SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

BA_Harrison "The Spanish answer to Hostel" boasts the sleeve of the DVD for H6. But whilst it's true that this film's relentless scenes of torture and violence might possibly appeal to the audiences of such modern horror, I suspect that fans of that particular franchise could feel cheated by the description used on the packaging. This isn't mainstream splatter for indiscriminate teens; it's a study of a psychotic serial killer that bears far more resemblance to a handful of other, perhaps lesser-known horror films than to the work of Eli Roth.Sure, certain aspects of director Martín Garrido Barón's brutal chiller can be compared to The Silence of the Lambs and the Saw films, but other parts are more reminiscent of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, American Psycho, The Last Horror Movie, nasty low-budget crap-fest Scrapbook, and even recent French shocker Martyrs. One thing is certain though: there's not a single sadistic East European in sight.Instead, there's a deranged Spaniard, with a plastic sheet covered room and a shiny new chainsaw ready for action.Said sicko is Antonio Frau (Fernando Acaso), who has recently been released from prison after serving 15 years for killing his girlfriend. Almost immediately after gaining his freedom, Antonio finds himself a wife (buxom nurse Rosa, who is desperate to escape life at her parents' home), inherits a rundown guest-house in a sleazy part of town, and begins writing a diary in which he catalogues every detail of his new hobby: killing drifters, prostitutes, pimps and junkies!While his wife is at work (she does the night-shift at a hospital, where she carries on her affair with a married doctor), Antonio is busy luring drug-addled hookers and other losers into his home, killing the men and taking the women to Room 6, where he 'purifies' them through repeated rape (amusingly 'working around' their knickers), torture, and finally, dismemberment. Meanwhile, the police inspector who previously arrested Antonio is hot on the case, and soon suspects that his old acquaintance is responsible for the area's lack of hookers.Very grim and brutal in tone, but surprisingly light on the explicit violence (plenty of blood, but not much graphic gore—not that it needs it to offend), H6 is definitely not a film for all the family (unless that family sits in armchairs made from human remains). The awful treatment to which Antonio subjects his victims is extremely harrowing, and is recommended viewing only for hardened horror fans who are numb to the sight of petrified young women pleading for their lives before being sawn into tiny pieces (some of which get served up as dinner for Rosa).The only thing that prevents H6 from being one of the best 'extreme' horrors to come out of Europe in recent years is the weak ending, which attempts to convince viewers that Antonio is a genius of Hannibal Lector proportions who has concocted a clever ruse to ensure that he receives a lighter than expected sentence. I can't help but feel that the film deserved a much more nihilistic denouement worthy of all that had gone before.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

Coventry With all the promising reviews warning about the morbidity & intense shock-value of this film, and especially with knowing what formed basic inspiration for the story , I can't help admitting I was a little disappointed after my viewing of "H6: Diary of a Serial Killer". Sure this Spanish effort is remotely gruesome and confronting, but not nearly as much as I expected (or hoped) and there are far more dull moments than shocking ones. As for the inspiration, the script (and even the main character Antonio Frau himself) often refers to Henri Landru. Landru was a French serial killer who murdered nearly a dozen of women during the years of World War one and carefully noted down his grim actions in a diary that eventually proved his guilt. Landru selected his victims randomly and killed without apparent motives, and maybe the character of Antonio Frau could have used a bit more sense of nihilism like that as well. His seemingly forced motives for killing young girls are (partly) what makes the film so implausible. Once freed from jail, where he did 15 years for murdering his girlfriend when he was a teenager, Antonio inherits an old and ramshackle motel in the middle of a prostitute-infested neighborhood. With his new wife working night shifts at the hospital, Antonio has plenty of free time to fulfill his new mission in life, namely the purification of sinners. He lures drug-addicted prostitutes to his motel and locks them up in room 6, where he rapes, humiliates and tortures them (talk about 'cleansing') before practicing his chainsaw dismembering skills on their scarcely dressed bodies. Antonio's modus operandi and motivations don't make the least bit of sense, but they do result in several nauseating and blood-soaked sequences. Totally gratuitous footage, of course, but suitably sadistic if you're interested in this type of cinema. But, like I mentioned before already, the film badly suffers from too many tedious moments as well. Antonio Frau really talks too much and insists on narrating all the things he writes down in his precious diary. Near the end of the movie and totally out of the blue, the script suddenly turns ambitious and actually attempts to make us believe the protagonist is a criminal mastermind, even more intelligent than the Jigsaw Killer or even Hannibal Lector. Yeah right. "H6: Diary of a Serial Killer" is nicely shot and benefices from macabre settings and a thoroughly grim ambiance. Fernando Acaso is fairly convincing as the twisted killer (at least during the first half of the film), Mariá José Bausá is bewitching as his voluptuous wife and Antonio Mayans (a Jess Franco regular!) makes a brief appearance as her lover. "H6" isn't nearly as sick and repulsive as some people claim, but nonetheless an interesting movie for Euro-horror fanatics to check out.

