Pulpmovies Reviews

Most horror films these days simply aren’t horrific, relying instead on more and bigger gore effects to make the audience jump, each jump followed by a joke so we can all relax again. The makers of these types of film also display very little respect for the intelligence of the audience by insisting on spoon-feeding every plot point to you, often repeatedly.

Horror isn’t like most horror films.

Instead of giving you the usual jump/laugh formula, writer/director, Dante Tomaselli builds a surreal and non-sequential nightmare of events and images that leave you unnerved and disorientated. It also leaves you reaching for the ‘play’ button as soon as the film has ended if only to get your mind around the wealth of ideas and themes thrown at you throughout the film.

There are two major plot threads running through the film.

The first revolves around a group of teenagers who on escaping from a drug rehabilitation centre immediately start to treat themselves to a collection of magic mushrooms, beer and pills given to Luck (Danny Lopes) by the previous days visitor - the, frankly bizarre, Reverend Salo (Vincent Lamberti).

The second plot thread centres on Grace Salo, the daughter of the Reverend Salo and his equally bizarre wife (Christie Sanford). Grace’s only source of comfort is her grandfather, the elder Reverend Salo (The Amazing Kreskin) who may or may not be alive and who certainly isn’t all that he seems.

The teenagers run into trouble and head to the nearest house, which happens to be home to the Salos. It’s here that Luck shoots both the Reverend and his wife, unleashing a bewildering array of horrors…

In a lot of ways, Horror follows on from Tomaselli’s earlier film, Desecration with many of the themes from the earlier film (repression, drug use, family dynamics twisted beyond dysfunctional) being further explored.

On a technical level, Horror is a big step forward. The characters and situations are more interesting and the actors (many of them the same as for the earlier film) put in much better performances. The film also has a much stronger ending.

In fact, the ending of this film thoroughly blew me away. Not only does it make sense within the context of the film but it also adds a whole layer of understanding to what has gone on before.

It’s also worth mentioning the soundtrack which is never intrusive but always there – hugely adding to the unnerving atmosphere of the film. In to the director’s commentary, Tomaselli describes the soundtrack as being 50% of the film and this attitude leads to a very effective merging of the visual and audio into a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s difficult to talk about the plot and structure of the film without giving too much away, so I will limit myself to noting that Horror is even less linear than Desecration.

But telling a straightforward story is not the primary intent of this film and the dreamlike logic is amply supported by the hallucinogenic imagery. And again, it’s tempting to go into detail but to do so would lessen the effect of these images when you first see them – and some of them really did make me sit up and take notice. Not all of the images are explicitly frightening, but they do combine to keep the viewer both disorientated and unnerved.

Horror is streets ahead of the vast majority of horror films released these days and if you want to see a film that engages your imagination and really gets under your skin, I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

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