Mudbrick

Mudbrick is a 2024 indie horror film, directed by Nikola Petrovic, about Paul, a man who inherits a crumbling old house in his family's Eastern European village. When he returns to check it out, he starts to uncover disturbing secrets tied to an ancient pagan cult and his own family history. As things unravel, Paul has to face the eerie past lurking in the walls of the house and his own family.

What a trip this movie was! I checked it out after seeing it recommended by Hyped on Horror, and I'm so glad I did. I also took their advice and looked up some of the history and lore beforehand, which I highly recommend-it makes the story way easier to follow. The cinematography really stood out for me. It's super simple and natural but somehow adds so much to the overall vibe as the movie goes on. Philip Brodie and Andrew Howard absolutely killed it, and their screen chemistry was on point. It's definitely a slow burn, but not in a painful way-it keeps you hooked all the way through and wraps up with a really satisfying ending.

I have to say this movie is not for those who want some dumb fun. It's a very serious tale of envy, despair, superstition, and ruin; that takes itself seriously.

The acting is superb, and plenty is said with dialogue that is trimmed down of anything unnecessary and it lacks exposition dumps, thankfully.

For the budget this movie had, I was shocked at how good it looked. The scenography will surely make you forget you're watching a non-Hollywood budget movie and the music is noticeable yet subtle to not take away from the experience but add to it.

The acting is simply amazing so that some actors who only have a line or not even a line, say more with that than some actors say with a book-worth of lines. One of the main actors, Andrew Howard, looks so much like a Serbian man that it comes out as a shock he's actually Welsh. The other main actor, Philip Brodie, wonderfully portrays the "prodigal son returns" role, and the rest of the cast well... if you've ever been to a Balkan village, you'd sworn you've seen these people there by how good they portray their roles.

Lastly, the story itself. The writer borrows enough from Slavic folklore and real life to intrigue you but leaves enough as a mystery for you to understand and unravel as you go along. There are "plot twists" but not in the typical sense you might be used to, rather it clicks in your mind as you watch ''til the end.

The only flaw of this movie, if I can even call it a flaw, would be that it's marketed as a typical horror movie. No, it's not a horror in the sense of jumpscares, CGI monsters and gore, it's a horror in a more personal sense, and I would rather call this movie a family horror-drama.

And adding lots to it. I had the pleasure to see this film in a local theatre, with the director and some cast attending. Unfortunately, not many people sat there in the audience. I did end up liking it, the direction was pretty good, good cinematography, music and some of the cast, especially portrayal of the two brothers, were also good. This film is directed as a horror movie, and I enjoy a film, where every scene lets you know what genre you are watching. The first act is accompanied by such an eery score, that you feel uneasy watching it. It features some gory scenes I have never witnessed before. The folklore elements were unfamiliar to me, but I think the director created his own, in a way that works for the story. The plot twists did not disappoint. What I did not like was the editing, some scenes needed to be long, especially in the beginning, when we see the characters for the first time. Jump cuts sometimes confuse, when you have not spent long enough time with the characters. I hope this will be fixed in directors future projects I am looking forward to.

If there was a possibility to rate it with 0 stars, that would be the only realistic rating.

This film should be a horror film, with elements of Serbian, pre-Christian, pagan, mythology. At least that's how it's defined and advertised. None of these definitions have anything to do with reality. Some evaluate it as an artistic folk horror, like Midsommar, and I can agree with that only in terms of complete illogicality, senselessness and bizarreness, which it completely shares with the aforementioned film.

By far the best grade the film can get is from the technical side. Better sound than most "Serbian" films, solid scenography and landscapes. And that's where the story about the positive ends completely. Of course, that's not nearly enough for one star.

The acting in the film is, to put it mildly, disastrous. This is, of course, the greatest "merit" of the director, who is also the creator of the nonsensical scenario. There is almost no meaningful and logical sentence in the film. The dialogues are artificial and illogical to such an extent that the viewer, surely several dozen times during the film, gets the desire to stop watching, because of the itch in the brain caused by the absurdities. The domicile language, supposedly spoken by the characters, should be Serbian. We can barely recognize a dozen words from Serbian in the film, and that's only because the actors actually speak Macedonian, and maybe even Bulgarian. Actors from the English-speaking area could not make an effort to learn the few or so words they say in Serbian so that it can be recognized that they are spoken in Serbian. As someone whose mother tongue is Serbian, I watched the movie with subtitles because I couldn't understand what was being said.

The part about pagan mythology is a special story. In Serbia, at least in the last 100 years, there is not a single place, even in the most rural possible parts of the country, which have practically no contact with civilization, and which are really few, where such cults exist or existed. Therefore, for me, as someone who knows and studies Serbian pre-Christian mythology, this is "close" alost the same as the mythology of the natives of South America, Papua New Guinea or Mozambique. Apart from the terms Nav and Veles, everything else is complete nonsense and the "artistic freedom" of the screenwriter/director.

The attempt to present the story as an arche narrative of struggle and envy between brothers also failed completely. Of course, at a time when the quality of movies is declining exponentially, there will be many who will "swallow" that attempt. However, it must be said that the realization of that aspect of the story is at the level of an amateur theater from some rural village, as shown in the film.

Of course, this film will find its audience. Lovers of the absurd, enthusiasts who don't care about logic. Those who care about "artistic expression", not content. Those who will say that the picture, which has two crossed lines, represents a dilemma, not the lack of talent and creativity of the author. And that's okay. The rest of you, save yourself some time and skip this.

This film is so cryptic that it doesn't even tell you what country it's taking place in. It doesn't tell you anything, really. There's also a lot of whispering and mumbling so you won't understand what little is being said either. Something about pagan worship amidst traditionally Christian people, which makes as little sense as the conflict regarding ownership over a worthless house. There are no scares in this film, there is no suspense to speak of, and there is no payoff for enduring the minimalist and confusing plot. The characters are poorly developed and annoying, making any emotional involvement impossible. Random surreal waste of time.