Kolobos - Trappola infernale

The opening music is very reminiscent of 'Suspiria' in Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk's 'Kolobos' (1999), but unfortunately this film suffers from the common ailment of low budget horror films; the problem of weak dialogue and variable performances.

The filmmakers obviously appreciate the slasher genre and at the same time acknowledge its weaknesses. One of the characters is an actress who appears in the fictional movie franchise 'The Slaughterhouse Factor,' which when the characters in Kolobos sit down to watch the series in its entirety, either mercilessly mock it or simply fall asleep as they tick off the rudimentary clichés of the genre.

Kolobos goes into the potentially interesting area of reality TV, with Big Brother (which only started in 1999) type territory being delved into. The set up has the characters answering advertisements to appear in a project where they will come together in a house with hidden cameras and be filmed for five days, having no access to the outside world.

Dario Argento 'Giallo' black gloves are given a guernsey, as are anatomy drawings, POV stumble cam, a Deep Red style tooth smashing, and the colour scheme is straight out of Suspiria and Inferno. For the U.S audience who maybe isn't familiar with 'Giallo,' Kyra is from the get-go set up as the final girl… but is she?

After an interesting start, Kolobos becomes plodding, and with a meager running time of 1 hour and 24 minutes, I still found myself checking my watch.

KOLOBOS surprised me. I thought it would be your run-of-the-mill Dead Teenager movie,but the movie went far beyond mere slasher conventions. The images are genuinely surreal,the script is smart and the deaths

look seriously painful. The ending rocks and even if you don't understand it,you WILL squirm. KOLOBOS is a very good movie that deserves to be experienced.

Kolobos might not be a title you hear thrown out in horror circles very often, because it was dumped into video stores without a theatrical release and given lousy artwork that had nothing to do with the film. This is definitely a small, low budget affair, but there's a lot of thought put into it and it looks absolutely beautiful.

The entire film is bathed in lighting that would make Argento and Bava proud and the death sequences are fairly imaginative and well done, especially for a low budget film like this. The final twist isn't handled very well and it comes across as a bad afterthought, but everything else is so captivating that I can't even fault it for that.

When I began to watch this movie I thought I was in front of another "Friday the thirteenth" rip-off and well,it follows the formula but at the same time it introduces some quite interesting elements that makes it superior to other similar movies released at the cinemas such as "Cut"or "Urban legend 2" and I liked the end because it´s a change with reference to some irritating topics from this kind of movies, I know there´s someone here telling it has no sense but I don´t think so.Although I have to say I´m quite used to strange movies with strange endings, check out the Spanish "School Killer", it´s fantastic.I give "Kolobos" 6 out of 10.

Read another review for the plot cause i wouldn't want to give anything away. i just wanna say i was really impressed by the quality and effectiveness that this movie had as a straight to video horror release, which there are so few of at the present. the gore is spot on, and me and my mate jonnyorange76 should know cause we have watched shelf loads of vids. (in one scene a guy gets his head rammed off a metal bath tub, and you see his teeth connect, grrrrreattt!!.) there is definatley a good amount of suspense pulled off here and the director managed to make me jump a few times, this was probably helped by some pretty descent acting instead of the usually petty crap straight to vid releases have in them. take the good advice and chek this movie out cause it has just as many shoks in as any of the screams if not more, PLUS U CAN THEN TRY AND EXPLAIN THE ENDING TO ME.