August Underground's Mordum

I thought this genre of hand-held shock began and ended with Blair Witch Project.

The movie is mindless, self-indulgent porn-gore, poorly "acted" by people simply reveling in attempting to give a shock-effect, while uttering the F*-word in nearly every line.

Sure, the movie apparently meets its attempted goal, of desecrating all that is sane, normal, and decent in humans. But anyone who would sit down and decide to take every single aspect of humanity, morality and mental-health to its opposite extreme would probably easily write such a plot, from the same logical (illogical?) conclusions. The movie is therefore predictable and boring. If you're like me and can watch gore and know that it's merely special-effects, the movie is a mere annoying waste of time.

If you're into grotesque special-effects of mutilation, sexual perversion, porn and bodily desecration, then you'll probably think this movie is exactly what you wanted. Which... would then make me wonder about your own mental health. Otherwise, it's a boring, simplistic and predictable antithesis of humanity and all that is good.

I'm sure that everyone involved, especially the actors, enjoyed the mindless attempts at shock and the flaunting porn-acts. But for me, it's mere self-revelry.

That was honestly one of the worst hours I have ever spent in my life. This is the dullest film I've ever had the misfortune to view.

So I got this because I heard it was a sick, unique film (which I have to say interests me) but this was truly shocking for all the wrong reasons. For me, it failed on every level imaginable.

Firstly, I still don't really know what happened. There was some "alternative" kids laughing while the camera focused on either some bloody scene or basically, nothing. But, I'm guessing this was the "crazy" idea behind it all. Well it failed completely for me. I hated the people in it because they annoyed me by constantly laughing and shouting at nothing. They came across as idiots really. The fact they happened to do nasty things as a hobby seemed so irrelevant because it was done in such a ridiculous manner it was unbelievable. They made a pathetic attempt at being deranged but like I said, it felt more like idiocy and I cared so little about the whole thing that there nasty habits simply began adding to the boredom of it all.

It failed to shock me too. The one thing it was so very desperate to do. Don't get me wrong, I didn't approach this in a sceptical manner, quite the opposite in fact. I wanted to be disgusted, scared or at the very least entertained by it as I do with every horror movie I watch. It was an interesting (but not original) idea having a first person horror and doing it "home-movie" style but obviously not if it's executed so very poorly. The atmosphere this film created meant the sick parts had little or no effect. They did look quite good some of the effects but it crossed over the realistic/stupid line almost immediately.

I have to say I would be very surprised if anyone actually enjoyed this film. I presume this was aimed at the likes of me. People looking for sick and unique horror films but this film preoccupied itself so much by trying to be "sick" that it totally missed the mark. Saying f*** a lot and having some gory torture scenes has to be done very very well to have any affect on people today. Something more than just visual effects are needed because this sort of thing just isn't shocking any more.

The original AUGUST UNDERGROUND was a very unsettling pseudo-snuff movie, chronicling the exploits of two serial killers. It had its share of blood and guts, but its real power was in the psychological terror it managed to convey. The impressively realistic special effects were certainly repulsive, but it was the tone of the movie that really stuck with me.

The sequel, AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM is about three times as sick, disgusting and gruesome as its predecessor, but it is also less powerful. The Toe Tag Pictures team goes so over-the-top and takes things to such an outrageous extreme that the movie becomes a freak show of gruesome images and repulsive concepts, with little of the original's chilling atmosphere.

As in the original, the special effects are excellent. The performances are absolutely convincing, particularly the female member of the group, who portrays a demented viciousness that is totally believable.

But when it was all over, I felt that not a whole lot had actually happened.

It's a clothesline of every atrocity and act of perversion that these people could think up, all done in a realistic manner, and nothing else. The claustrophobic terror of the first movie is missing here, and that is what made it so disturbing. Many of the scenes of violence and depravity are taken to such an extreme that they become more absurd than horrifying. A scene in which the threesome make themselves vomit repeatedly on two victims is pretty vile initially, but it goes on so long that I stopped being disgusted and started wondering how the actors were able to continuously make themselves puke.

AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM is certainly worth finding and checking out for fans of maverick, underground and sick cinema. But anyone who's seen HENRY - PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, the GUINEA PIG videos or the original AUGUST UNDERGROUND has seen worse.

It is easy to understand what will make you look into this movie, and comments you will find will push you over the edge into watching it, just as I did.

Yes it is likely that it is the sickest film to have ever been put to film, however there is absolutely no entertainment factor to it. When a film introduces extreme gore, it works within the content of a story line that makes you look away and get adrenalin during the violent sequences. This film is a poorly filmed but accurate depiction of nothing but endless, silly gore designed to shock but that fails. It is almost certain that you will come away feeling slightly ashamed that you wanted to watch graphic rape, torture and necrophilic pheadophilia with nothing else to its credit other then it makes it look very real.

To call it shocking is to give it credit it doesn't deserve. The Exorcist was shocking, this has no 'shock' factor, no humorous factor that you get with some gore based films, no dialogue or story of any significance and any film enthusiast should feel offended that this is the most extreme film we have. Pathetic, ridiculous, childish and absolutely not worth looking at.

A bunch of morons with a hand-held camera go around screaming ceaselessly and laughing idiotically in a never ending profanity-laden cacophony whilst performing "sick" acts which, as some unknown rule apparently dictates, can only be inflicted on disgusting fat chicks who forget to resist.

This is not a movie, since it has no plot, and it is not disturbing, since you can find worse things on the internet in less than a fraction of the time it would require for you to waste your time with this childish foolishness called "August Underground's Mordum," which belongs in the same trash bin as "Scrapbook." Just because damaged American kiddies with fractured psyches, short attention spans, and a penchant for anything that can momentarily lift them out of their fuzzy world view-defined, over-indulgent, instant gratification-based existence manage to praise this film with the vocabulary of someone who - surprisingly - has at least managed to attain a high school senior's vocabulary, does not make it worth watching. Then again, I suspect anyone who falls for it will probably be the same category of human: a confused child in a man's body, his emotional development permanently arrested at point "Beavis and Butthead." This review is for the sane who like horror cinema, not boring pseudo-porno splatter fluff worshipers: stay away, folks.