In Taeter City, a futuristic civilisation ruled by a totalitarian regime known as 'The Authority', potentially violent criminals are identified by the Zeed system, which analyses the brain structure and converts killer instinct into suicidal impulses. Once dead, the criminal's body is collected and turned into fast food for the masses. However, the Zeed system is not perfect, mutating one such violent outlaw, Trevor Covalsky (director Giulio De Santi), and making him even more aggressive in the process. Authority bikers Razor, Shock and W**k (Monica Muñoz, Santiago Ortaez and Wilmar Zimosa) are given the task of trying to stop him.
Supernatural revenge flick Adam Chaplin, the debut film from Italian production company Necrostorm, blew me away with its cool narrative, over-the-top characters, ultra-violent comic book style and amazingly realistic gore effects (provided by this film's star and director De Santi). Taeter City, the company's ambitious follow up, employs a similarly excessive approach, but fails to impress as much, the story not as sharp and the characters less defined, with the regular and rather repetitive Verhoeven-style commercial breaks rapidly becoming tiresome. An overuse of flickery editing effects and digital colour-grading also proves irritating.
Thankfully, De Santi's incredibly bloody effects are just as impressive as before, and gore-hounds will undoubtedly get a huge kick from the sheer quantity and quality of the carnage on display: limbs are torn, heads are crushed, eyeballs are popped, guts are wrenched, hands are mangled and bodies are sliced, all of which is flawlessly executed (some of the effects are uncomfortably realistic). Hardly a minute goes by without some poor schmuck having something truly revolting happen to them. Movies rarely get more violent.
6/10—jaw dropping splatter, but the weak narrative lets it down a bit.
