Horror (2002)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: D
When a film in the Horror genre has the nerve to call
itself Horror, it has much to live up to. When it is as bad as this 2002 disaster from multi-hyphenate
director Dante Tomaselli, forget it.
This wreck with random pseudo-scares runs a mercifully short 77 minutes,
but that seems more like 3 hours. It
tires to be a nightmare-inducing film, but the only nightmare it induces is the
one of continuously bad cinema.
People are bleeding, stabbed, burned and zapped all over
the place and none of it adds up. There
is the loose idea of people being made to be insane, inane or mentally ill,
both victims and killers (including one female lead evil woman who should be
getting a cease & desist order from Karen Black in the future if she turns
up again). It lands up being a
compendium of every bad cliché, convention and archetype of the genre since the
reactionary slice-and-dice slasher films of the early 1980s that many have
successfully argued killed the genre in exchange for being a literal
grindhouse, bloodbath series of moneymaking machines. Maybe we can think of the title as what NOT to do in the genre,
but then that would be giving it some kind of credit most of the bad films in
the genre possess. Skip this one!
The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image is hazy and the colors are
mixed, though consistent. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 sound is a weak mix, with a certain roughness and harshness that
goes beyond the audio tricks that fail to cover up the endlessly bad
script. Extras include a useless
commentary by the director, clips form his previous film short, stills, behind
the scenes footage, two trailers and some goofy piece involving The Amazing
Kreskin, who plays Reverend Salo here (yawn!!!) has his own DVD you’d be better
off finding if he is that important to you.
Too bad his psychic powers could not find him a better role. Also, the flashing lights in the main menu
page might give people with certain dispositions seizures. The film is enough to give anyone a brain
tumor.
- Nicholas Sheffo
