah
and drive to make their own independent features... but that
doesn't mean the movies they create are necessarily good. As
a matter of fact, they're often quite bad and that's the category
in which I'm afraid this messy little pretentious hodge-podge
of images resides. Seeming both too short and too long at the
same time, the film has no sense of momentum and even less regard
for relating a compelling story. Tomaselli sets up two poorly
thought-out plot lines and then throws them together without
any logic and, as far as I can tell, no point. Even when he
manages some beautiful or frightening images he almost immediately
undercuts their effectiveness with awful editing that destroys
the budding atmosphere. This is most prevalent early on, when
he manages to evoke some very creepy tableaux with the black
goat, which seems to be a harbinger of evil. Setting the goat
against a bright snowy background, he uses silence and the stark
contrasts of color to create a powerful visual moment. Several
times he effectively creates just such a sinister feel only
to edit in a fast-moving POV shot that drains all the mood from
the film. Such editing crops up throughout Horror
and ruins the flow of the piece each time.
I'd like to say that with a tweak here and
there this could have been an interesting film but I honestly
can't. When in the first 15 minutes we see most of the young
cast gobbling down hallucinogenic mushrooms you know that this
will become the filmmakers' sad excuse to throw anything on
screen they want including as many homages as possible. By the
time the Romero-like army of zombies appeared outside the house
I threw up my hands in disgust. After all it's just another
hallucination, right? It doesn't matter to the characters or
mean anything in the story. To me this type of pointless throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks
crap wears out its welcome fast. We even get a couple of scenes
of Kreskin doing his mentalism act that are easily the most
interesting moments the movie has to offer. Find your story
and tell it! Or, if all you want to do is create striking images
for an hour or so then learn how to edit the scenes so you cause
awe instead of guffaws. This film is neither scary nor interesting
unless you've got some mushrooms of your own to eat during the
ride. Since Tomaselli says in the DVD's commentary track that
Horror is a succession of dream
images and "all the characters are symbols or objects,"
maybe I'm just missing the point of the film. Maybe it's supposed
to be pointless, disjointed and frustrating. There are some
nice critics' quotes on the back cover of the DVD that sing
the flick's praises as a visionary, visual masterpiece... so
perhaps I'm simply missing the boat. But I don't think so. Any
film that puts me to sleep twice is not a visual masterpiece.
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