I attended the world-premiere of "The Furies" at the Brussels' Fantastic Film Festival, and writer/director Tony D'Aquino was present to introduce his movie and sing for the outrageous audience (it's tradition in Brussels for directors to sing a song). Admittedly, I always tend to be more lenient and forgiving in my reviews when I hear the makers enthusiastically talk about their films. When you hear him promote his own film, it's clear that D'Aquino is primarily a die-hard horror fanatic, like myself and everyone else in the audience, who grew up with the notorious slasher of the 80s. He combined all his love & knowledge of vintage slasher cinema and made "The Furies"; - a homage to nostalgic horror with an absurd plot and loads of over-the-top gruesome gore. Somewhere in rural Australia, unknown assailants kidnap wayward young girls and release them again the middle of a forest. The girls are trapped in a sick type of VR-game and find themselves pursued by a variety of maniacal killers in horrifying masks. You'd think that the logical thing for the girls to do is stick together and team up against the killers, but the rules of this cat-and-mouse game are slightly different. Hate to say this, but the script is quite nonsensical and every next plot twist is even more ridiculous than the one before. And yet, I honestly can't dislike "The Furies" because the gore and the killers' outfits are simply fantastic! I'm not sure, since I didn't attend the Q&A session with D'Aquino, but I'm strongly suspecting the outfits are inspired by legendary mass murderers like Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, etc... "The Furies" certainly isn't a masterpiece, and probably won't ever become a cult gem, but at midnight at a festival, I love the sight of nasty axe-murders, exploding heads and scooped-out eyeballs!
