One of the great joys of doing Film Gutter is stumbling across absolutely random movies – it's one of the reasons I initially set up the series and has brought me to some great and good movies. Excess Flesh very much qualifies as one of those movies that I came to knowing literally nothing about. The premise sounded vaguely interesting though, and I've never been shy of just taking a punt on something, so I decided to head right on in for this one.

Excess Flesh is a dark psychological thriller centred on roommates Jennifer and Jill. Jennifer is a model who loves nothing more than partying and sleeping around, while Jill is a much more secluded character. She also has deep issues with food, barely eating and basically vomiting it up when she does. The relationship between them begins friendly but steadily goes downhill, with Jill being unemployed and spending much of her time criticising Jennifer's lifestyle, while Jennifer is in the habit of sleeping with men Jill has an interest in. The tension between them in the early stages is well played, and both of their underlying issues bubble away really nicely. In fact the performances from both actresses are very good indeed, and this early interaction between the two of them is powerful stuff. I was really hopeful for something good as the first half an hour or so played out.

However I do feel as though the whole thing starts to fall apart around the 45 minute mark, when Jill takes the extreme measure of kidnapping Jennifer and chaining her up in their bathroom. It simply feels too soon in the tale for that to happen, and the motivations for the act never feel entirely clear to me. What comes next is either pretty slow and tedious or simply doesn't make a huge deal of sense. Some of the more unintelligible scenes are a truly bizarre confrontation with the police, a very strange dream sequence that begins with a whole host of cameras and clapperboards clearly visible, and an ending that was extremely hard to wrap my head around. It's obviously trying to be somewhat meta and alternative, but I don't think it really sticks in this instance.

My first impression was that the last half/two-thirds of this movie was absolute nonsense, but the more I've thought about it the more I think it's actually all building up to a twist ending. I wouldn't like to stake my reputation on it, but even if that twist is there I don't think it improves the movie. In fact its one of the clumsiest and hackneyed twists I've ever seen, if my interpretation is correct, and if that take is right I somehow think that's even worse.
 
There are redeeming features with this movie, particularly in the shape of the two lead performances and some of the visual stylings – it gets a little over the top in places, but there are some beautiful shots in the film. However I just overall feel that all that is let down by the storyline and the random wanderings that go on in the second half of film – honestly that just makes it all the more frustrating when you have a very strong opening to build form. There's an overriding sense after it all that this movie is not quite as clever as it thinks it is, especially with its finale.

RATING: 3/10. The movie this reminded me of was Jimmy Weber's Eat, which I come to think of increasingly fondly over time. This one tackles similar areas of female friendships, pursuing a high-profile career and the psychological issues it can bring. But Excess Flesh's take on body dysmorphia feels a bit too on the nose, and generally the film tails off in the second half barring one or two scenes. I genuinely can't blame either of the lead actresses involved – in fact it obvious they're giving everything and worked hard on their respective roles – but I feel like the directing and especially the plotline are really holding this one back. There's also a sense it's trying a little too hard stylistically – in fact you could say numerous things feel done a bit to excess, so it's a less than stellar 3/10 from me.

Come on, how on earth can you resist a title like that?

If films like Maniac and Snuff have taught us anything over the years, it’s that a nice lurid moniker can be quite the draw. In fact, just weeks ago our look at Brutal proved that very point. And that’s certainly the case with this 2005 offering – it even closes with a practically irresistible exclamation mark. I do have a hazy memory of catching this on TV a long time ago – I can't even recall whether it was a Channel 5 job or the Horror Channel –  but the details were anything but clear in my mind for this revisit.

Anyway, having rewatched through Jonathan Yudis’s 2005 offering, lurid feels like exactly the word. Pervert! is the story of James, a washed-up youngster who arrives at his father Hezekiah’s house in the absolute middle of nowhere in the desert to stay for a while. He’s pretty surprised to find his dad now living with drop-dead gorgeous young blonde Cheryl – as it turns out he's paying for her company – and it’s not long before a romance begins to bloom between the James and Cheryl underneath Hezekiah’s nose. However there’s much more to the story than this alone, as it’s not long before Cheryl turns up dead, and a number of his father’s other 'lady visitors' follow suit. The suspicion falls on Hezekiah – especially when James finds his strange ‘art workshop’ and the meat puppets he is making at the bottom of the garden, not to mention the fact James begins to wonder if his dad was the one who killed his mother. The story really comes to a head when nurse Patty arrives to care for Hezekiah, but she turns out to be anything but what we had expected, and the truth of the deaths is revealed and a dark voodoo curse is finally unveiled.

