Her Name Was Torment

How I did come across this flick, well, if a flick contains necrophilia and you are a horror buff searching into the deeper vaults of the obscure back then in the eighties it was all about Nekromantik (1987). Sure, there were earlier flick about necrophilia but Nekromantik was explicit. Then in 1997 it was all about Nekro, a short flick. Nowadays, it's about this one.

Is it as shocking as it did back then in the eighties. No, and it never will. Back then it was extremely hard to get a copy of Nekromantik, you could even go to jail if they found out you had it in possession. Now with the internet it's all there to catch in full glory. So on that part it's not shocking but if you never seen a necrophilia flick then you will be disgusted by this one.

But it isn't going to be a flick for all sickies out there or gorehounds because it's made in the art- house style. And there isn't that much of red stuff to catch even as they pull out nails, cut off lips remove eyes you get the feeling. What annoyed me was that the victim never really screamed while being tortured. So the overall look is all about torturing being done by a female walking around in her nudies with a creepy mask. And there it will be shocking again because when she goes for the corpse she masturbates all over it and let the victim lick her fingers. Let that be the messy part.

Why she is doing all that is in her mind, some kind of overlord looking like an alien. You see, not an easy flick to watch. A few weird shots and sounds, well done on part of editing and effects used to create the art-house look. But on the horror part it's a bit too low to really shock the real horror geeks. Still, if you are used to see Hollywood horrors then place a bucket in your room, you will need it to catch your vomit.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 3/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I can't say much about this movie in terms of plot because it seems very much like there is a lot that was left unsaid. I will say that at times it felt like an episode of Lost in the sense that it left you with more questions than answers, but was wildly captivating and entertaining at the same time. It is raw. It is bold. It is in your face. It is WRONG (on so many levels). Yet, it is so RIGHT. If you enjoy no-budget indie horror at all and are not squeamish, this is the movie for you. Like the title says, it is the best no-budget, indie horror film about necrophilia, love, hate, torture, religion, and loss released this year!

Some movies like to show you the meaning of life. Let us think about arthouse flicks like "The Tree of Life" and "2001: a space odyssey". This was definitely one just like them. It was so exciting to witness all the things that beautiful woman did with the skeleton against her frail naked body!! I mean, how could you oppose such class of meaning, reason of existence really?! It is a glorious thing to be able to witness his hand against her buttocks, thereby really linking life to death and death to life, bringing to mind some heavy parts of Sartre's "Being & Nothingness", yes, definitely substantialising God himself on this planet Earth. Ow, by the way, that corpse, did it not have a short cameo in Steven Spielberg's "Poltergeist"??? It's been a long time, so I'm not that sure, but there was a certain resemblance.

As a doctor interviews patient 394, a physically and mentally scarred female serial killer known as Torment (Allison Egan), a series of flashbacks reveal how she tortured and killed one of her victims (Brandon Salkil), collecting his body-parts in jars for a mysterious being called The Overlord (who, looking at him, might be an extraterrestrial).

Up until now, indie horror director Dustin Mills has impressed me with his willingness to tackle a range of sub-genres and film-making techniques, but here he strays into dreaded torture-porn territory, while employing a tired, grainy, found-footage-style aesthetic with art-house pretensions; it's a combination I was always going to struggle with, having had my fill of torture movies and found footage flicks over the last decade or so, and, more often than not, finding the experimental horror label to be nothing more than an excuse to show some outrageous gore while not bothering with an intelligible narrative.

Sure enough, I found the whole thing rather disappointing, the film covering ground that has been done many times before with greater success, and not making a whole lot of sense in the long run. The wobbly camera-work and grainy imagery, combined with a cacophonous soundtrack, grated on my nerves; the gore, while wonderfully nasty in tone, failed to convince (do eyeballs really have optic nerves THAT long?); and the acting is far from realistic (I'm sure I'd do more than just groan a bit if I was having my finger nails ripped out with pliers).

As with most of Mills' productions, there's plenty of full-on female nudity, this time from Egan as the tattooed, mask-wearing killer, who likes to romp with a decomposing corpse (a la Nekromantik) when she isn't practising her manicure skills, pulling on eyeballs, or snipping off lips. Needless to say, these scenes are far from erotic (if you find yourself turned on, then you may have issues that need addressing).

I'd like to think that Her Name Was Torment was simply a case of Mills getting 'torture porn' out of his system, but with a couple of sequels imminent, it seems that he ain't finished yet.