No Reason

After being placed in a strange afterlife, a woman finds herself continuously forced to watch the torment of those around her to help determine the true value of a cruel lesson about herself, and the longer she stays in the tormented scenario the more her mind and body break which hinders her quest even further.

This was a generally solid but somewhat trouling genre effort. When this one works, it's due to the solid atmosphere that emerges from the setup that serves to unleash stomach-churning gore at every opportunity. Given the presentation offering up simple excuses for her to encounter the people from her life in a series of intense, brutal and well-choreographed torture sequences offering demonic creatures taking BDSM tools and other nefarious tools to graphically rip victims apart in unrelenting sequences, the film works rather nicely. Mangling parts and splitting open their body to generate spectacular gore-gags with oceans of bloodshed during the scene, these scenes stay in the mind rather nicely with the impressive nature of the setups including the scenes in various lighting arrangements that add an extra layer of psychological torment to the proceedings. This psychological approach carries over rather nicely into the general plotline involving her quest to uncover the truth about her tormented state and constant torture. The addition of the color-coded levels that are supposed to signal the separate points of her psyche that needs to be uncovered is a fantastic aspect introduced here as there's a lot of fun to be had with how this takes on the running storyline involving her surviving the torture to determine the point of the experience and purpose of her life. Regardless of the effectiveness this storyline aspect brings into the film, there's a lot of impressive work here that gives this a rather surprising and unforeseen final half which adds a lot to like with this one. That said, there are a few problems to be had with this one. The main issue is the generally confusing and nonsensical storyline that wraps all this surreal imagery and gore together which doesn't make any sense. Not only is there no excuse for a film like this that barely tops out at an hour to feature useless padding such as the visit from the mailman destroying the bathroom or the shopping trip picking up supplies that don't mean anything to the end result of the film but it tends to take up time that could've been spent spelling out what's going on. There's very little mentioned here about why she's going through this process to begin with since the beginning stages involving her everyday life don't signal this and to then put everything into this coded mystery involving the meaning of various colors and the connection to her own spiritual journey becomes quite confusing and disorienting.

Rated Unrated/NC-17: Continuous Full Male and Female Nudity, Extreme Graphic Violence, Extreme Graphic Language, perverse sexual actions and children-in-jeopardy.

German underground horror (basically raw or extreme) director Olaf Ittenbach first came onto my radar with Premutos: The Fallen Angel. The gore was excellent but the rest really lack luster. This brings us to No Reason (2010), which was only recently released outside the festival scene). Again the gore was spectacular, and I mean almost on par with Marian Dora, spectacular. The cinematography and editing worked well with the Hellraiser meets Raw atmosphere. Irene Holzfurtner delivered an extremely strong performance. This brings us to the story, which with Ittenbach we do not expect to be there at all. Ironically there is a bit of a story and it is rather cleverly conveyed, mostly through the prologue and references to the book Holzfurtner's character is forced to read. A better script and tighter directing would have made it a really good film.

This movie wastes no time getting into gear exposing full frontal female nudity and excessive gore. This movie reminded me of some great horror films of 2010 such as The Farmhouse, Blood River and Devil but unfortunately for this German export, it didn't live up to its potential. The problem with this film is that it is too confusing and convoluted for the average gore fan. The acting is tenuous at best and the ending seems a little rushed although i did like the conclusion. Other negatives to this film were the special effects and the audio. Some effects were so bad and obviously fake that it took a bit of the gore authenticity away from the proceedings. The audio sounded like it came from another film at times and was badly recorded into this picture. It's not all doom and gloom for this picture, the pacing is good and moves along at a very crisp pace and for the budget I think the heart of this film was in right place. It also had a grimy '70's grind house feel reminiscent of great 1970's exploitation sleaze such as Malabimba and one of my all time favourite's Alucarda. So for those of you that love grisly gore and nudity running amok...proceed, the rest of you stay far far away.....

Ittenbach's latest diabolical mind-bender of the colorful kind may bemuse you as well as shrink your dink.

If I tried explaining the story to you, or even – I'm losing patience just thinking about it – discussing what it all means, I'd probably come across dumber than I sound right now. So, with that said, let's give it a shot! Ya got a girl who's visited by a tentacle bearded demon guy that is trying to teach her the truth of her ways by bringing her to different layers of some type of afterlife realm…or some sh!t like that. Hey ya know, that wasn't that bad of a summary. What's most important is knowing if Olaf's flick was able to deliver while his cast of characters did their thing. The answer is sure.

Pretty early on you get the picture that the story is a take it or leave it type of thing. I personally thought it stunk, but if you dig heady, weirdo German type story-telling then I guess you'll dig it…at least a little bit. But again, we know better. Ittenbach fans know better than to expect an average tale. We hope for one, but we don't expect. What we do expect is blood. So we sit there with our bibs on, waiting for that first splash.

It doesn't take long.

What No Reason does have going for it is that it's possibly one of the goriest films of the past couple years. Besides some lighting techniques that may have cut corners around how realistic the gore should look, the film still delivers on the blood front. There's a sequence, a hellish sequence you would say, where we stroll along through a torture dungeon of sorts that is basically just non-stop atrocities. Some creative stuff is going down too. Graphic is an understatement, as we peep peeing girls, some skin tearing, a bound to be classic penile mutilation, and of course, lots of blood spurting. It's the highlight of the film.

There are other scenes of OTT violence, and our leading lady is one hundred percent naked I'd say 80% of the movie - nice bum, small boobs, camel toe in your face. So as you see, there is enough here to keep your eyes glued to the screen. At a little over 70 minutes the film does feel longer because of Olaf's talky tale of colors, but I'd say it's definitely worth any gorehounds time as well as a must see for fans of Olaf, and, without a doubt, a definite for feminist gorehounds.

An average output for Olaf by my standards, but still, gore is gore, ass is ass, and how much more can you ask for when Ittenbach is in the big boy chair?

No Reason is a film that lives up to its title - not in a clever, ironic way, but in the sense that there seems to be no reason for most of what happens on screen. Directed by Olaf Ittenbach, this German horror film leans hard into gore, surrealism, and shock value, but forgets to bring along a coherent plot, engaging characters, or meaningful purpose.

Clocking in at 75 minutes, the film feels much longer, dragged down by endless sequences of over-the-top, stomach-churning body horror that lacks emotional weight or context. The protagonist, Jennifer, wanders through grotesque hellscapes, encountering increasingly bizarre and disturbing scenes, but without a narrative thread strong enough to justify the journey.

The visuals are clearly where the budget and effort went - practical effects fans might find moments of interest - but without a strong story or characters to invest in, the gore becomes numbing rather than effective. Dialogue is minimal and often stilted, performances are wooden, and the philosophical themes the film seems to hint at are buried under piles of meaningless carnage.

In the end, No Reason feels more like an art school horror experiment than a satisfying film. Disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, it lacks the substance, structure, or subtlety needed to make any of its horror land with impact.