Now, much of that probably sounds patently ridiculous, and to no small extent it is. But when you throw in the added element that this is a Russ Meyer homage, then suddenly things kick up to another level. And as a homage, this thing is gloriously, bizarrely pitch-perfect, loaded with all the elements that Meyer was known for – gratuitous nudity, absurd storylines, plenty of blood and guts – and hitting all the right notes with its parody. The final section – with James’s penis leaving his body and going on a murderous spree of its own – is flat-out absurd but equally absolutely hilarious. The one line that killed me was this the homicidal member was actually a female of the species, but then again I don't know what else I should have expected...

Make no mistakes, there’s nothing high art about this movie, but as a brainless way to while away 90 minutes it’s got plenty of merits. There are lots of laughs, the performances are suitably hammed up, the music is ideal for the theme, the look and feel of it captures much of its inspiration perfectly and it’s bound to raise a smile in any fan of the Meyer movies. It’s in bad taste, but then it would really lose something if it wasn’t.

No doubt there will be plenty who don’t get this one – it’s unapologetically silly, the nudity is overblown, some of the shots and segues feel really random and as I say the finale is patently absurd. But there is an overriding sense that everyone involved is having great fun with the material, and the parody is really delivered with an affection for the source material – as any good parody should be. It doesn’t feel sniping, or mealy-mouthed, or mocking as so many current parodies and spoofs do.

With all that said, this one decidedly was for me, and I had a blast watching it. As a bit of light relief from the usual bleakness of Film Gutter, it was fantastic entertainment.

RATING: 8/10. Comedy isn’t easy to do well, and I think parody is probably even harder to do well. I think that Pervert! shows the right amount of affection for the material that inspired it, whilst also poking fun at it in a knowing and exaggerated way. The performances are all on-point, and director Yudis captures the very spirit of Russ Meyer in what feels like a real personal pet project. It’s unlikely to live all that long in the memory – given that I forgot so much from the first viewing – but for a film to give you a chuckle put a smile on your face this is a good bet. A worthy 8/10 for a heartily fun time.

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Last week we took a look at the low-budget slasher Criminally Insane, a movie with a good core concept but hamstrung by all sorts of issues – bad acting, terrible editing, awful and unrealistic effects and a horribly rushed finale. But wait, there's more, because for some reason – and a mere twelve years later – the sequel to the 1975 original arrived. Why on earth it took so long to put together is beyond me, as honestly is why anyone even bothered to put it together.

Now the first one was bad, don't get me wrong, but it had the odd moment and, as I said, with a higher budget and some different actors, there was something that could have worked. Criminally Insane 2 – and there's no easy way to say this – feels like one the absolute laziest, most half-arsed sequels I've ever seen. It's fair to say that sequels are practically renowned for not living up to the original, but this one didn't have a high bar set for it. Anyway, let's explore further...

Criminally Insane 2 sees Ethel Janowksi, our lead from the first movie, in an asylum which is suffering with horrible budget cuts. As such, the head of the establishment decides that all inmates with no trouble on their records for the last five years will be released into half-way houses – which takes in Ethel, of course. Forget the fact that she killed six people twelve years before, why not just let her out and free? So Ethel finds herself at Bartholomew House, run by Hope Bartholomew, which she shares with a couple of other similar recently released patients – including a man who openly admits killing at least three of his wives. Of course it's not long before some of the visitors and residents start to agitate Ethel, and the killing begins once again.

The most criminal (if you'll excuse the pun) thing this movie does is the overuse of footage from the previous movie – in fact I would estimate at least 25 minutes of the 61 here are made up of clips from the first film, which leaves remarkably little new material here. If you've seen the first – which of course I have, and expect many viewers of this one will as well – then practically half of the runtime is absolutely irrelevant to you. This comes in dream sequences and flashbacks for the most part, with long scenes of Ethel sleeping and having nightmares about her past crimes. Not only that, there are scenes in here that actively feel like they are killing time – there are long scenes of eating and food preparation throughout. Maybe the director is trying to say something there, but two minutes of a man serving the residents of Bartholomew House dog food is utterly unnecessary. In all these cases you could have cut down by half or more, but then this one would have likely been 40 minutes or something like.

