Artivels
Undescribable Perfection
Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
Hayden Kane
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
GL84
While trying to open a portal to Hell to retrieve a long-lost love, a man finds his quest of locating the designated victim to draw the symbols required to do so far more challenging than the Dark Angel who assigned it to him thought it would be.An ultimately disappointing effort, this one was just flat-out flawed and not really that worthwhile. The main point of contention with this one is that it's just confusing and not all that easy to follow, tending to use far more flashbacks than necessary, most of those filled with going so far out of the traditional plot line (we do have about four or five of them, and none of them intersect until the finale) that overall it just becomes so confusing as to what's going on that eventually it just becomes moot as to what's going on. This one does have some wonderfully absurd images and ideas, as there's one scene with a pig you have to see to believe, and the concept of what's going on works when it's kept to a visual standpoint instead of trying to spell it all out, but that doesn't come close to justifying the rest of the flaws in here, and overall this one is just a jumbled, incoherent mess.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.
geddyleeisgod
I've seen virtually every major horror film and a number of B-rated ones as well, so have a pretty good versing in the genre. My tolerance of low budgets and wandering plots is high, but this one is off the charts.It earns two stars for the lighting and makeup. The cast also does a reasonable job with what they're given, but this meanders between tedious and pointlessly disgusting.My guess is the "writer" had WAY too much peyote and has lost the ability to write anything remotely comprehensible.Avoid like the plague.
Bloodwank
Demons, suicide, necrophilia, transcendence through drugs and mutilation, all ingredients to whet the appetites of any self respecting fan of nastiness. Necromentia is a film well stacked with the good stuff and it has the right intentions to use it, but when all is said and done it comes in beneath its potential. It has the structure of a sequence of linked vignettes, the sequence of events avoiding a linear timeline in favour of unwrapping the mystery of how everyone is connected. A hip approach that film-makers have been fawning over since at least Pulp Fiction, it works here because everyone is connected and there isn't too much of randomness to things. The structure makes it fairly fun to get to the bottom of things and the ride is made all the better by the style on display, this is a very visual film with some sweet morbid imagery on display. The palette is predominantly dark (lots of shadow, grey and cold metal), the sets and shots cluttered and the art direction focused on chains, hooks and tools of pain, it's a horrific world on display and one so overpowering that the flesh tones and lighter colours of its characters come across as alien, an intrusion that inevitably leads to horrors as the darkness of the world around interacts with the flesh of the characters. If only the film had substance and emotional heft to support its style, but it sadly doesn't and the characters are a significant part of the problem. The acting is perfectly reasonable, with Layton Matthews conjuring an inscrutably sinister presence, Chad Grimes grimly determined and mentally frayed enough to do anything and Santiago Craig appropriately twisted and slightly pathetic. The trouble is that the film has a tight cast with most people connected, and pretty well everyone is so twisted, so tainted that empathy is impossible. The lack of balance wouldn't be so bad, since the film is clearly aiming to be something of a deeply macabre side-show, but in a film where no one is likable and the emphasis is on nasty stuff going down, things need to be seriously, impressively messed up and in Necromentia, they come close but no cigar. The visuals have imagination but lose their impact after a while, whilst the gore is kept mostly to a bit of splatter, skin carving and intestine play. The scenes are generally brief and not quite convincing, grisly but not grisly enough. So in the end the film falls somewhat short, a bit too much frustration making some of the cheaper looking scenes more noticeable and the overall hellish ambiance less interesting or effective than it could have been. This means that in the end the audience can't connect with the characters and isn't shocked by the grue, thus ends up slightly unmoved by the whole affair when it becomes apparent that it has little to offer beyond its ideas and atmosphere. Still, its watchable enough and a decent little independent effort, so a fair 5/10 from me..
Paul Andrews
Necromentia starts as a man named Hagen (Santiago Craig) is visited by two men, one of the men Travis (Chad Grimes) says that he know's Hagen is keeping the rotting body of his dead girlfriend Elizabeth (Zelieann Rivera) in his apartment & claims that he can help Hagen bring her back to life. Hagen is sceptical at first but decides to go along with Travis who says he can open a doorway to the other-side which he can enter & find Elizabeth but first Hagen has to die. Hagen finds himself in hell as he is part of a larger plan that involves betrayal, murder, deals with demon's & the supernatural...Directed by Pearry Teo (who seems to have written the Plot Summary on the IMDb's main page & even makes a few mistakes like saying Hagen & Elizabeth were married when they weren't, didn't he direct this thing?) this horror film seems to have been heavily influenced by the works of Clive Barker & in particular Hellraiser (1987) with the themes of grotesque demon's, the afterlife, hell, opening doorways to other dimensions & the two worlds colliding. I was amused to see the IMDb poster image for Necromentia claims that it's 'Seven meets Hellraiser but better than both...' which did make me laugh a bit actually as Necromentia isn't fit to even be mentioned in the same sentence as those two brilliant films (I'm not even sure where the Se7en (1995) comparisons come from) let alone be called better than both. The whole time-line of Necromentia & the way the plot unfolds is strange, what one would consider the start of the film is at the end, the middle of the film at the start & the end of the film at the start if that makes sense, I suspect the script was trying to be too clever for it's own good & present the story in such a way all the pieces fall together at the end in one giant twist revelation but I figured out where Necromentia was headed long before it finished & there's no great reason or narrative justification for the plot to be split up in such an odd way & for me didn't work at all. If you ignore the end credits Necromentia only lasts for seven five minutes which is still too long, the character's are shallow, any sort of explanation is vague & none of the character's have proper endings. At least it's short I suppose but I still couldn't recommend it.In keeping with the Hellraiser themes of immortality, being stuck in hell & demon's Necromentia also steals the look of Barker's classic & in fairness is visually nice to watch. There's chains, old scary looking surgical instruments, weird S&M style outfits (the main demon seems to wear an old WWII style gas mask), self mutilation & a dark morbid feel to the film with all sorts of bizarre wire like contraptions that encase people. There's also a Cenobite style monster that to it's credit looks great, it's a shame it doesn't do anything other than walk up a dark corridor but as I said the special make-up effects on it are mightily impressive. There is also a fat bloke wearing a Pig's head as a mask wrapped in barb wire who urges someone to commit suicide, one of the less successful attempts at being bizarrely grotesque & just comes off as rather odd & random. There's a bit of gore but again nowhere near as good as in Hellraiser, a guy slashes his own chest with a straight razor, a woman's finger is chopped off & someone's guts are pulled out.With a supposed budget of about $300,000 it's no wonder the film is dark, it's so you can't see anything but as far as low budget films go Necrmentia does look really good & at times visually striking even if I didn't like the plot or the way it's randomly sliced into three parts & shown in completely the wrong order. The acting is alright but I wouldn't say anyone puts in a great performance.Necromentia is an odd film that i can't say i enjoyed even though it only lasted for seventy five minutes, the random order the plot is presented did nothing for me & made Necromentia an annoying viewing experience & the constant Hellraiser rip-offs & visual style although effective for the budget aren't as good here as in Barker's film.
