Necromentia

An off-world look at the superstitious repercussions of tattooing an Ouija Board on your body. Hagen, who has a dead wife believes that he can revive her from the dead. Travis, a man who lost his brother and wants to join him in the afterlife. Morbius, a bartender who is betrayed by those he loves comes back from the dead to take revenge. And a strange man only known as Mr. Skinny protects the secrets of the Ouija Board and how the stories weave and affect each other. (summary taken from the director)

Let me begin by praising this film before I explain why I gave it a mediocre rating. The best thing I can say is that this film has strong visuals, some appearing too quick to really analyze... but this works well, allowing the imagination to fill in the gaps. If there's a single redeeming part, it's the Mr. Skinny Show, especially the bouncing ball suicide song... who else can sing about the Easter bunny and sodomy? Also, there is a really nice score and soundtrack with a steady beat, and some industrial influences (not unlike Charlie Clouser's "Saw" work). I'm unclear who was responsible for this, or I would single them out... the music here deserves to be heard and be known.

But yet, despite the great visuals, other parts come across as shot with home video, with too much shadow and realism. The first ten minutes drags on... the barbershop janitor, Hagen (Santiago Craig), is quite boring, and his droning on is simply blah. On the other hand, the character of Travis (Chad Grimes) is interesting, talks smoothly and he has the look -- if anyone knows how to open the gates of Hell, it's him. His side business is fascinating. But one good character does not make up for a bad one.

The influences seem to be "Saw" and the work of Clive Barker. The skin map is kind of like Clive Barker's "Book of Blood" in a way, and others have compared this film to "Hellraiser". The plot is a bit sketchy, with the film focusing more on scenes of torture than much else... it seems heavily influenced by "Saw" with its traps (and the aforementioned music). While more artistic, it's not necessarily more disturbing -- a finger cutting scene did not faze me at all.

Can you really use ketamine (Special K) to get off heroin? I suppose it's an improvement, but a ketamine addiction is nothing to sneeze at, either.

While the visuals were great, the story was messy and dragged at times... I wonder if this could be fixed with the right editor? I would have to give this film a second viewing to properly review it, since I didn't grasp everything the first time through. But, unless my opinion radically changes, I think viewers would be perfectly safe in avoiding this title.

Demons, suicide, necrophilia, transcendence through drugs and mutilation, all ingredients to whet the appetites of any self respecting fan of nastiness. Necromentia is a film well stacked with the good stuff and it has the right intentions to use it, but when all is said and done it comes in beneath its potential. It has the structure of a sequence of linked vignettes, the sequence of events avoiding a linear timeline in favour of unwrapping the mystery of how everyone is connected. A hip approach that film-makers have been fawning over since at least Pulp Fiction, it works here because everyone is connected and there isn't too much of randomness to things. The structure makes it fairly fun to get to the bottom of things and the ride is made all the better by the style on display, this is a very visual film with some sweet morbid imagery on display. The palette is predominantly dark (lots of shadow, grey and cold metal), the sets and shots cluttered and the art direction focused on chains, hooks and tools of pain, it's a horrific world on display and one so overpowering that the flesh tones and lighter colours of its characters come across as alien, an intrusion that inevitably leads to horrors as the darkness of the world around interacts with the flesh of the characters. If only the film had substance and emotional heft to support its style, but it sadly doesn't and the characters are a significant part of the problem. The acting is perfectly reasonable, with Layton Matthews conjuring an inscrutably sinister presence, Chad Grimes grimly determined and mentally frayed enough to do anything and Santiago Craig appropriately twisted and slightly pathetic. The trouble is that the film has a tight cast with most people connected, and pretty well everyone is so twisted, so tainted that empathy is impossible. The lack of balance wouldn't be so bad, since the film is clearly aiming to be something of a deeply macabre side-show, but in a film where no one is likable and the emphasis is on nasty stuff going down, things need to be seriously, impressively messed up and in Necromentia, they come close but no cigar. The visuals have imagination but lose their impact after a while, whilst the gore is kept mostly to a bit of splatter, skin carving and intestine play. The scenes are generally brief and not quite convincing, grisly but not grisly enough. So in the end the film falls somewhat short, a bit too much frustration making some of the cheaper looking scenes more noticeable and the overall hellish ambiance less interesting or effective than it could have been. This means that in the end the audience can't connect with the characters and isn't shocked by the grue, thus ends up slightly unmoved by the whole affair when it becomes apparent that it has little to offer beyond its ideas and atmosphere. Still, its watchable enough and a decent little independent effort, so a fair 5/10 from me..