On top of that, it inherits all the same problems as the original – horrendous acting, hokey effects and unrealistic-looking blood, choppy and baffling cuts from one scene to the next, and another bizarre attempted twist in the last ten seconds of the film that just doesn't seem to click with anything else. 

I can't imagine this was a sequel that anyone was crying out for, and it pads its length in all sorts of ways to hit that classic follow-up issue – namely, it's not as good as the original, and the original wasn't really up to much in the first place...

RATING: 0.5/10. One of the oddest sequels I've ever seen, in that it borrows so heavily from the first despite barely reaching what you could call full film-length. If you've seen part one you could skip over practically half of this and miss nothing. This one doesn't have as good a concept, and the troubles of the original feel exacerbated – in fact I'm only giving it  a half-point for a single scene that really made me laugh out loud. If it only avoids nil points for an unintentional splash of humour then that likely tells you all you need to know – it's a bottom of the barrel scraping 0.5/10 from me.

There are a lot of films on the 'I want to watch that at some point' list, and among them is Criminally Insane. You can thank the comedy stylings of one of my favourite YouTube channels, The Cinema Snob, for that, in highlighting this notorious mid-70s slasher. I say notorious – no doubt there are many movies out there that are better known, but in cult circles this is a movie that comes with a certain reputation. Director Nick Philips was prolific from the late 60s to the late 80s, and was still helming films into the 2000s, including a 2003 version of Henry James' Turn of the Screw.

Criminally Insane is also sometimes known as Crazy Fat Ethel, which probably better bottles in a few words what this one is all about. We begin with Ethel Janowski in a mental hospital, before she's released into the custody of her grandmother. However, on doctor's advice, Ethel's grandma tries to make her grandaughter eat less – not something that Ethel welcomes at all, to the point of stabbing her grandmother when she tries to lock the fridge. Things devolve pretty quickly from there, as Ethel continues to binge before the arrival of Rosalie, who had been staying with Ethel's grandma. Unfortunately Ethel simply leaves her grandmother's corpse to rot, which soon enough arouses the suspicion of Rosalie and scumbag boyfriend John ('I'll tell you why I hit you... sometimes you girls need a beating, you all do' is a typically lovely line of sample dialogue from him). Add into that the fact that Ethel has been skipping out on her continuing electroshock therapy (??) and it's not long until the pressure of life back in society is getting too much, leading to a shocking conclusion...

That story probably doesn't sound too bad, and the irony is that this could have been a really good movie in different hands, or even with a bigger budget. This was made for $30,000 – not a lot of money even back in 1975 – and the lack of every cent really shows here. The movie is shot on video, which cuts and stutters throughout, and the whole feel of the movie is incredibly choppy. The editing cuts remarkably quickly, sometimes confusingly, and the effects look absolutely atrocious – the blood doesn't look or behave anything like blood, and ultimately I suspect we're actually watching red paint for the most part. The acting for the most part is pretty ropey, especially from many of the side characters, and there are so many parts of the story that just don't hold any logic. How on earth Ethel's murderous rampage isn't discovered much earlier is beyond me given how badly she hides those crimes. Basically every character other than Ethel winds up dead at the end of the tale, not that you'd really miss any of them – most are either barely in it or fundamentally unlikeable. And the ending itself is so rushed you could literally blink and miss it – and given the whole thing scarcely runs 60 minutes there's no real reason to rush it.

This is such a strange offering it almost needs to be seen to be believed – in its own way it's a compelling way to spend an hour of your life. It's not good – in fact it misses the mark horribly in every regard – but like Black Devil Doll or The Room before it, there's a grim fascination in just how poor this one us. But while those almost go full circle to 'so bad it's good' territory, this one is unfortunately fairly tedious and lacks the oddball charm of those particular movies. In a way I am glad I've finally seen it, because it lives up to everything I had heard about it and more.

RATING: 2/10. Criminally Insane does practically everything really poorly, but I have to give it something for what was – or at least could have been – an interesting plot and for at least holding a few comedy moments, be they intentional or otherwise. Maybe the whole thing was shot deliberately to be this awful with a view to being a future cult classic, but I don't think it's even achieved that goal if that ever existed. All in all it's a criminally bad 2/10.

