Atascados en el piso 13

I too saw this last night at the Fantasy Film fest in Berlin where it had its world premiere. I hadn't seen any previews for it and almost didn't go. At the last minute, I changed my mind and grabbed a ticket.

I'm so glad I did!

The first 20 minutes, I thought oh lord, this is going to be terrible. On the contrary, this 20 minutes established the plot line and the first few characters personality and allowed us to figure out who was "serious" and "normal" and who were the slapstick artists playing off the deadpan. Once established, this cheaply made movie was quite simply a laugh riot for those who have a morbid sense of humor and enjoy creative torture methods.

The description in the film fest magazine really says it all: "And you thought you were unlucky? - During a heist in Russia, a professional thief (Dorff) finds himself dealing with twin serial killers, insane hostages, double-crossing psycho Russian hard-men and the real possibility of a horrible death."

By the end, the audience was laughing so hard we had tears in our eyes. It was gruesome, gory, campy and funny. It's one I'm buying when it comes out on video - because it fits my morbid humor quite well.

~Rose

I watched this movie last night not knowing what to expect and have to say this was one of the funniest slasher movies I have seen for a long time. I think You need to watch this movie twice or more to appreciate the subtlety in the humour. camp? yes, a good helping of gore, and some excellent larger than life characters. Boris and Yuri had potential as the new morecambe and wise of horror. I don't know what the other people commenting were expecting (or indeed watching) but my wife and I laughed throughout. A great deadpan performance form stephen dorff and the beautiful Jaime Murray. Take a chance and see this movie. All in all a great watch and a lot of fun.

I saw the movie at it's premiere at the Fantasy Filmfest in Munich, Germany, and I have to say it's very entertaining.

The movie itself is not a masterpiece by means of production design, acting, editing, directing or anything else. It is more in the B to C category. Trash, that is. But it is not at all pretending to be anything else. Just the other way around, it embraces it's trashiness by having the villain jumping around in ballet-like moves and similar things. This is one thing that makes this movie very likable. The other is that it is just so funny. If you are not offended by extreme violence and gore.

The theater was packed with the special kind of audience that is attracted to the Fantasy Film Fest, the kind of audience that will applaud and cheer when a head gets cut off and gallons of blood get poured around. But the cheering didn't stop there. As soon as the audience got into the movie, and got over an initial impression of crappiness (like a very rudimentary set, bad editing with scenes that were often just a bit too long and actors that were, with the exception of Stephen Dorff, sub par), it became clear to them that the movie is intended as a comedy and delivered funny and unexpected scenes one after another. And the laughter continued throughout the whole movie.

I really enjoyed the movie a lot, and in retrospect did not notice that it was actually 100 minutes long (although cutting 10 minutes off would have helped).

For it's great entertainment value (and isn't that what movies are all about ? ) I give 7 points. I cannot give less to a movie that I enjoyed so much, even if it has a lot of shortcomings on the technical side.

Expecting a different take on a heist gone wrong I never imagined this would be the result! Very few people realize that it is very hard to do comedy. And a comedy that is dark like this one is even harder to do. But because of the actors and the gore fest it works. Bronagh Gallagher (as Sonya) is marvelous evil. And Geoff Bell (as Boris) gives a good parody on the "perfect" Russian soldier. I must admit that at first I thought that the phony Russian accents were too much. But soon when I realized which direction the movie was going I understood why they used these accents. Everything supposed to be over the top,including the acting! If you don't get that than you won't like this movie. But if you do you will have a blast!

So, after i-don't-know-how-many years of being a reader of IMDb, after having seen this... film, i just felt compelled to comment for the first time. It's a sorry mess. And i mean really a mess. Not a single thing works in it, not one. I didn't feel interested at any time. Didn't smile for once. Didn't feel a thing, if it was not just amazed at the sheer stupidity of it all. It starts in France, where the french speak French, and moves to Russia where, in all logic, the Russian speak English between each other... with a Russian accent. It starts off with some jewelery robbery, and proceeds to a bad, bad slasher comedy. As i said, nothing works. Everybody's brain dead, the logic is thrown down the Russian drain, and it just drags on like the dummy rats that it showcases as the summum of special effects. What saddens me most is the evident budget that could have been used for someone with a minimum of talent to make a film worthy of existence. It was not even bad in a good way, just downright lame. The only worthy mention (with my appreciation that is) was the rather exotic looking Jaime Murray, with no more skin showed than her pretty face. That is to say how much i searched for an escape...

Amazing stuff. That it got made at all, that is.