Demonium

A group of people assemble at a castle for the reading of a will, only to get murdered one by one. This did have a touch of Agatha Christie in that respect. Demonium was released in the UK on a label called Hard Gore, as the name suggests they specialised in putting out gory movies. And there is plenty of gore and violence on offer here.I would say that it is the only thing worth seeing as the plot, script and acting are all atrocious. Actually there is some female. topless nudity too. If it was not for the gore then I would be scoring this mess 1/10. Denomium is a TERRIBLE movie, despite the DVD's claim that it is a "masterpiece of gruelling horror"! Special effects meastro Sergio Stivaletti, who worked on many great Italian horror movies, was on board and whilst some of the gory effects are decent many are cheap looking, including some nasty CGI.

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!***

This could have been Andreas Schnass glorious welcome to the English speaking cinema, but ended up flawed because of certain production aspects that could had been easily corrected. Maybe it was the budget? overconfidence? human error? Let me explain.

This plot is about an old man who is brutally murdered in his castle, and the family who comes to take the inheritance. One by one will be killed by the servants who want to take the money. This is stated since the first two scenes, so don't worry, I have not spoiled a thing.

The movie starts with a couple being brutally killed by no reason. It takes us a year after the homicide and the movie starts, we realize that the couple are the servants. There is suspense, but this is not of the Agatha Christie's "who did it?" type, the questions that carry the movie are: "how were they discovered? and who discovered them?" In terms of script, is an unusual take on the story of the typical "inheritance story", and even when it gets boring at times and the ending is kind of dull, the acting carries it very good. Andreas Schnass had a nice cast... which leads us to one of the main problems in the film.

Why to have good foreign actors who CAN'T speak English TALKING in English?!? No matter how good an actor is, to be able to play a part in a language you don't know takes an extra effort that on rare occasions works(Peter Lorre in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" comes to mind). It was obvious that the movie was doomed when this choice was made because, even when some actors DO make a good pronunciation, most of them don't. Don't get me wrong, the acting is good, but it would had been a thousand better if the actors were speaking their mother languages. Or knew how to speak English. A good dubbing would had improved this movie a lot.

Andreas Schnass is known for having over-the-top gore similar to Peter Jackson's early efforts; in Demonium, while it still is very gory, it takes a Gothic approach similar to Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak. This makes the gore to be less funny(unlike Braidnead) and more in tone with the dark ambiance the film has.

So, we have average script, good acting(despite the BIG flaw of the language), usual direction BUT... the second BIG flaw of the movie is the lighting. This is Schnass first 35 mm. movie, but the lighting he used makes it look like a video. It's that bad. Certainly, this is a problem of experience, I hope that his next efforts will have improved this flaw.

I see a bright future for Mr. Schnass, and even when this movie suffers a LOT with it's flaws, it's still watchable. It's a bad movie that promises a better next effort.

5/10 because it's flaws really damaged what could had been a good movie.

There is one shot early on in the otherwise utterly indefensible DEMONIUM that shows that Andreas Schnaas might have a real filmmaker lurking somewhere inside him: a blind woman, unaware that a killer is lurking in her house, walks past the camera towards her bathroom, when all at once the killer jumps out of hiding behind her, running from one room to the room opposite the hallway she's in. It's abrupt, and Schnaas cuts away almost immediately, so that the entire action is on screen for less than a second. It's a "jump outta your seat" moment worthy of Argento's DEEP RED.

Unfortunately, that's the only instance of actual film-making in the whole lousy enterprise. For the most part, Schnaas is just an untalented pretender to the director's chair. Even a reported $2.2 million budget and a chance to shoot 35mm hasn't made his work look any more professional than it does in his infamous shot-on-video no-budget backyard productions. His DP, and I use the term advisedly, makes everything look like video anyway. Almost all of the nighttime exteriors look like they were lit with a single 1K. And Schnaas not only shows his incompetence at composition, but in this film he overuses a camera dolly to ridiculous effect, the act of a filmmaker whose attitude is "Well, we rented the damn thing, might as well use it." I didn't get the impression Schnaas ever bothers with shot lists or storyboards, but even if he does, his work on those must be as inept as his "directing".

And the acting...yeesh! All the cast (but one) are Europeans for whom English is clearly their second or even third language, so everyone's (and I mean everyone's) line delivery is laughable. They sound like they're just reading for their ESL class, and doing it badly. Schnaas was either on a tight deadline here, or just doesn't bother with second takes, because a number of actors flub their lines, then start over. I imagine some of these actors might be pretty talented working in their native languages, but their work here is unlikely to benefit their careers in any way, to put it kindly.

Everyone talks about how gory Schnaas's films are, but you'll see much worse (and more believable) than this in ICHI THE KILLER, a gore film that just happens to be made by a real talent at the helm. Schnaas can't even make a good example of the lowest form of film art this side of hardcore porn. He and Troma deserve each other.

1/10

This movie starts with a couple, who at this point we know nothing about other than they are lovers, getting brutally 'murdered' by someone or something in a wide brimmed hat to conceal his/hers/its face. After they are both dispatched we cut to a 'castle' in europe somewhere and a caption on the bottom of the screen informing us that it is 'a year earlier'. Straight away the owner of this 'castle' Arnold is also brutally killed. Three gory deaths within the first ten minutes, a good start. Anyway, Arnolds relatives are informed and called together at this 'castle' for the reading of his will. As you can probably guess they start to mysteriously disappear. I think that this is basically a pretty decent low budget horror. Its twisted, someone throws his own freshly severed arm out of a nearby window to try and raise some help. Its perverted, we get the maid dressed up as a dominatrix and a chained up slave groveling at her feet. And its sick, a very joyful killer cuts a woman in half with a chainsaw in close up, and an unlucky guy gets his throat ripped out with a meat hook. But it has its problems, for instance the opening three murders are done by killers unknown to the viewer. But soon after the killers and their motives are revealed when the fourth victim dies making the way the opening murders were staged with an unknown killer pointless. The photography is quite poor consisting mainly of master shots and virtually no close ups. It seems as if the director wanted to film each scene as quickly as possible, with as few camera set ups as he could manage. While pretty gory there are gorier out there. The blood looks fake, really thin and watery. The make up effects could certainly have been better too. Oh, and you never see the 'castle' just its front door. Inside its just like a large modern house so forget about dark candle lit corridors and gothic looking rooms. It does however have its good points. It moves along like a rocket, your never too far away from the next murder. Could have been better but its not too bad I suppose.