Over the years, we've watched a lot of films whose titles have really summed up exactly what they are about. Look at a movie like Slaughtered Vomit Dolls or Vase De Noces (AKA The Pig F***Ing Movie) and it's basically crystal clear exactly what you're about to get into. And so it was that I stumbled upon this South Korean short film, and with a title like Necrophilia I thought it wouldn't take a huge amount of imagination to figure out what this one would be about.  And it's not a topic we've ever really ducked, or shied away from – there have been a few nauseating experiences in the field (IE Aftermath), but I've never let that put me off before...

However, one slightly baffling quarter of an hour later, I was rather forced to eat my words on this one. Because Necrophilia isn't really about any physical relations with the dead at all – more a sort of morbid romantic connection, as well as an obsession with sex as a kind of 'little death', presumably riffing off the French name for the orgasm. Was it interesting? Yes, without a doubt. Am I 100% clear on what I just watched? No, not in the slightest. But then again that's not always a bad thing, with the chance to pull at and further puzzle over a film sometimes being a benefit – in fact the work of Phil Stevens (Flowers, Lung II) has always left me with this similar kind of sense. And while Necrophilia might not quite have that edge of quality, it's a worthy effort in its own right.

The story follows I-Jin, who is a young journalist writing a report on the 'orange people' (yes, that reference is lost on me too) and is under pressure to meet her deadline. She spends a lot of time with her best friend, who seems to be pretty open in her discussion about sex and death. The rest of the story – honestly, I'm not totally sure. There's some link to the murder of a man she may or may not know, and some distinctly strange and trippy dream sequences, often featuring her best friend in violent and/or sexual scenes. The real-life elements rather slip into the background compared to these moments, leaving the movie feeling interestingly multifaceted without making it immediately possible to latch onto. My guess is that this one would likely reward repeat viewing in order to further pull at its complexities.

The film itself is really beautifully shot, and while some of the effects can look a little cheap – and the sense of 80s-ness is bottled in an awful opening credits sequence – there's plenty of scenes here that look great. The lead performances capture the kind of ethereality required by this kind of story, and the closing scene goes some way towards explaining what's really going on here. One of the reasons I downgraded this one slightly is that this is one of the few scenes that felt a bit clumsy, and I feel like there could well have been a better way to close this one out there somewhere..

But overall this one left a definite impression on me, and as a short film provides a fascinating insight into a small part of a whole that feels tantalisingly close, almost close enough to grasp, without quite being able to reach. The old saying goes 'leave them wanting more', and Necrophilia certainly fits that particular motto. I'd have loved to have seen this as a feature, but with nearly 40 years passed from its release I expect that particular ship has very much sailed...

RATING: 8.5/10. The latest in what feels like a slew of very good short films, Necrophilia is a piece of art that is likely to leave you equal parts confused and curious. Bound to reward further study, this little-known short feature from an era when splatter and gore were extremely prevalent in the region eschews that side of things for a dark tale with a striking visual aesthetic and some equally grabbing ideas and concepts. I'd argue that this one was well worth fifteen minutes of any horror fan's time, with a very creditable 8.5/10.

What is it about one word titles that are so hard to resist? In fact a search around IMDB to add all the details of this film reveals there have been a whole slew of movies called Brutal, and Taskashi Hirose’s offering – a recent release from the good folk at Unearthed Films – undoubtedly lives up to its billing. Then again, anyone who’s a regular purveyor of Japanese horror cinema will know there’s little shyness about laying on the gore and violence thick, so in that regard Brutal is following on in a fine tradition. The fact it has found a home with Unearthed, one of the most unflinching movie labels out there, should also tell its own story.

Brutal is a relatively short movie – not long over an hour total – that follows two serial killers, simply addressed here as Man and Woman. We begin with a first ‘chapter’, our male lead killing off two women that he has trapped in his house, one with a particular rough beating, asking them if they can 'understand him'. The second woman dies in an even more unpleasant fashion than the first, culminating in an opening that is grim, grimy and hard not to wince at least a little when watching.

Our second ‘chapter’ shows our female killer with a sort of montage, almost a ‘best of' her kills, before she meets a man in a bar and decides to take him home. There’s a strangely beautiful and hypnotic scene in the middle here as the two of them talk in the car while the scenery shoots by – it’s really gorgeous and honestly feels as though it belongs to another film entirely, although you could argue it’s a sort of breather from the brutality that is tactically offered up by the director. When the two get home, we find out her male companion knows what she has been doing, and sets about to kill her himself as a sort of retribution or revenge for all the male lives she has taken. He meets an equally nasty end after a tough-looking fight scene between the two, again a very effective and crunching confrontation.