Chris_Docker H6 - Diary of an Assassin opens with a dark screen. A domestic argument can be heard. Spilling out of the darkness of an apartment into murky, ochre light we see a man abusing and eventually throttling his wife. Hello Antonio Frau, before he learns the self-control needed to become a serious serial killer.Several years later and he's out of prison, inheriting an old empty building that used to be a brothel. He also picks up a wife, who has corresponded with him in the nick and believes he has reformed. He has. Gone is the anger, the violent reactiveness to situations he can't control. He now has a finely honed mind, free of any non-psychopathic tendencies, and explains to the audience his new calling as a serial killer. He obligingly plans a diary that will include before-and-after Polaroid pictures - for posterity, you understand. We survey his collection of chain saws and other necessary equipment.The portrait of an unemotional but ruthlessly clinical and intelligent killer hearkens to many movies of this ilk, or popular fiction such as We Must Talk About Kevin. It is not particularly new, but there is always room for a new approach and I was interested to see how the cinematography tackled the subject, whether the scenes of gore would be particularly extreme censor-bait, memorably artistic, or whether it would develop new psychological twists.Intellectually, the film is fairly shallow, but could still appeal to gore-buffs. Antonio Frau's main raison d'etre is the old 'cleanse humanity of the scum' motive - rounding up prostitutes and other undesirables and purge them with pain before ridding humanity of their presence (all in the name of the Lord). The psychology mirrors the witchfinders of Roman Catholicism, aided and abetted then by a string of ingenious torturers, sexual perverts and willing official and non-official helpers. That age having passed (or at least transformed - the Church no longer having such power in modern day Spain), poor Antonio has to shoulder the divine burden all himself. "The Lord has chosen me for this very special task," he proclaims. The similarity, and the fact that Church brutality against 'witches' was mirrored on Old Testament torture, raises the question of copycat violence for the weak minded.Antonio's preferred method is to seem kind and generous until he has his victims in his grasp. He has a special room in the old lodging house with a table where he binds women of the night spread-eagled (usually he feeds them first and explains his special sexual needs, offering lots of dosh). Once they are tied up, he rapes them repeatedly, starves them for days, and then (for the good of their soul) hacks them into bits and puts the body parts in black bin bags.For its economy of images, most of which are above-average though not quite outstanding, H6 - Diary of an Assassin deserves some credit. One of the victims puts in a remarkably good performance as she is raped - the expressions on her face are horrifying. But the film falls short of even its own modest ambition. The camera looks away as limbs are hacked off, and the blood spurts look a little repetitive from one dismemberment to the next. Even more worrying in terms of continuity is the explicit camera shots between the girls' legs that always show neatly arranged panties even as Antonio dismounts.This film will be offensive to many people for the subject matter. For some horror buffs it will, ironically, be lacking in sufficient realism, at least by today's film-making standards, but there is enough to slake the blood-thirst of most fans of the genre. Others should probably stay away.

rothsindel This self proclaimed "very talented artist" have directed easily the worst Spanish film of the 21st century. Lack of emotion, coherence, rhythm, skills, humor... it repeats the same situation over and over again. It shows no character development. It does not even show any violent and/or sexual content, and it does not add anything new to the psycho-killer sub genre. So lame it should be shown at film schools as an example of "what not to do" in a first movie.BTW where the hell is the "talent"? there are scenes which have been shot almost identically; there are scenes which have two or more master shots and it is quite awful to see the action jumping from one master shot to another without a reason. The camera almost never moves, as if the "very talented artist" was afraid of showing his lack of visual skills. The actors playing the main roles act like amateurs, and the supporting cast is hardly believable. There are more holes than plot in the script (if ever there was one)...A really disheartening movie, and a whatsoever talented director.