Minore

A highlight of the 2024 NecronomiCon in Providence, R. I. was the U. S. premiere of this gonzo action / horror / comedy from Konstaninos Koutsoliotas. When a British (I think) sailor (Davide Tucci) settles in for a stay in a sleepy Greek resort town, he's forced to join a posse of locals to defend the place against a seaside invasion of well, creatures. From out of the sea come hostile cyclopean monsters ... a little bit like the flying brains from Fiend Without A Face, only they have eyes. And tentacles. The first line of defense: since almost everyone in the film plays bouzouki (how Greek can you get?) the obvious strategy is to combine the musical and the paramilitary and merge bouzoukis with assault rifles into deadly weapons to repel these hard-to-kill invaders.

If you think that sounds like a Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez-type strategy, you're on the right track, since at times Minore evokes what would happen if Tarantino and Rodriguez - maybe on a lark with Edgar Wright - made a version of John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes (an end of the world monster novel that, curiously, has never been filmed). Despite Tucci's nominal placement as hero, Minore is a true ensemble effort that blends gangsters, tourists, male models/bodybuilders, a granny only too willing & able to defend herself, etc. Koutsoliotas and collaborator Elizabeth E. Schuch must be congratulated on this work of Lovecraftian horror (the invaders' mastermind is a kind of giant Cthulhu-like creature) that is simultaneously unforgettable ... and very hard to describe: you have to see it!

Initially when I stumbled upon this 2023 Greek horror movie, I must admit that I was expecting some Lovecraftian horror, given the movie's cover and the synopsis.

Sure, I had never heard about this movie from director Konstantinos Koutsoliotas prior to sitting down to watch it, so I didn't really know what I was in for.

Writers Konstantinos Koutsoliotas and Elizabeth E. Schuch put together a script that proved boring and sluggishly paced. Sure, it was slightly Lovecraftian in nature, and I really wanted to like the narrative, but the storyline was just too boring and uneventful. And the character gallery was flaccid and bland, and people just standing around different locations playing guitar was so odd.

I was left with an overwhelming sense of 'was there a point to this narrative?' once the movie came to an end.

Give my extreme limited exposure to the Greek cinema, this being my second movie in my 49 years of living, to watch a Greek movie, then I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. But I will say that the acting performances were good.

It was a nice touch that the sailor apparently served aboard a ship named Miskatonia. Definitely a tribute towards Lovecraft.

The effects in the movie were surprisingly good, and the effects were the ones carrying the majority of the movie, as the storyline was a massive swing and a miss.

My rating of "Minore" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Low-brow and low-quality comedy targeted to the wide uneducated audience is what has dominated Greek film/tv/theater for decades.

Once in a while, there will be attempts to combine this particular brand of Greek entertainment with foreign elements. A couple of years ago Kako and Kako 2 came out and in the 80's there was Drakoulas ton Eksarhion.

In Minore you got bouzouki music and traditional Greek guys playing backgammon. You also got tentacled monsters that looks as if they were created with A. I software and some cheap looking gore. If that wasn't bad enough, the film lasts one hour and fifty minutes and for the first hour absolutely nothing happens.

It is no surprise Minore didn't last in Greek cinemas more than a week. It didn't do better with international audiences.

If the creators of Minore had taken their viewers more seriously maybe there would have been a more positive response.

"It's all Greek to me," summons up everything one can say about this film.

It's one of the movies that I spend most of the time laughing in the theatre. It's a great comedy! It has a black sense of humour which goes perfect with it crazy story. Also, in some scenes the camera movements are EXCELLENT despite of being a comedy it has a well don't camera work. In the beginning the images are delightful specially the scenes with red. The music composition of "rempetiko" and some heavy metal and other. The movie has lot of references to the 60s to 90s for example famous movies of the time like "the thing" with its practical effects. Sometimes, to not say most of the times the movie edit is Goofy (for example the CGI) but in a fun way which shows that the editor had a lot of fun editing those scenes. It's a amazing movie and I would watch it more than 2 times and i believe that someone who love the vibes of those decades (60s-90s) would appreciate a lot this film and have a great laugh.