The plot: A man seeking to resurrect his dead lover runs into a shady occultist who claims to be able to help him.

Necromentia is clearly one huge homage toward the works of Clive Barker -- Hellraiser, in particular. As a huge Barker fan, I was both excited and a little disappointed. The film is grotesque, gory, and beautiful, but almost everything in it is directly "inspired" by Clive Barker, making it a bit less original than I might like. Still, it has some truly striking visuals, and some scenes that you might remember long after the movie ends.

Necromentia is slow-paced and atmospheric, and people who are more used to modern, MTV-style filmmaking might end up being bored. The budget is clearly very low, but I thought they did an excellent job with what they had. Sure, some of the set design was a little underwhelming at times, but I was not nearly as disappointed as many other people seem to have been. There are many twisted and disturbing scenes, some of which end up with a very absurd, surreal vibe. Although not really a candidate for "most disturbing movie ever", it still deserves an honorable mention.

There some original ideas here, but the themes are as old as dirt, and, admittedly, becoming a bit clichéd in horror movies. If you're looking for something more than a Hellraiser clone, I can understand how you'd dislike this movie. Despite its issues, I still enjoyed it, and I think that other Barker fans may, as well.

Four disjointed stories of horror loosely connected by a tattooed quija board.

Story one is about a guy who keeps his dead wife in a bathtub and tries to bring her back....or rather....keeps saying she promised to come back. No mention of when she died, but funny how there's no decay.

Two thugs come in and make an offer to bring the wife back. Something about gateways. But there is a fatal flaw with the plot. The guy doesn't choose his fate, as the narrative says...it's thrust on him against his will.

Story two finds two brothers -- one who appears to be a crippled mute. Mr. Skinny -- a fat guy with a pig mask pops out of the TV and the kid finds him funny even tho he's covered with blood. Lots of torture scenes here, but I couldn't follow it. It's all over the map and not one frame makes sense.

I THINK this 3rd story is about a guy who wants his brother back, but by this time all logic breaks down. The stories appear to be intertwined in a way that no sense can be made of them.

That's it for me. I don't even know what the 4th tale is supposed to be but it appears to be related to the first in a way and features an extraordinarily effeminate man who loves a woman a bit too much.

Net net -- this is a clunker.

I love the idea of this movie but the logistics don't work and that kills the final product for me. Told in a Pulp Fiction piece-it-together style, it tells the story of love, betrayal and resurrection but leaves out some fairly important information. How did the parents die? Why does their will not provide for adequate care of their children? And even *if* you're a junkie, how, when you run an underground scarification business, do you NOT charge your clients enough to survive on? Seriously. That ran through my head throughout the whole movie. Also - how do you cut off a client's finger and just continue on as if nothing happens? For me, this shows that no matter how much thought went into the movie (and it's an interesting premise), in the end Reginald choose cheap gore-points over an actual vision. The movie just...ends without a major plot point resolved.

The performances work well and the direction is decent. The pacing needs tweaking so as not to allow the viewer to actually think about the plot holes. While consistently a little too dark, the movie looks fantastic which is why I kept watching after the questions started popping up.

The pay off isn't worth the time invested. Worse, you really need to pay attention and that makes the ending even more disappointing.