Gvozdi

Nails (Gvozdi) is one of a series of surreal, psychedelic, gore movies called HalluCinoGeNnN, by Russian director Andrey Iskanov.

I normally tire very quickly of surreal movies, as my simple brain just doesn't function when having to decipher metaphors and imagery. Sit me in front of something like Eraserhead, and I'll be reaching for the 'off' switch faster than you can say "lady in the radiator".

Nails had an altogether different effect. I couldn't drag myself away from it, even though it was miles away from the standard movie format. Iskanov has made clever use of both monochrome and colour filming, to represent the two stages of the hit-man's life. The movie opens in black and white, during his 'tortured' phase and just after the first batch of nails goes in, it switches to colour as his outlook on life has greater clarity. The constant industrial noise in the soundtrack fades away to comfortable peace and quiet, as he starts this new phase.

As the hit-man sees the essence of life more clearly, even the most mundane things begin to take a different form. His food no longer looks tasty and delicious, instead it shows its true form as processed junk. Each can the hit-man opens contains something more disgusting than the last…penis soup anyone? He begins to see himself and his girlfriend as they truly are; soulless plastic mannequins with no purpose other than to end life. Perhaps it is the true vision of his life that drives him further to keep using the nails and finally the drill. Imagine the scene in Evil Dead 2, where Ash goes mad and all the furniture taunts him. Then multiply it by ten and make it last for an hour – that's pretty much how Nails plays out. It's like a hybrid of the cyberpunk violence of Tetsuo and the work of Jorg Buttgereit (Nekromatik, Der Todesking).

You don't watch Nails, you experience it.

ultra low-budget gore/surrealist flick from Russia starts off very well with a KGB hit man smoothly executing his latest targets then coming home to a barren, depressing flat. He tries to sleep but is haunted by strange, unnerving sounds and spectres from his past as gruesome images of people he has killed enter his mind without warning.

After much pretentious head-banging he comes across an article on the art of pounding nails into one's head as a way of relieving mental agony. He gives it a try and (understatement of the year) gets a little carried away.

Film is very gruesome but also has a lot of nice touches of surrealistic weirdness to keep it afloat. The whole thing takes place in the hit-man's apartment - very low budget. It's a nice idea but more like a student film than anything else. It's shoddily photographed in places and the pacing is slow and draggy (even at an hour long).

Best aspect is probably the sound design, which is very odd and seems to contain a lot of distortion and sound f/x played backwards.

It's basically kind of a rip-off of Tetsuo, only Tetsuo is about a hundred times better (and was made twenty years ago).

Nails, directed by Russian Andrey Iskanov, is about a hit-man unable to cope with the daily life. The leading character tries Vodka and pills but nothing will do the trick. At one time, unable to sleep, he stumbles on a magazine that inspires him to drive nails through the brain. And that's basically it. The first part of the movie is rather good - grey sweeping footage over suburbia accompanied by monotone instrumental music sets the mood effectively. A mood-setter is also the fact that there is no dialog in this part of the movie either, almost like an old journal film. However, as the film progresses the story gets old. The running time is about 1 hour which is about 30 minutes too long. The FX are not very convincing, although may be unpleasant for the casual horror fan.

If you want gore you'll probably will be disappointed. However, if you want surrealism, you'll probably like it a lot. Myself, I like my horror horrifying and my gore extreme. If I want surrealism a prefer other genres.

This is the first time I've seen his work and I wanted to get my thoughts down on it as soon as possible, so please excuse the scatter-shot approach.

Without a trace of hyperbole, I can honestly say that I have seen a new Prince of Darkness in the world of horror films and his name is Andrey Iskanov.

Call it splatter if you must, gore if you dare, but make no mistake Iskanov is a unique artist with a signature style and he knows how to tell a story.

I see that some of the 'critics' here have slammed him for not being an original in the field of surrealism! I wonder if those same people have a problem with Hitchcock for not being the first to work in suspense. And, please note, I am not saying Iskanov is the new Hitchcock, only that he has the potential to become a very good film maker given a chance.

Coming in at a succinct sixty minutes, there's not much wasted footage in this tale of surgical psychoanalysis. To accomplish his vision Iskanov combines acute edits, expressionistic camera angles and stark imagery to a sound-scape that suggests paranoia at every off-key cue.

Working under what I can only assume is a budget that was as claustrophobic as the world his protagonist lives in, Iskanov has crafted a piece of work that will live inside you long after the lights have gone up.

One final word of warning -- after watching this film your nightmares will never be the same.

You have been warned!

Well, what are you waiting for ....

Everything I've seen so far by Iskanov has pretty much been boring or awful, with the exception of the director's cut of Visions of Suffering (a huge improvement over the original), which has some compelling visuals and atmosphere on a low-budget. Nails, however, isn't far off from dreck like Philosophy of a Knife. It starts off in black and white with the main character in the middle of a hit on a crime boss of some sort. The setting seems to be that of a dystopic sci-fi, with the interesting element of his gun stating that his daily ammunition allotment has been used up part way through the scene. This forces him to dispose of the boss's female companion with a knife; in a strange turn of events, she seems... almost turned on by what transpires and the whole scene is rather fetishistic. The effects and gore are also laughable.

From this point on, the film is hopelessly directionless. He mills about in his room while haunted by visions of those whom he has murdered. And that's... pretty much it. The name of the film comes from the main's bright idea to hammer nails into his head as a cure for all that ails him, resulting in an oversaturated, hallucinatory world in color and tripped-out visuals. It's fairly inventive in the tricks that it employs on a shoestring budget, similar to something like Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo, Sogo Ishii, Shozin Fukui, etc, but it's ultimately wasted on a one-note gore premise and a so-so descent into madness.

He doesn't do much except try to fix himself dinner with an arrangement of nasty jello-caked critters. It's not clear if these disgusting assortments are a result of his unraveling mind or the dystopian world he inhabits. Now all that's left is for him to spout a bit of philosophy in a typically cryptic Russian art cinema style and have his "hitgirl" girlfriend over for a bit of conflict. The atmosphere and visuals peak sometime around this point, but Iskanov has no restraint whatsoever, so it's to be expected that film connoisseurs will be pleased one moment and cringing in disgust in the next moment.

The cinematography and effects are a mixed bag. Certain detailed close-ups are very effective, and the saturation and odd visuals help to obscure the limits of the budget. But certain shots simply look awful. There's far more of a kitchen sink approach than there is meticulous craftsmanship.

The script is the main problem. I don't really have much of an issue with the dialogue or themes, but there's just not much happening at all. Even having the main character contracted for another hit and breaking down along the way in a nightmarish world would have been a conventional angle that would have worked better than the next to nothing we got for over an hour. Perhaps what they had would have been okay with better pacing or some cuts for time, but it's debatable. The ending is rather nasty, but will likely leave most viewers scratching their heads or shrugging their shoulders. Meh.

It has a bit of an "insane" feel and has the touch of an auteur, albeit one who is on the lowbrow, z-budget side of the spectrum. It's a somewhat effective example of creating a unique visual style and atmosphere on a low-budget for an aspiring filmmaker, so I'd recommend it for film students who like genre films, but if you want a truly GOOD movie, you can probably safely avoid this.