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.
