Demonium

Having first achieved success with productions filmed in their native tongue, the next logical step for many foreign directors is to try and break the international market with an English speaking movie; for crappy cult German horror director Andreas Schnaas, whose amateurish splatter pics are unlikely to ever receive praise from the masses, this might have meant a very long wait. Rather than waste time honing his skills and mastering his art, Schnaas has ploughed on as he is, somehow raising a slightly bigger budget than usual for Demonium, his seventh directorial effort and the first to be shot entirely in English.

Well, something approximating English, anyway...

Inexplicably, Demonium features a predominantly Italian cast whose command of the English language can only be described as basic. With the actors mangling nearly all of their lines, and Schnaas' usual inability to tell a decent story (what is it with those annoying, flickery, sepia-toned flashbacks?), the film quickly becomes an incomprehensible mess which is only just made bearable thanks to some pretty gory death scenes and a little nudity (although even these elements seem to have been toned down slightly by the director in a misguided attempt at broadening the film's appeal).

Taking its basic premise from the Agatha Christie classic 'Ten Little Indians', the film sees a group of people gathered together at a creepy castle for the reading of a rich scientist's will; here they are told they must remain for three days before they can qualify for their inheritance. No prizes for guessing that not all of them survive to collect. One by one, the beneficiaries suffer gruesome fates (an exploding chest, a chainsaw attack, a pitchfork in the throat, etc.,) at the hands of the will's executor, Rasmus, and his lover Maria, who hope to claim the scientist's last discovery—a wonder drug that can cure all ills—all for themselves.

Despite plenty of the red stuff, even the most dedicated of gore-hounds might find Demonium's poorly structured narrative and excruciatingly bad acting too much to handle.

***Minor point of interest: Italian horror make-up maestro Sergio Stivaletti supplies the film with a very brief CGI sequence. It is rubbish!***

Schnaas makes his debut on film with this (shot on Super16 then blown to 35mm) DEMONIUM and tries to do a mystery story without leaving the gore: the result is a mess. They took Italian actors (since it was shot in Italy) but to act in English: you can imagine what comes out. The story is filled with holes and the style hasn't improved: again, the director uses a lot of hand-held camera. The gore is still there: this time the effects are very good (totally professional manifacture), but some scenes (like the murder of the old doctor, who gets the chest pierced with his own leg) are too much exaggerated. Since this is a real movie, we can say it sucks.

"Demonium" is the English language debut of Andreas Schnaas,whose previous amateurish horror movies include "Zombie 90:Extreme Pestilence","Anthropophagous 2000" and "Violent Shit" trilogy.For a Schnaas film,"Demonium" actually looks pretty expensive,but not too much.The acting is very poor and the script by Ted Geoghegan and Sonja Schnaas is awful,with appalling dialogue and unsympathetic characters.The gore is pretty extreme,with decapitations,throat ripping,torture and chainsaw dismemberment.Still the film is rather dull,so casual horror fans will be disappointed.Give this one a look,if you're a fan of German splatter.4 out of 10.

I did not like The horror film Demonium at all. I did not find anything interesting in the movie to enjoy. Rasmus Bentley and his lover, Maria. One afternoon, after they close a deal which will secure their lives together forever, terrible events occurs. One year earlier,a scientist is brutally murdered in his ancient castle. Rasmus, calls together the man's heirs listed in his will, but as they all gather at the castle, but what they do not know is that the murderer is still haunting the ancient halls. One by one, the group is hunted down by the lunatic, whose bloodbath is not yet complete. I found this to be quite a poor horror film, with not much of a very good storyline to it. 3/10

I saw this film yesterday, hoping it would be one of the so 'bad they're good' splatter films which I enjoy from time to time. But as the plot unfolded, right from the start I knew I had my hands on something really, really bad. To begin with, the acting is well.. atrocious, I mean the so called 'actors' were not only bad, but it almost seemed like they were trying their best to be the worst, it wasn't fun at all to mock them either since they seemed like porno actors and most of them were pretty unattractive to boot. The story already gives itself away in the beginning and soon you'll realize that for the rest of the film you will not be getting any surprises. I was yawning all the way through since I already knew what would happen. The sets and camera angles used are plain and do nothing to heighten the suspanse, not even the cheap scares worked since it all looked so fake. As far as the music score went, nothing to say really, just your usual spooky horror music we've all heard before, except for the occasional german (?) eletronic/metal/goth song in the background. By the end I was skipping forward with the remote to avoid the redundant and totally pointless dialogue between the characters, I don't even know what it was all about since the script is an amateurish disaster and everything that happens is so bizarre and illogical that it boggles the mind as to how such a screenplay could have been written by a sane person. Please do yourself a favor and stay away from this trash, it has nothing going for it except some cheap murder scene which failed even to make me cringe in the slightest. And what's with the ending?? what is the point of it all?. Avoid it like the plague!