I don’t want to spoil the end of this one, so I won’t except to say that the meeting of these two opposite yet eerily similar forces is inevitable, and the climax if anything is even more brutal than what has gone before. However there was something about the ultimate message here I didn’t like, and that made me feel distinctly uneasy as a viewer, so I’m going to downgrade it somewhat for that – again, I can’t say too much more without giving it all away. You’ll just have to watch it for yourself and see what you make of it, and I expect it to be the source of plenty of debate going forward.

Brutal feels like a really promising concept, and it looks great both in its depiction of absolute horror and nihilism as well as one abstractly beautiful scene in the middle. The lead performances are effective, and the more unpleasant scenes look uncomfortably realistic. There’s a splash of inspiration from the likes of Ichi The Killer and American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock here without a doubt, but it doesn’t quite deliver the brilliant finale of those two pieces. If you’re a fan of Asian extreme then you should check this one out – I don’t think it’s a leader in the field, but putting my own discomforts about the ending aside there’s plenty to like here for fans of hardcore serial killer movies.

RATING: 6.5/10. A hard one to rate, as I did enjoy it for the most part and really respect what the actors and director achieved with this one. It looks great whether it’s in violent, chaotic mode or in calming, dreamy mode, and the breaking down into chapters feels like a clever device and a nice way to build to a finale. However it’s a denouement that to me, personally, really missed the mark. Some people might love this ending, but it simply wasn’t for me, so what could easily have been a 9 or maybe even more slips down to a 6.5/10 all told. 

A new year is upon us, and of course that brings new and exciting possibilities and the prospect of intriguing new developments for Film Gutter. What cinematic madness lies ahead for this year? Will there be another film to absolutely break me before the closing credits? Yes, the excitement is boundless as 2019 begins...
 
...with a rape revenge movie. Yes, new possibilities indeed.
 
I've written a little about this subject before, but it's very hard to do something different and exciting in this subgenre. There have been a handful – movies like Julia, Landmine Goes Click or American Mary leap to mind – but the name of the milieu gives away the plot right away. You know that someone is going to get raped in the first part of the movie, and then they are going to get their revenge. The mould hasn't changed a great deal since I Spit On Your Grave, and nor can it really, since the description applied to it is so limiting.

Which brings us to Even Lambs Have Teeth, a 2015 offering from Terry Miles that follows friends Katie and Sloane about to go off and work at an eco-farm near their uncle while one of their mums (honestly didn't catch which one it was) goes off to Cuba. A slightly random opening, but of course it isn't long before the girls decide not to wait around for the bus to the farm, instead taking a lift from two handsome strangers. Then they find themselves drugged and waking up in the middle of the forest in a shipping container. From there a host of men from around the local area come to visit and abuse our lead characters over an unspecified amount of time (which I think amounts to a few days).

This leads me to one of the main problems about the movie, in that things do feel a bit too vague to really connect home. Something like I Spit On Your Grave made an emotional connection by showing in quite shocking detail the attack on our lead, and when she inflicted the equally brutal revenge there was a kind of catharsis there – it offered a certain degree of satisfaction to see. There are plenty of hints and intimations of what happens to our lead characters here, but nothing much is ever shown in any detail, so you do feel slightly cut adrift. Strangely the same goes for the revenge, which again on numerous occasions hints at real brutality but somehow seems to duck short of the issue. If this was a deliberate decision it doesn't feel like one that helps, although of course it may have been cuts or restrictions of some variety there too.

I always try and take into account I'm not a big fan of these kind of films when reviewing, and barring the above issue there's not really a massive amount wrong with this one. The performances from our two main actresses are solid, and fit the story well, and I was pretty partial to the soundtrack that ran throughout the movie. Unfortunately the male characters in the film feel seriously underdeveloped – some of them I couldn't even remember when the girls mete out their vengeance – which again gives the film a somehow unsatisfying resolution, and the tendency to go for a few too many cute one-liners also feels a little excessive. Maybe it's in some parts an attempt to satirise some of the other examples of the field, but it doesn't really hit home.

