FILM REVIEW: STOMACH (2019)

Have you ever hated your job and the people around you so much that your painful stomach ulcer has turned into a demon and gone on a murderous rampage? I'm sure we've all been there, right?

Stomach is the story of meek and mild Alex, a young man who's pushed around and bullied by everyone around him. Boss, workmates, his own doctor – apart from his crush Anna everyone seems to hate him, and he quietly hates them right back. But inside him this hatred is manifesting as an ugly, brutish creature that's desperate to be born and to devour Alex's tormentors.

It's an interesting concept, like a serious take on the 2013 comedy-horror Bad Milo. But where that earlier film was polished and entertaining, Stomach sadly doesn't live up to the premise. Right from the get-go it's clear what kind of film we're in for. Ugly blue and red lighting? Check. Opens with gratuitous sex scene? Check. Sex scene morphs into violent bloody attack and it turns out to have all been a dream? Check. It's nice of the film to let us know where to set our expectations right at the beginning.

Alex is played by Fabio Carlani in his debut role. Carlani as Alex is mostly quite understated, bordering on boring for the majority of the film, which is a shame as he looks like a young Ozzy Osbourne and could have done with channeling some of that chaotic energy. Luckily he shines in his dual role as the creature. The creature's movements and physicality are quite unnerving, helped by the special effects that highlight its monstrousness. At times it's reminiscent of Channel Zero's Tooth Child. Hopefully Carlani will have the opportunity for more similarly physical roles as that's where his strength lies. Alex's emoting and lines are all pretty flat up until the climax, especially in the interminable narration.

The narration is a symptom of the biggest problem with the film: it's just not interesting enough. Instead of allowing us to discover the character through his actions, what little we know of Alex is given to us in narration and in dialogue from the people around him. He's too passive a character, spending most of the film clutching his stomach or getting picked on. By the time he decides to take action and reach out for help, it's too late as we don't care what happens to him. We certainly don't care what happens to the rogues gallery around him as apart from Anna they're all cartoonishly awful cardboard cutout characters. Too much of the film is just terrible people being terrible until they're murdered, a lazy trope that crops up in too many horror films. Add to this a couple of horrible gratuitous rape scenes and the end result is a fairly unpleasant film with a story that's too slim to be interesting.

It's not all bad, though. The gore effects are done well for the budget, and there's a couple of satisfyingly gruesome deaths that are carried off well. There's always the risk that something like a decapitation or an eye being gouged out can look quite silly without Hollywood production values, but Stomach manages to be effectively sick and gross without looking too cheap. There's some good creepy imagery, especially a scene where the creature crouches over a pile of guts like a grotesque gargoyle while Alex lies comatose beside it. And the twist, while inevitable in hindsight, was well-handled and ties up some logical problems that the story seemed to have. I didn't even see it coming, which is always a pleasant surprise.

The film is directed, written, shot, edited and produced by Alex Visani, who also handled cinematography and visual effects. It's always disheartening when a film-maker takes on so many roles on a single project because the film inevitably suffers as a result. These are all full-time roles that require maximum attention, and when one person tackles them all they stretch themselves so thin that they can't do every department justice. It also means you don't get multiple people's creative input, which is vital in film.

This is Visani's first feature length film, after several shorts and a segment in The Pyramid (2013), so this is still early days for his career. Here's hoping for better things in the future.

BY SAM KURD 
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