No Reason

Stay away from this movie,please. Everything is bad. GARBAGE

Six minutes wasted right off the bat, more than were needed to serve as contrast for what is to come. One scene of stark violence; two minutes of dubious editing and dialogue; 14 minutes of exposition. Even as some of the preceding moments are woven into the narrative thereafter, it's not until one-third of the runtime has passed that it seems like the movie begins in earnest. The concept sounds promising, and surely grotesque; the execution is distinctly uneven and wanting, sometimes needlessly obscene, and less than convincing. Whatever you think you're going to get out of 'No reason,' there's at best a 50-50 chance that you're right. For my part, I'm at best unsure this was worth my time.

Credit where it's due: the blood and gore looks good, and the effects generally. The violence and otherwise ghastly imagery is emphatically extreme, graphic, explicit, and excessive, including genital mutilation amidst near-constant nudity. Yet the crimson and viscera are also the bread and butter of the film, with any sense of plot being little more than an excuse for the visuals, so by that measure one would certainly hope this element is executed well. To that point, the makeup, prosthetics, and costume design mostly look pretty great, and mostly equally wretched. The exception is the cephalopod being, whose mask especially betrays the pointedly low-budget nature of the production, and the voice effects for whom are downright tawdry. I appreciate the set design and decoration, especially in the more gnarly scenes, and if a little on the nose, the use of lighting is pretty swell.

All this is well and good. On the other hand, the acting generally leaves much to be desired. The editing is wildly overzealous - presumably trying to compensate for weak material - including disjointed sequencing that adjoins poor writing. Individual scenes are mostly fine in theory (and do come off well in the bloodiest of instances); dialogue is laughably bad, and never more so than when there's any attempt at profundity (including the ending). Characters are a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas, as seemingly unfinished in concept as the story. No feature can survive poor writing. There are good ideas here, and the root premise of an ultra-violent journey through one's personal hell is a fantastic idea for a horror film. Yet the plot feels meagerly plastered together, barely attaining cohesiveness, and it's flimsy all the while. Again, it's clear the blood and gore were the top priority, but that's "no reason" for shortchanging the glue that holds a picture together. Olaf Ittenbach needed to spend more time developing his screenplay and less time imagining different ways to spill blood.

If all you want out of a horror film are a few scenes that arguably make it seem like the Cenobites exercise restraint, then you might get a kick out of 'No reason' as long as you fast-forward through about a collective half of the runtime otherwise. If you need more out of your genre flicks than simple, brutal violence, you've altogether come to the wrong place. I had high hopes, and they were dashed: it's a notion I'd like to see explored more earnestly, but this isn't the movie for any major degree of thoughtful storytelling or mindful film-making.

This movie wastes no time getting into gear exposing full frontal female nudity and excessive gore. This movie reminded me of some great horror films of 2010 such as The Farmhouse, Blood River and Devil but unfortunately for this German export, it didn't live up to its potential. The problem with this film is that it is too confusing and convoluted for the average gore fan. The acting is tenuous at best and the ending seems a little rushed although i did like the conclusion. Other negatives to this film were the special effects and the audio. Some effects were so bad and obviously fake that it took a bit of the gore authenticity away from the proceedings. The audio sounded like it came from another film at times and was badly recorded into this picture. It's not all doom and gloom for this picture, the pacing is good and moves along at a very crisp pace and for the budget I think the heart of this film was in right place. It also had a grimy '70's grind house feel reminiscent of great 1970's exploitation sleaze such as Malabimba and one of my all time favourite's Alucarda. So for those of you that love grisly gore and nudity running amok...proceed, the rest of you stay far far away.....

Ittenbach's latest diabolical mind-bender of the colorful kind may bemuse you as well as shrink your dink.

If I tried explaining the story to you, or even – I'm losing patience just thinking about it – discussing what it all means, I'd probably come across dumber than I sound right now. So, with that said, let's give it a shot! Ya got a girl who's visited by a tentacle bearded demon guy that is trying to teach her the truth of her ways by bringing her to different layers of some type of afterlife realm…or some sh!t like that. Hey ya know, that wasn't that bad of a summary. What's most important is knowing if Olaf's flick was able to deliver while his cast of characters did their thing. The answer is sure.

Pretty early on you get the picture that the story is a take it or leave it type of thing. I personally thought it stunk, but if you dig heady, weirdo German type story-telling then I guess you'll dig it…at least a little bit. But again, we know better. Ittenbach fans know better than to expect an average tale. We hope for one, but we don't expect. What we do expect is blood. So we sit there with our bibs on, waiting for that first splash.

It doesn't take long.

What No Reason does have going for it is that it's possibly one of the goriest films of the past couple years. Besides some lighting techniques that may have cut corners around how realistic the gore should look, the film still delivers on the blood front. There's a sequence, a hellish sequence you would say, where we stroll along through a torture dungeon of sorts that is basically just non-stop atrocities. Some creative stuff is going down too. Graphic is an understatement, as we peep peeing girls, some skin tearing, a bound to be classic penile mutilation, and of course, lots of blood spurting. It's the highlight of the film.

There are other scenes of OTT violence, and our leading lady is one hundred percent naked I'd say 80% of the movie - nice bum, small boobs, camel toe in your face. So as you see, there is enough here to keep your eyes glued to the screen. At a little over 70 minutes the film does feel longer because of Olaf's talky tale of colors, but I'd say it's definitely worth any gorehounds time as well as a must see for fans of Olaf, and, without a doubt, a definite for feminist gorehounds.

An average output for Olaf by my standards, but still, gore is gore, ass is ass, and how much more can you ask for when Ittenbach is in the big boy chair?

No Reason is a film that lives up to its title - not in a clever, ironic way, but in the sense that there seems to be no reason for most of what happens on screen. Directed by Olaf Ittenbach, this German horror film leans hard into gore, surrealism, and shock value, but forgets to bring along a coherent plot, engaging characters, or meaningful purpose.

Clocking in at 75 minutes, the film feels much longer, dragged down by endless sequences of over-the-top, stomach-churning body horror that lacks emotional weight or context. The protagonist, Jennifer, wanders through grotesque hellscapes, encountering increasingly bizarre and disturbing scenes, but without a narrative thread strong enough to justify the journey.

The visuals are clearly where the budget and effort went - practical effects fans might find moments of interest - but without a strong story or characters to invest in, the gore becomes numbing rather than effective. Dialogue is minimal and often stilted, performances are wooden, and the philosophical themes the film seems to hint at are buried under piles of meaningless carnage.

In the end, No Reason feels more like an art school horror experiment than a satisfying film. Disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, it lacks the substance, structure, or subtlety needed to make any of its horror land with impact.