RATING: 5.5/10. Even Lambs Have Teeth is a decent rape revenge movie that is likely to hit the mark well enough for fans of the subgenre, but for me it all just feels a bit too comfortable and familiar to be deeply memorable. It's not brutal and bloody enough to be a serious standout on that front, and the emotional context and connection feels a bit undercooked. It runs a relatively short runtime, and I wonder if another 10 or 15 minutes to load up on those two things could have helped.  Some likeable performances aren't quite enough to save this one, so it's a distinctly middling 5.5/10 for this one.

Last week we began our top ten with an absolute slew of brutality – in fact it probably chimed pretty nicely with the five most distressing films of the year, apart from Green Elephant that is...

Thankfully the top five of the year aren't quite that remorseless, although this shining quintet certainly have their moments. So let's dive right into to the crème de la crème of the movies we watched in 2018...

Our Octo-Boll month certainly brought us to plenty of interesting movies by Uwe Boll, many of which were absolutely brutally bleak. However the exception to that rule was the hilarious Postal, which took all the dark, edgy and base humour from the game and planted it fantastically into movie form. One of those comedies that won't be for everybody but spoke wonderfully to everything I like in humour, pushing the boundaries to deliver moments where you don't really know whether to gasp in shock or laugh out loud.

I’ve got to come clean and say that Giallo doesn’t always float my boat. There are a few notable exceptions, but generally it’s a subgenre I can happily take or leave. So Andreas Marschall’s German Giallo feature came as a pleasant surprise. Very well acted, with some fantastically intense moments – including what was for me probably the longest I ever held my breath during a film – this one has some original and quirky ideas whilst also paying a homage to what has come before it. Well worth a look as a fine slice of modern Giallo for fans of the field.

Not wildly common that a short film scores this highly, so you can be confident that the Korean Human Form left an impression on me. Certainly more subtle than some of the entries here, the movie uses a lot of strange and bizarre imagery to make its point rather than ladling on shock or gore. It’s a clever but slim idea very well delivered, with a genuinely haunting ending, which earns it no 3 in the year’s ratings.

It's that min again. Andreas Marschall emerged as a favourite name in the field for me in 2018, and his anthology horror movie certainly hit all the marks for me. Based loosely on a fascinating real-life cult leader, and divided into three parts based on Indian mythology, this one brings plenty of genuine scares as well as lots of fascinating ideas to the mix, with a very solid framing device running all the way through. A great movie that once again cemented just how good the anthology horror film can be.

I don’t give out top marks cheaply, and in fact I only gave it out once in 2018 – to Jimmy ScreamerClauz’s staggering, horrific, psychedelic magnum opus, When Black Birds Fly. Sometimes there is a sense that a director just knocks something out of the park, absolutely nailing their vision perfectly, and this is the one. I liked Where The Dead Go To Die plenty, but this offering takes all the best elements of that and expands on them whilst adding new, fresh and exciting content. This dystopian nightmare in both black and white and lurid colour is absolutely something to behold – you’ll never look at Heaven quite the same again…

We look forward to lots more reviews in 2019, and thanks to all for reading throughout 2018!
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Yes, it’s that time of year when things turn all retrospective and we start looking back at the year that was. 2018 was certainly a fascinating year for Film Gutter, which gave us the opportunity to actually programme some films for the first time – helping to put together screenings of American Guinea Pig: Song of Solomon, Your Flesh, Your Curse and of course both Nekromantik films with the legendary Jorg Buttgereit in attendance. Those few days remain an absolute highlight of the year for me!

But we watched many, many more films than that, and as always out top ten list refers to films WATCHED in 2018, not necessarily released in 2018. So, without any further ado, here are Film Gutter’s highest commended titles of this particular annum, starting in this part one with numbers 10 up to 6...

The American Guinea Pig series has been growing a serious following since it began, and while Bloodshock probably remains my favourite of the four so far, both this year's installments were very good indeed. Sacrifice was also well among the hardest movies to watch of the year – especially for any male viewer – but it's a fascinating (if slight) story with incredible visual effects. Not for the faint of heart, yet well worth an hour of your time if you can stomach it. ​

This Brazilian short film was absolutely uncompromising, and showed an intriguing triptych of characters effectively haunting a disturbed serial killer, each of them representing some facet of his own personality. It packs in a lot for a short film – in fact the more I reflect on it, the more I wonder if it would have been even better served by being longer – and is performed and delivered with intensity throughout.

