I got this movie from a very good friend, who shares my appreciation for horror movies (granted, he prefers actually GOOD ones, whilst I will watch pretty much anything). So, one sunny and warm, terrible afternoon, he suddenly walks over to his DVD collection, searches for a while, and then hands me a beautifully looking metal casing - a movie called "Hell". I was a bit confused. So, after enquiring why he would hand me such a pretty looking thing, he just told me that I should take it. I naturally said "no", because I usually don't like taking gifts from other people. When he resolutely walked to my bag and put it into it, with the words that he NEVER EVER wants to have it back, I knew that I would be in for a treat.
Let's start with the basics: A bunch of young people and their older uncle are driving in a car. Apparently, they want to film something. So, basic set-up: Young people, older adult that warns them about the dangers of hell (could we call that "subtle foreshadowing"?), and a car. Guess what? They have an accident! And wake up in... you guessed it, hell.
Now, that sounds like a premise I can live with. I imagine a movie about souls trapped in hell to sate my lust curiousity concerning torture methods and violence, making the gorehound that is me happy. I have to admit that the torture scenes do indeed make me happy (I will occasionally gift you with one - yes, it was screenshot time again).
But the rest... sheesh. I had to figure out the plot through tedious piercing together of useless dialogue. The dialogues are crap (granted, I watched the German dubbed version, for I wasn't in the mood for Thai. Oriental languages make me nervous, for some reason I do not really understand. Nervous and a bit annoyed. No offense to those who love them, or even speak them). The characters are as stereotypical as it gets (well, not as stereotypical as in Teeth, but it's a close call).
The beginning of the movie actually wasn't bad. Random pictures of terrible things happening to people, mostly being done to them by other people, whilst a narrator tells us that life is truly violent. I agree, and I like that part. Maybe it's because I like pictures of terrible things. But no matter why, it started out promising.
And then we suddenly are faced with DRAMA.
Seriously, if I want to watch a movie about the relationship problems between young adults, I am going to watch... uhm... I'm sure there's some sort of TV series I could watch in order to see stuff like that. When I put something into my DVD player that looks like THIS,
I don't want to know about the character's dramatic relationships and lives.
First, we get our heroine (we can easily identify her as the heroine because she is sad) in one of the most terrifying scenes known to mankind: Waiting for the result of a pregnancy test. Now, for people of the Teeth persuasion (celibacy and all that), something like a pregnancy test might not be scary. To me, it is one of the essential and fundamental scary things in life. And as far as I know, a lot of males feel the same. I freely admit it - I am scared of pregnancy tests (or rather, what they indicate). So this was probably the one scene in which I felt myself recoil inside in terror.
Then we get even more drama. The heroine's boyfriend, who is a really evil and uncaring young man (I would give him a stern look if I could) is cheating on her with the other female member of our merry team of young people going to hell.
The Lord of Hell will have a lot of work to do with that filthy, evil man. And the filthy harlot.
Mmmmmmh.... harlots...
...where was I? A, yes. Drama. A broken heart... nice pictures, though. The rain, the tears... it's actually pretty.
So, basically, we get to know that everyone in this little group of people going to hell has committed some sort of sin. As if that was important. It's a movie about people in hell, I don't care WHAT their sins were, I care about seeing them tortured.
So... car-crash. Background drama. Hell. And what, pray tell, do my eyes have to witness? Instead of creepy demons...
Thai Half-Orc Barbarians!
At this point I want to say something about the dialogues again. Seriously, they are fucking brilliant. I mean... they have a chance to flee the Thai Half-Orc Barbarians, and what is the first line I hear uttered?
"Stay here! Where do you want to go?"
....Uhm... away, possibly?
Anyways, they seem to face being confined to hell in a quite stoic way.
They also made this hell a bit... fiery. Fire vortexes, fireballs (as in D&D), torches, lava, more fire, lots of scorching sun... very...errr.... creative.
We also have "The Dark Lord of Hell".
He looks constipated, doesn't he? Please tell me that this is intended to be comedy.
I have to suppress the insane urge to giggle all the time. Not a good sign, if you ask me. I mean, granted, there is good giggling and bad giggling when it comes to horror flicks, but this is the kind of bad giggling that shows that I just... just can't take it seriously. Luckily, I have a Meouwser sitting on my back. He disapproves of this movie. On the other hand, that means I can't smoke a cigarette (the Dark First Primordial Malice From Beyond Time and Space doth not approve of cigarette smoke).
