O Toque

Rated as the scariest Russian horror movie ever, Prikosnovenie (which is best translated into English as The Encounter, not Contact) is one of those films viewers don't watch twice -- at least that's what many of them admit online. A low-budget supernatural murder mystery filmed with a bare minimum of homemade special effects succeeds brilliantly in creating a truly inhuman, otherworldly atmosphere you won't want to experience again in a hurry.

A detective investigating a series of suspicious suicides realizes too late he might not be dealing with an organized crime group of hypnotists as he first believed...

The strength of the movie is in the fact that it's not filmed for entertainment, the way most horror flicks are. You're not expected to watch it, stretch and say "it was only a movie". It's filmed in dead (pardon the pun) seriousness, a fictionalized documentary rather than a scary bedtime story. Interestingly, director Albert Mkrtchyan -- who enjoyed the challenge of working on a supernatural story contrary to his superstitious friends' warning -- very nearly shared the main character's fate and never made another film until his death 15 years later.

The film is unique in that it actually makes us experience the other side beyond life, the notorious next world -- not as a filmmaker's concept but as raw unedited truth. How did the director do it? -- Well, that's talent for you. But just getting a glimpse of what might await you out there is enough reason to carry on living.

Or rather the opposite. Well, that's what the director seems to be trying to convey to us and what if he succeeds. It is a movie where the depressing is visible almost in every frame. For this and despite a low budget, he knows how to play with the lenses, the camera cuts, the old and abandoned buildings so typical of the recently abandoned USSR. He delves into this idea of a sad world doomed to failure and the fact that we never see an evil that you can call a villain in order to position ourselves fuels that anguish.

Even good turns into bad and good actions into heinous events.

It is not made to entertain, it simply terrorizes us without makeup or sweeteners. Take it or leave it.

Never have I experienced such an amusingly artificial and bad acting. All the dialogue lines are somehow equally spaced by silence, but not long enough silence for the movie to feel like a theatrical play. These were the least believable diagolues I've ever seen.

The premise of the movie is somewhat similar to "It follows", but unclear and incoherent. The plot is short, feels as if written by a 10-year old, and badly executed.

I hesisate to call it a B-movie. Its artistic value is way less than of an average TikTok video.

It's got a bit a vibe (not of a horror movie, but of a sad despair incoherent swamp), but you would spend at least 2 minutes of your life staring at an old's man portrait.

Waste of time. Best to be burnt and forgotten.

Contact" of Albert Mkrtchyan is the best Russian horror of the 90s. An atmospheric and frightening film about a policeman who, when investigating a double murder, encounters inexplicable mystical supernatural facts and otherworldly forces. The film literally drives crazy not only the heroes of the film, but also the viewer. Also, in a mystical way, the film turned out to be the last in the creative biography of the director of the film, who almost died immediately after this film.

Well, this unknown but genius horror film had a deep and real beyond story, including the mystery of the screenplay, very real feeling of dead world. I can compare this film with Lucio Fulci's last "The door to the silence" of the same year. A detective is working on a strange suicide story and meets strange people who tells about "forzi"- some beyond creatures taking away people beyond. The hero was prohibited to say the words "The life is wonderful and nice". Every time he said that accident happen. Bad ending . A lot of cemeteries, super sound-effects, true story and masterpiece music.