Necromentia

This movie looked so promising in the beginning and had potential, but it was never given chance to fully become what it could have.

The movie is dark and gloomy, which is nice for this type of movie. And the creatures in the movie looked cool, although there was far too much inspiration "borrowed" from Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" franchise. And also the big creature in "Necromentia" seemed to be a replica of the "Nemesis" monster from the "Resident Evil 3" game (and/or "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" movie).

As for the cast and acting, well nothing bad here. Good performances all together.

The story was fairly good up until halfway through the movie, then it lost its breath and the movie suffered horribly from it. The movie grew stale and boring at that point. But I still sat through the entire movie.

The ending? Well it did tie up the circle of the story throughout the movie. But nothing breathtaking or spectacular. And also there were no scares throughout the movie. I was constantly waiting for something grand to happen. Unfortunately, it never did.

"Necromentia" is not one of the better horror movies out there, and it certainly is not among the worst either. Just below mediocre. Suitable if you are bored an evening and got nothing better to watch...

Four disjointed stories of horror loosely connected by a tattooed quija board.

Story one is about a guy who keeps his dead wife in a bathtub and tries to bring her back....or rather....keeps saying she promised to come back. No mention of when she died, but funny how there's no decay.

Two thugs come in and make an offer to bring the wife back. Something about gateways. But there is a fatal flaw with the plot. The guy doesn't choose his fate, as the narrative says...it's thrust on him against his will.

Story two finds two brothers -- one who appears to be a crippled mute. Mr. Skinny -- a fat guy with a pig mask pops out of the TV and the kid finds him funny even tho he's covered with blood. Lots of torture scenes here, but I couldn't follow it. It's all over the map and not one frame makes sense.

I THINK this 3rd story is about a guy who wants his brother back, but by this time all logic breaks down. The stories appear to be intertwined in a way that no sense can be made of them.

That's it for me. I don't even know what the 4th tale is supposed to be but it appears to be related to the first in a way and features an extraordinarily effeminate man who loves a woman a bit too much.

Net net -- this is a clunker.

Gotta admit, I was pretty excited to check this movie out. Combine the weird cover with a positive user comment here that said it's one of the sickest flicks he's seen, plus seeing a couple stylish screens of the film....I was ready for some Necromentia. Son of a bitch.

The story plays out as this anthology dealy, with basically three characters all interweaving with one another in some way. And to be honest with you bozos, it's nothing special. I'm already forgetting how they did connect, and I must say, that's a good thing. Instead of describing each character and his dilemma I'll just say the film revolved around revenge, love, redemption, and some silly nilly torture and necromancy.

Thinking about the flick I really can't think of anything truly memorable. The film even though wasn't my cup of tea, I can see that it was a labor of love. It's camera-work was stylish, the make-up alright, and hell, even during the credits they had cool symbols scrolling with the names. The acting and writing was all very mediocre, and at times boring. Not a good thing for only an 82 minute flick.

I'm a sucker for sing-a-longs, so that scene with the suicidal pig man....that was some good entertainment. Instead of going down this silly necromancy, demon realm (in a dumb tunnel) thingy, they should have maintained the focus on the truly bizarre. As that pig man scene was something altogether different and well-done.

Necromentia isn't anything I'm recing out anytime soon. The story was kinda dull, the characters unlikeable, the writing weak, but the flick had a touch of love, a splash of style and a sprinkle of originality that shows that the film-makers do have some promise.

Demons, suicide, necrophilia, transcendence through drugs and mutilation, all ingredients to whet the appetites of any self respecting fan of nastiness. Necromentia is a film well stacked with the good stuff and it has the right intentions to use it, but when all is said and done it comes in beneath its potential. It has the structure of a sequence of linked vignettes, the sequence of events avoiding a linear timeline in favour of unwrapping the mystery of how everyone is connected. A hip approach that film-makers have been fawning over since at least Pulp Fiction, it works here because everyone is connected and there isn't too much of randomness to things. The structure makes it fairly fun to get to the bottom of things and the ride is made all the better by the style on display, this is a very visual film with some sweet morbid imagery on display. The palette is predominantly dark (lots of shadow, grey and cold metal), the sets and shots cluttered and the art direction focused on chains, hooks and tools of pain, it's a horrific world on display and one so overpowering that the flesh tones and lighter colours of its characters come across as alien, an intrusion that inevitably leads to horrors as the darkness of the world around interacts with the flesh of the characters. If only the film had substance and emotional heft to support its style, but it sadly doesn't and the characters are a significant part of the problem. The acting is perfectly reasonable, with Layton Matthews conjuring an inscrutably sinister presence, Chad Grimes grimly determined and mentally frayed enough to do anything and Santiago Craig appropriately twisted and slightly pathetic. The trouble is that the film has a tight cast with most people connected, and pretty well everyone is so twisted, so tainted that empathy is impossible. The lack of balance wouldn't be so bad, since the film is clearly aiming to be something of a deeply macabre side-show, but in a film where no one is likable and the emphasis is on nasty stuff going down, things need to be seriously, impressively messed up and in Necromentia, they come close but no cigar. The visuals have imagination but lose their impact after a while, whilst the gore is kept mostly to a bit of splatter, skin carving and intestine play. The scenes are generally brief and not quite convincing, grisly but not grisly enough. So in the end the film falls somewhat short, a bit too much frustration making some of the cheaper looking scenes more noticeable and the overall hellish ambiance less interesting or effective than it could have been. This means that in the end the audience can't connect with the characters and isn't shocked by the grue, thus ends up slightly unmoved by the whole affair when it becomes apparent that it has little to offer beyond its ideas and atmosphere. Still, its watchable enough and a decent little independent effort, so a fair 5/10 from me..

I love the idea of this movie but the logistics don't work and that kills the final product for me. Told in a Pulp Fiction piece-it-together style, it tells the story of love, betrayal and resurrection but leaves out some fairly important information. How did the parents die? Why does their will not provide for adequate care of their children? And even *if* you're a junkie, how, when you run an underground scarification business, do you NOT charge your clients enough to survive on? Seriously. That ran through my head throughout the whole movie. Also - how do you cut off a client's finger and just continue on as if nothing happens? For me, this shows that no matter how much thought went into the movie (and it's an interesting premise), in the end Reginald choose cheap gore-points over an actual vision. The movie just...ends without a major plot point resolved.

The performances work well and the direction is decent. The pacing needs tweaking so as not to allow the viewer to actually think about the plot holes. While consistently a little too dark, the movie looks fantastic which is why I kept watching after the questions started popping up.

The pay off isn't worth the time invested. Worse, you really need to pay attention and that makes the ending even more disappointing.