Hotel Inferno

I abso-bloody-lutely loved Necrostorm's first movie Adam Chaplin, directed by and starring Emanuele De Santi, but was rather disappointed by their follow up, Taeter City, which was helmed by Chaplin's special effects man Giulio De Santi: it tried hard to impress, but simply didn't work anywhere near as well as a whole, despite once again featuring tons of superb splatter. But I'm a generous kind of guy, always willing to give a film-maker a second chance to impress, and with Hotel Inferno, impress me De Santi most certainly has. As Yoda might say. If he watched gore films.

Shot entirely in first-person POV, Hotel Inferno is quite unlike anything I have ever witnessed before. Sure, I've seen first-person POV employed sparingly in films like Doom and House of the Dead, but never has it been used as fully or so effectively as it is here, the viewer being fully immersed in the action from start to incredibly bloody finish. Quite how De Santi pulls off some of his technical trickery is simply mind-boggling, the whole film feeling like one long take during which numerous foes are dispatched in graphic fashion by the film's anti-hero Frank Zimosa, the hit-man through whose eyes we witness the action.

Zimosa (Rayner Bourton) has been hired by mysterious businessman Jorge Mistrandia (Michael Howe) to kill a couple currently staying in a fancy schmancy hotel in some strange, unspecified foreign country. Mistrandia, who keeps in contact with Zimosa via high-tech glasses that relay everything the hit-man sees, insists that the kills be carried out in a ritualistic manner with specific weapons. Always the professional, Zimosa obeys, but becomes concerned when his second intended victim displays some worrying symptoms before he has even been touched, spewing blood and pus all over the bathroom while mumbling about 'She' being 'fed on pain'. Suspecting that something is seriously wrong, the hit-man decides to split, but Mistrandia has other ideas and sends other killers to prevent Zimosa from leaving the hotel.

What follows is an hour and a quarter of extreme, jaw dropping brutality, with the plot taking strange turns into the world of the occult, pitting Zimosa against an army of deformed zombie-like creatures and—in the manner of the video games that it so closely emulates—an end-of-level boss that is super powerful and seriously freaky. Admittedly, the film loses focus in the final act and feels a little longer than it really needs to be, but overall this is a very impressive piece of horror cinema—innovative, exciting, and oh-so-incredibly-gory!

Everything about this is bad. The acting, the lighting, the sound, the camera "work", the "special" effects, the props, the costumes, the dialog, the script and the entire basic idea for this "project". Another reviewer mentioned the soundtrack and while that didn't stand out for me as being as horribly bad as the rest of it, never once did I think "hey, pretty cool soundtrack".......... The only people who should ever see this are those who participated in making it and they should be made to watch it over and over again for the rest of their lives. This item has no redeeming qualities unless you are a fan of very bad attempts to make something worth watching. I am running out of ways to describe this without using the words "film" or "cinema" or "movie" because it is none of those things. If some 4th grade kids made it I would give them an A for effort. If 5th grade kids made it I would flunk them. There is absolutely no reason why anybody should watch this. There are far more entertaining "bad productions" to watch. I sat through this so you don't have to. Believe me now or you will regret wasting your time and you will say "Yep, that guy on IMDb was right. I really wish I would have listened to him".

Fun movie and while a few of the effects are a little off the overall effort is exceptional.

The the only real problem are the hands of the point of view character . He has hands like a kept woman. I mean he must moisturize every hour on the hour. There is no character in the hands.

The exposition scene in the room of flies is very well done.

All in all a very well made project with budget spent on real FX.. no computer work here..

This movie got a handful of bad reviews, but I guess different people look for different things in films. I like 1) creativity 2) atmosphere 3) Uniqueness. This movie has all things I like in a good horror movie. The gore is an A+ effort (of course, Necrostorm never fail on this front), a truly individual story and characters that are fresh. Never in my life before have I seen (or heard) people who speak like this, but I mean that in a good way - It gives the film it's own feel. I've owned this a few months and watched it repeatedly, it never fails to entertain. If you are a fan of Necrostorm but not seen this, it's better than Taeter City and on a par with Adam Chaplin. The story isn't particularly complex, but I don't think that matters here. This is simply a tale about a man falling into trouble and trying to find his way out. No more to it than that. Except he get's out of it using extreme violence! Fun! Watch it.

I got through 20 minutes; the gore and sense of realism is spot on (if a little over the top), but it was the terrible amateurish dialogue that I found the most offensive. Maybe it would feel too much like watching a snuff movie if it were acted well. Not for.