UK director Bernard Rose is no newcomer when it comes to horror movies, both the movies ‘Candyman’ and ‘Paperhouse’ were well received and have quite a cult following. His latest grisly turn may not have quite the same effect.
We are greeted with a distraught husband besides a poker faced mid-wife waiting for a doctor, he arrives only to find the mother dead but movement still within the womb. The baby is ripped from its dead embrace and in true gothic fashion, every time the baby cries there are strange noises coming from the family tomb. But this is only a movie, the latest from horror maestro Boris Arkadin (Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbe in his best role since ‘The Fourth Man’ ).
To the sounds of Helter Skelter Arkadin is called away from his dope smoking hippy guests to the cutting room and while away they are murdered in a Manson type massacre that resembles his latest masterpiece. Rose is playing with the audience here as he continues to mix styles and viewing formats, from the projected screen to PC monitors to camera surveillance to hidden cameras, but I am forgetting myself and jumping ahead….
With his wife and friends butchered and his baby ripped from his wife’s womb he becomes a recluse and shuts his doors to the world outside. Years go past and rumour has it that Arkadin will once again venture into the world of the macabre. Four actors are called to his Villa with a proposition in tow, they have to act out as the very victims from all those years ago and play against the house filled with mini cameras and microphones. It seems that he is broadcasting this live over the net.
This is where the movie falls flat, it starts with a bravura opening and now goes into too familiar territory that was recently covered in the well made ‘My Little Eye’ , the complete clunker and final nail in the Halloween coffin, ‘Halloween Resurrection’ , and in the French gothic chiller ‘Deep in the Woods’ , that have all been shown within the last five years and the casual horror viewer’s memory is hopefully more than that.
He annoys his actors further by playing them off against each other and before you know it there is a van approaching the Villa (it’s also revealed that this was an old hospital from the War with operating rooms still intact) that carries a few odd characters called Youth, Teeth and X, again resembling the Manson troupe from before and more carnage ensues, or does it ? We also have someone that may or may not be the devil with a Texan drawl.
Yeah it’s a neat idea, yeah it does challenge your viewing habits in the way that his previous ‘Ivans XTC’ did, but it is too familiar. As said, this plays more like Rose’s game, and he will get more of the jokes than we do, yes he is playing with the audience but when the ending is unveiled you feel more than cheated and this undermines any tension or feelings you may have had in a good way up to that point. Overall a sadly missed opportunity that showed so much promise in the opening.
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