The tortures are nice, though. Could be more imaginative, but I am not going to complain. Tongue ripping out, drinking molten gold, being impaled alive, drawn and quartered, thrown into a lake of fire, hanging, hanging on the legs, hanging with the head down and being cut open...
Gods, I like crude torture methods. I'm more of a fan of sharp things, but sometimes, brute force can be nice. Crude, but apparently effective. Not that it would give me any kind of perverted ideas.
Then we get a plot twist: THEY AREN'T ACTUALLY DEAD, JUST IN AN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT! Gods, I NEVER saw that coming! Clever! My, M. Night Shyamalan couldn't come up with something like that!
At least now the colour filter of the movie changed. To this:
I like the demons, they look funny. Notice the chubby one in the middle? Hilarious. I had to stop the movie in order to stop laughing. It/He/Her looks a bit unsure what to do - "Whatever, I'm just going to stand here, looking somewhere... man, I'm bored... maybe I should really do that SlimFast diet they told me about?... *sighs*.... stupid movie..."
Or at least that's how I imagine it.
Anyways, those threatening Thai Half-Orc Barbarians are on a bridge. And by PURE COINCIDENCE, all our heroes and heroines are back together, just HAPPENING TO HIDE UNDER THE SAME BRIDGE?! Yeah. Sure...
I just like showing you pictures of torture scenes. Because there were three things I liked in this movie:
1 - The torture scenes (the more graphic ones).
2 - Cannibalistic children (sorry, no screenshot, I keep that to myself because of the sheer awesomeness. It's like small ghouls, only less cool than ghouls, but at the same time infinitely better than normal cannibals or mutants, because they are children and rip living people into pieces! ENTHUSIASM!).
3 - Evil tempresses.
As for point 3, I present:
I volunteer for this sort of punishment. I'm just wondering when they'll turn into man-devouring, dead, rotten night-hags. (Answer: Less than a minute later, and I am actually good at predicting how seducing and alluring females from hell will look like as soon as they got their prey in their clutches...)
In short: Nice torture scenes, one far too short cannibalistic children scene, a far too clothed appearance of evil tempresses, and far too much drama and moralising. Seriously, keep your morals to yourself, movie. We don't want to hear stereotypical characters whining about the evil they did in their life. And we don't want fucking relationship dramas. At least I don't. Cut away 40 minutes of your "plot development", add more half-naked ladies and torture and cannibalistic children, and this could actually be a decent movie. If you replace the Thai Half-Orc Barbarians by ANYTHING else that is more scary.
3/10. Just because of the torture scenes, trust me.
Let's start with the basics: A bunch of young people and their older uncle are driving in a car. Apparently, they want to film something. So, basic set-up: Young people, older adult that warns them about the dangers of hell (could we call that "subtle foreshadowing"?), and a car. Guess what? They have an accident! And wake up in... you guessed it, hell.
Now, that sounds like a premise I can live with. I imagine a movie about souls trapped in hell to sate my lust curiousity concerning torture methods and violence, making the gorehound that is me happy. I have to admit that the torture scenes do indeed make me happy (I will occasionally gift you with one - yes, it was screenshot time again).
But the rest... sheesh. I had to figure out the plot through tedious piercing together of useless dialogue. The dialogues are crap (granted, I watched the German dubbed version, for I wasn't in the mood for Thai. Oriental languages make me nervous, for some reason I do not really understand. Nervous and a bit annoyed. No offense to those who love them, or even speak them). The characters are as stereotypical as it gets (well, not as stereotypical as in Teeth, but it's a close call).
The beginning of the movie actually wasn't bad. Random pictures of terrible things happening to people, mostly being done to them by other people, whilst a narrator tells us that life is truly violent. I agree, and I like that part. Maybe it's because I like pictures of terrible things. But no matter why, it started out promising.
And then we suddenly are faced with DRAMA.
Seriously, if I want to watch a movie about the relationship problems between young adults, I am going to watch... uhm... I'm sure there's some sort of TV series I could watch in order to see stuff like that. When I put something into my DVD player that looks like THIS,
I don't want to know about the character's dramatic relationships and lives.
First, we get our heroine (we can easily identify her as the heroine because she is sad) in one of the most terrifying scenes known to mankind: Waiting for the result of a pregnancy test. Now, for people of the Teeth persuasion (celibacy and all that), something like a pregnancy test might not be scary. To me, it is one of the essential and fundamental scary things in life. And as far as I know, a lot of males feel the same. I freely admit it - I am scared of pregnancy tests (or rather, what they indicate). So this was probably the one scene in which I felt myself recoil inside in terror.
