Shadow

If you liked Wolf Creek, then this funny little movie (and it is short for a movie) will probably please. It manages to remain serious enough throughout to genuinely scare, although at the beginning, to my mind, there is a slight caricature issue. I may be wrong about that, as this is an American movie made by Italians, so I'm not sure what was the intended audience. There is some beautiful forest to be ridden through, though the cameras used could have had better colour, and there was no artistic cinematography which would have been nice, although the shots of the deer were OK. Is it scary though? The first half is action, light on the dread, the second half is dripping with dread, and light on the action. It is frightening, absolutely, but I feel, in my humble opinion, that there was much more scope to develop more creepiness and tension, and I certainly wouldn't have minded the movie going a bit longer so as to enjoy that. It's like a painting that's only 80% and needs some art direction in any case. Shadow has great ideas that are slightly undernourished. Similarly the soundtrack was really original and modern, until the final frantic stages leading to the credits, when it devolved into something off-kilter and slightly distracting. Again, an unfinished painting. The flashbacks needed work, I thought, and to be more convincing. OK, I'm being really picky. Basically, Shadow is a good horror movie with plenty of skin to crawl and seat to edge onto, with excellent acting, good looking leads, and a profoundly devilish evil that's worthy of a minor award. Yea!

I was compelled to write a review after seeing some negative reviews. A lot of the other reviewers were expecting some kind of Italian horror like argento etc. When they didn't get what they expected they wrote a bad review.

I cant stand those geeky Italian horrors from film makers like argento so my views are not tainted by it! just because the directer is Italian doesn't mean its going to be similar to those films dur.

This film was nicely filmed in beautiful locations with some smooth editing and quality camera work. I was interested from start to finish in what was happening. For those reviewers who said the film was mixed up obviously didn't get what it was all about. I wont ruin it by telling you.

There was some gruesome imaginative torture porn for those of that are into that sort of thing but what kept me interested was the creepy atmosphere and how invested i was in the characters struggle from the start of the film right through to the end.

In summary really not bad for a lower budget film, a directer who knows how to capture the moment and not give us enough time to question what just happened before the next drama ensues! This is something Hollywood fails with again and again with every genre so i gave it an 8 / 10

I got to say that I'm not big fan of Italian horror movies, but seeing trailer for this movie, got me interested.

Great beginning of the movie, intense (usually love outdoor horror movies) and fun. But, when started "bloody part" of film, I was disappointed. As I love to see blood, cutting, torturing and things like that on horror, I was not so satisfied with "killing scenes", 'cause they were not showed (camera would go up in the air or would be filming from distance). I was expecting a little bit more gory scenes in movie. Plot was good, main actor was good, not great, but at least good looking (watched with my friends, so we liked to see him on screen :)), the killer was creepy and convincing and for the first director's horror movie it was really good.

Watchable movie, definitely didn't waste my time, but could have been a lot better.

This was... most certainly indi to say the least haha it was a little all over the place but still had some positives.

Conceptually I found this decently interesting and in a big way was saved from being unredeemable by the twist in the end. Nothing all too interesting happened until about half way through and I think a lot of the beginning filler could have been cut. In all honesty, keeping it as close to its original form, I think it could have been most successful as a 30 minute short.

They had some really neat filming locations and set dressing so props for that. Also main guy and girl did a decent job, the two bad guys... not so much. And the bad bad guy, while he didn't say anything he was super creepy. Honestly, could have done with more of him all around.

You have to have a true appreciation for indi for this one. Also I think the concept could inspire something really interesting to work with. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't recommend.

Saw this at Frightfest in London a few days ago.

Director Federico Zampaglione comes across as a really nice guy, the film seemed like a bit of a labour of love for him (he even got his old dad who helped with the script up on stage for the Q&A which was quite sweet) and he's obviously a real genre fan. That's the good news...

However, on the bad side... the story is horribly confused, the direction is all over the place - but the music isn't too bad (Zampaglione is the singer of an Italian pop-rock band) There are a few fairly gruesome moments, but there's all too much boring, nonsensical build up, with badly drawn characters running around in the woods before the "horror" bits kick in. There's also a good deal of needless mountain biking (a passion of the director) which makes the film feel like someone's switched onto an extreme sports channel for 5 mins before we can get back to the film! As I say, there are moments of promise but as an overall film it just doesn't work. I don't think that Zampaglione is really ready to be writing and helming his own films at this stage... it's a far cry from a 3 minute music promo.

Hopefully for his sake he'll maybe try and work with an outside influence who might be able to give his next project a little bit more focus. In a way you have to salute Zampaglione for making exactly the kind of film he wanted to make - but unfortunately that doesn't make it something that other people will want to watch.

One to avoid.