One of the most wonderful things about this short film was seeing it on the big screen – the impact of the sound in the cinema was absolutely remarkable, and something that didn't come across quite the same on the small screen. With that said, this story of a woman trying to overcome the aftermath of a sexual assault is plenty impactful in its own right, being both very simple and effective, with only one character for the most part.

I can't compare this to the first one, which I haven't seen as yet, but this one was strange and entertaining in equal measure, driven by a real guessing game of which person would be the one to emerge alive and victorious from the red room. It's not without its flaws, but it's directed and delivered with enough verve to keep you watching and has a heartily unexpected ending to boot as well. Certainly one of the better examples of the wave of splatter movies to come out of Asia.

The third part of the AGP series made a genuine impression in both the extreme horror world and beyond, and rightly so – an excellent exorcism film in its own right, even without the great practical effects, lit up by a fantastic lead performance from Jessica Cameron, who absolutely steals the show in the role of the possessed. As one priest after another fails to exorcise the demon from her, we lead to an even darker conclusion than you might expect for a film in this particular series...

We'll be back next week with our entries from 1-5!


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It’s strange in a way that we have a globetrotting series such as Film Gutter that so rarely gives a chance to actually look at a film from these shores. In four years and nearly 200 reviews I’m pretty confident I can count the British films that we’ve reviewed on one hand – I can recall some good examples in the likes of The Lesson and Feed The Black, as well as our recent review of short film Stuck – so it’s nice to have the chance to spotlight something from these shores.

Oppression comes to us from Capture That films, and is solidly described as an ‘arthouse horror’ – I’m sure trying to pare down the actual meaning of that could be an article in and of itself, but it’s pretty apparent this is a short film trying to separate and distance itself from the more mainstream elements of horror. It’s obviously a labour of love too, with director Gore (a pretty suitable name for these parts!) also writing and starring in the movie. Not an uncommon thread for short films, and certainly not something that holds things back at all here.

Oppression is the story of an unnamed man wandering a forest – I’ve assumed it’s after some sort of apocalypse, but that might just be conjecture on my part. He’s clearly having some difficulty telling the real from the imagined, and the runtime here is partly a quest for survival and partly a quest to find something much deeper. There are plenty of implications as to what might lie in his past thought his daydreams and hallucinations, and while they are pretty clear individually it’s not always that apparent how they actually link together ultimately. There’s very little dialogue, with only a handful of whispered lines adding something to the theme and feel of the movie, and generally very little human interaction whatsoever throughout.

The result is a movie that feels pretty sparse – in all honesty the premise would struggle to stretch to more than this kind of runtime – but was interesting enough to keep my attention throughout. It tends to unravel slowly as a movie, and in fragments, and while certainly refusing to give you anything neat-wrapped I feel like there is enough information here to at least draw a conclusion – although of course it’s hard to know whether my conclusion would be the same as anyone else’s…

It’s hard to say too much more without getting into spoiler territory, but, as one might expect from a movie keen to mark itself as ‘arthouse horror’, Oppression is suitably nicely shot and laden with some lovely visuals, as well as some pretty dark but still stylish visuals. It’s got a nice look and feel to it, and although it certainly wouldn’t be the most extreme of the extreme we’ve watched here, it has a moment or two that might rattle a relative newcomer to our world. To me, though, after last week’s trauma watching Green Elephant, it was actually great to watch something that was generally appealing to look at and approached things in a rather more subtle fashion.

Some of the comments that I applied to Possum recently will stand here too – it’s not a film that is neat or tidy in the narrative sense, nor that offers and firm answers to the questions it poses. It put me in mind to some extent of its fellow short film Precut Girl, or even bits of Your Flesh, Your Curse – albeit a much softer version! There’s enough here to reward your time without it being a serious standout, and enough to have me keeping my eyes peeled for more work from this particular team going forward.

RATING: 7/10. Nebulousness seems to be the word of the week for me in the reviewing sense, and by keeping this one mysterious Oppression has built something interesting without a doubt. Those of you who like to chew over a movie and pull it apart like a puzzle might well enjoy this one, although if you prefer a straightforward narrative and character arc you might be better to look elsewhere. For me this was good without being classic, and being as Capture That Films have uploaded this to YouTube for free you’ve got plenty of chance to check it out!