Then we get even more drama. The heroine's boyfriend, who is a really evil and uncaring young man (I would give him a stern look if I could) is cheating on her with the other female member of our merry team of young people going to hell.
The Lord of Hell will have a lot of work to do with that filthy, evil man. And the filthy harlot.
Mmmmmmh.... harlots...
...where was I? A, yes. Drama. A broken heart... nice pictures, though. The rain, the tears... it's actually pretty.
So, basically, we get to know that everyone in this little group of people going to hell has committed some sort of sin. As if that was important. It's a movie about people in hell, I don't care WHAT their sins were, I care about seeing them tortured.
So... car-crash. Background drama. Hell. And what, pray tell, do my eyes have to witness? Instead of creepy demons...
Thai Half-Orc Barbarians!
At this point I want to say something about the dialogues again. Seriously, they are fucking brilliant. I mean... they have a chance to flee the Thai Half-Orc Barbarians, and what is the first line I hear uttered?
"Stay here! Where do you want to go?"
....Uhm... away, possibly?
Anyways, they seem to face being confined to hell in a quite stoic way.
They also made this hell a bit... fiery. Fire vortexes, fireballs (as in D&D), torches, lava, more fire, lots of scorching sun... very...errr.... creative.
We also have "The Dark Lord of Hell".
He looks constipated, doesn't he? Please tell me that this is intended to be comedy.
I have to suppress the insane urge to giggle all the time. Not a good sign, if you ask me. I mean, granted, there is good giggling and bad giggling when it comes to horror flicks, but this is the kind of bad giggling that shows that I just... just can't take it seriously. Luckily, I have a Meouwser sitting on my back. He disapproves of this movie. On the other hand, that means I can't smoke a cigarette (the Dark First Primordial Malice From Beyond Time and Space doth not approve of cigarette smoke).
The tortures are nice, though. Could be more imaginative, but I am not going to complain. Tongue ripping out, drinking molten gold, being impaled alive, drawn and quartered, thrown into a lake of fire, hanging, hanging on the legs, hanging with the head down and being cut open...
Gods, I like crude torture methods. I'm more of a fan of sharp things, but sometimes, brute force can be nice. Crude, but apparently effective. Not that it would give me any kind of perverted ideas.
Then we get a plot twist: THEY AREN'T ACTUALLY DEAD, JUST IN AN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT! Gods, I NEVER saw that coming! Clever! My, M. Night Shyamalan couldn't come up with something like that!
At least now the colour filter of the movie changed. To this:
I like the demons, they look funny. Notice the chubby one in the middle? Hilarious. I had to stop the movie in order to stop laughing. It/He/Her looks a bit unsure what to do - "Whatever, I'm just going to stand here, looking somewhere... man, I'm bored... maybe I should really do that SlimFast diet they told me about?... *sighs*.... stupid movie..."
Or at least that's how I imagine it.
Anyways, those threatening Thai Half-Orc Barbarians are on a bridge. And by PURE COINCIDENCE, all our heroes and heroines are back together, just HAPPENING TO HIDE UNDER THE SAME BRIDGE?! Yeah. Sure...
I just like showing you pictures of torture scenes. Because there were three things I liked in this movie:
1 - The torture scenes (the more graphic ones).
2 - Cannibalistic children (sorry, no screenshot, I keep that to myself because of the sheer awesomeness. It's like small ghouls, only less cool than ghouls, but at the same time infinitely better than normal cannibals or mutants, because they are children and rip living people into pieces! ENTHUSIASM!).
3 - Evil tempresses.
As for point 3, I present:
I volunteer for this sort of punishment. I'm just wondering when they'll turn into man-devouring, dead, rotten night-hags. (Answer: Less than a minute later, and I am actually good at predicting how seducing and alluring females from hell will look like as soon as they got their prey in their clutches...)
In short: Nice torture scenes, one far too short cannibalistic children scene, a far too clothed appearance of evil tempresses, and far too much drama and moralising. Seriously, keep your morals to yourself, movie. We don't want to hear stereotypical characters whining about the evil they did in their life. And we don't want fucking relationship dramas. At least I don't. Cut away 40 minutes of your "plot development", add more half-naked ladies and torture and cannibalistic children, and this could actually be a decent movie. If you replace the Thai Half-Orc Barbarians by ANYTHING else that is more scary.
3/10. Just because of the torture scenes, trust me.
No comments:
Post a Comment