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.

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!

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.