Judy

I've seen all 3 Necrostorm movies up until now and all 3 have been violent bloodfests. After seeing the first 2 I assumed that the 3rd Necrostorm movie would be a violent bloodfest and it was. Assumption correct. And so of course I assumed the same would be true of their 4th movie: Judy. At last my dumb assumption has been proved wrong! Instead of an action horror we have an attempt at 'pure' horror. More than half of the movie goes by without any body parts being blasted off, instead building tension and a foreboding atmosphere. There's only so much of that I can take though and at one point I became bored with not much happening... until suddenly everything happens in the 4th quarter. This is the Necrostorm we know and love! This is a good movie, I wish it could have been a bit longer than the 75 minutes running time though. Other notes: The movie has pretty much 1 character. The dubbing is once again dubious and yet amusing. I'm not sure it's worth the full 15 or 20 Euros cost as it feels like a half film, a watered down Necrostorm adventure. Would I recommend? Yes I would! Bye!

I have seen every film by the studio, and while some are great and extremely entertaining (Adam Champlin, Hotel Inferno), this film unfortunately falls at the opposite end of the spectrum. Slow, tedious, poorly written, questionable make-up; can this film do anything right? The premise made very little sense (a woman ignores a circus clown and is later stalked and tortured by the freaks of an unknown circus?), and once you get to the end of the film, you wondered why you wasted your time. It was a mean spirited movie that should have never been made.The one redeeming quality? The little gore shown was top notch, and actually made me squirm. But there was just not enough of the good stuff to erased the rest of this atrocity. A total disappointment.

At first I was HIGHLY annoyed that the mouths and words didn't match, but then I realized, after going online that it's actually an Italian film. That first scene of blood, shocked me. After that I was HOOKED

I have been a pretty decent fan of Necrostorm for the past couple of years. Adam Chaplin and Taeter City went down as instant favourites due to their entertaining, blood splattering value. Even Hotel Inferno was a lot of fun, despite its resemblance to a video game as opposed to an actual horror movie. Necrostorm has come to mean blood and entertainment for me, so it's fair to say I was more than keen to check out their latest release, Judy. I purchased this movie knowing nothing about it, except it was by Necrostorm and directed by Emanuele De Santi (the same director of Adam Chaplin). All I knew to expect was blood, and lots of it, a trademark from Necrostorm. What I got was something I wasn't expecting at all. I got an actual scary movie.

Judy is a dog. Despite the misleading title, the movie actually focuses more on Judy's owner, Mary, who is being stalked by some deranged and scary street performers. That's about all I'm going to say about this movie. As always, the less you know about a movie the better. So, is this movie any good?

On a cinematography level, this movie looks gorgeous. The production values are top notch and the effects are brilliant. Even the actors look normal, and not mutilated and deformed, as in the usual in Necrostorm flicks. But the makeup and costumes are fantastic. As a standout from the other movies by Necrostorm, blood and gore is used sparingly in this one. They take their time when to show it, but when they do, it's effective. There's still enough blood for this to be considered a 'splatter', however, it's not the focus of the movie. The movie actually focuses on tension and atmosphere. In that sense, this movie is sometimes considered a slow burner. There is constant tension as you are always waiting for something scary or dramatic to happen. And for the first half of the movie, not much pays off. There are many scenes where you expect something to happen, and it never does. This is actually very effective, cos when something finally did happen, it's beyond scary. The ending really is quite terrifying. I was not expecting this from a Necrostorm movie. This movie was scary!

However, this isn't a perfect movie at all. The biggest thing people will notice, is the dubbing. I don't mind dubbing at all, this is an Italian movie after all, however, the voice actors were pretty bad. This didn't bother me too much, because the bad effects of the voice acting helped give this movie more of a surreal tone for me. But I can see many others being too distracted by it to fully allow themselves to be immersed in this. My other complaint, is there is no indication whatsoever why the events in this film took place. On the back of the DVD box are the lines; "Bad things happen to bad people", but this is irrelevant since our protagonist isn't a bad person. We are not spoon fed anything and have to connect the dots ourselves. So when the ending happens, you might be scratching your head and wondering why certain things were possible. But again, this can be overlooked. Sometimes things are scarier when they are not explained.

Despite this lack of explanation, this movie is still very freaky. For me personally, it succeeded in being a decent horror movie. This movie is far from perfect, but it was scary as hell! If anyone liked movies like the Babadook, I highly recommend this one too.

Thankyou for reading.

An interesting change of pace for Italian splatter fiends Necrostorm, the guys behind relentlessly gory low-budget fun action-fests like 'Adam Chaplin' and 'Taeter City'. 'Judy' by contrast is a slow-burn, suspense-building creeper of a film focusing on a woman being stalked around her apartment by an oddball bunch of street clowns for unknown reasons. And it's a very decent effort to be fair. Creepy and effective for the most part. In terms of movie-making it's more of a serious attempt to woo a broader range of horror fans rather than just the thrill-seeking gore-hounds out there. Not that the gore lovers have been totally left uncared for, there are a couple of gruesome moments on offer - a brief moment at the beginning and a more brutal scene at the end showcasing Necrostorm's brilliant use of gory makeup effects.

Yeah it's by no means perfect, there are a couple issues. Pacing was a tiny bit slow, building the suspense is fine as long as moments of horror or a scare are added to make things not seem so monotonous. Also, another thing that plagues other Necrostorm productions is the bad English dubbing, it does harm the overall effect of the film and it's no different here.

So in conclusion I urge fans of Mr. De Santi's previous work to give this one a chance, it's a commendable change of direction and it shows he's got more to offer than just splatter and gore.