Reviews From the Horror Chamber - Epitaph, Circulation, Fall to Pieces

Welcome to the first edition of Reviews From the Horror Chamber for 2009. I do apologize for not having at least one edition, in the last two months, as yours truly has been busy working on other stuff on the site, like DVD news and the startup of the Film Arcade.net Newswire and Youtube page. I have a lot things planned for this column, this year, which I’ll talk about more in the State of the Horror genre address that I have planned for this weekend on the site, so stay tuned.

Also, we have a contest going on, where filmarcade.net is giving away four copies of Epitaph” (which is reviewed in this edition). For more information, you can goto: http://www.filmarcade.net/2009/02/film-arcadenet-is-giving-away-four.html

Contest ends this Friday.

With any more further explanation, on the reviews.

Epitaph
Year: 2009
Director: The Jung Brothers
Studio: Danger After Dark
Stars: Kim Tae-Woo, Kim Bo-Kyung, Jin Goo
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 101 Mins
Language: Korean with English Subtitles




“Epitaph’ is a film that goes into depths of obsessive love and heartbreaking sadness. The film takes place at hospital, in the 1940’s, where a set of strange occurrences takes place. First, a medical student is assigned to the hospital morgue, where he begins show affections of love to a recently murdered young girl. Then, a young child, who survived an automobile accident, is haunted by visions of her dead parents who perished in the accident. Finally, a couple working at the hospital investigate a series of gory murders that involved soldiers and the employees at the hospital. This film that has many twists that leads to it’s shocking ending.

“Epitaph” is a visually captivating supernatural horror film that has many twists and turns. The Jung brothers are directors that fans of Asian cinema should be on the lookout for, as their direction was very visual and frightening. The duo did a great job making the visual very dreamlike and frightening. They did that, so that the images were those that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. It also makes the film have artistic value that most films of this genre, don’t have. Another that the Jung brothers did well, they made the scares and bloody effects work. They make it work, by making most of the ghosts look frightening and bloody. That helped make some the scares work. What also made the scares work was the fact that the Jung brothers had a dark and frightening score to accompany their vision. The film score was very dark and gothic. They also did a very good job directing their actors, as the performances here were very good. The Jung brothers made sure the performances were very dark and emotional, as it helped make the action, interesting.

The Jung brothers also wrote this very good screenplay. One of the things that made me liked his film, the fact that it had a Pulp Fiction, like structure for most of the film, as each of the three stories intersect with the each other. The main reason, why that structure works here. You have three stories taking place in that one hospital setting. It makes it easier to connect all the main characters to these strange events that are occurring in the hospital. They also did a great job building the suspense, for each of the stories. But what made the twists and turns work was the last fifteen minutes of the film, as all of the three stories became one. That’s when this film became a five star film, in my opinion. The twists turned the movie upside down, as the events that I thought was happening weren’t happening and the end result made sense.

“Epitaph” is truly a gem to come out of the Asian film market, as this is a visually and suspenseful film that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Review Rating: Five Stars

Circulation
Year: 2008
Director: Ryan Harper
Stars: Sherman Koltz, Yvonne Delarosa,
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Cinema Epoch
Running Time: 88 Mins
Official Website: http://www.circulationfilm.com/




Circulation is a surreal horror film about reincarnation and a world where the dead are human and everything looks the same. Soon, some of these people start to develop strange animal like behavior. While all this is happening, a retiree (Sherman Koltz) is vacationing and learning all the behaviors of a spider. During all this, he picks up a woman (Yvonne Delarosa), who is on the run from her ex-husband. He begins to find out that she is destined to reborn as caterpillar as this film examines, the world where human and animal instances live as one.

Circulation was a very dark and surreal horror film, but at the same time, the film was very effective, in what it was set out to do. Ryan Harper’s direction was good. The film moves at a very slow pace, but it’s one of those films, where it has to move at a slow pace, so the images are surreal and dark. He captures the Mexican landscape, very well, as it felt like another character, in the film, as most of this film takes place in these deserted areas. In a film, like this, the acting has to be good, as most of the film, at times had no dialogue or only the male lead talking. The acting was very effective. Harper does a good job, in making sure that the performances fit the surreal-ness that this film had going, for itself, as the performance fit the level that the story is going for.

Harper’s screenplay was also very good, as it’s very weird and original. One of the things that the screenplay does right, it allows the surreal imagery grab your attention, while not taking much away, from the story. He allows the imagery to grab your attention, by slowing the action down. It allows, for some strangest images to come across. This is what helped get you through all the slow moving action that this film has. The screenplay also does develop the major characters and the strange world that they live in. He does that making sure that each of the leads has a conflict that is ongoing throughout the film, as you had one character on the run from her weird ex-husband and you had the retired tourist, who’s burned out and constantly living on the road. It made for an odd pair, but this story is weird.

Circulation is a film that has a lot of images that grabs your attention while you’re caught in the surrealness and horror, of the story.

Review Rating: Four Stars.

Fall to Pieces
Year: 2009
Director: William Young
Stars: Ashleigh Vanden, Sean Scarlett, Kelly Beaubien
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Illusion Productions
Running Time: 53 Mins
Official Website: http://www.falltopiecesmovie.com/





"Fall to Pieces" is about a young man, who is going through the breakup of his girlfriend. He still feels that they can be together, as he begins to feel a certain obsession for her. His obsession will take him down a dark path, after realizing that she no more feeling for him and wants to move on. She falls in love with a member of their school’s track team. Soon, the young kid’s obsession will descent into madness, which could turn his obsession into a modern love tragedy.

“Fall to Pieces” is a film that I enjoyed for the most part. One of the reasons that this was enjoyable, the direction was good. Co-Writer/Director William Young's direction wasn’t that bad, as the look of the film looked good, and the mistakes wasn’t that distracting, even though there were a couple of them. The film also has a couple of good scares, which helped this film, even though the story is pretty much predicable. The death scenes for the most part were bloody and eerie, which also helps. The acting wasn’t that bad here. Young get his actors, to make their performances come off as very dark and mature, which fits the subject matter, in which the story is trying to tell. The film also has a good soundtrack that features underground bands like, “The Devine Madness”, and “Without Tomorrow”. It helped give the film its dark and gothic tone.

If there was one problem that I had with this film, it was the fact the story was predictable. The Screenplay written by Young and Cory Garrett, at times felt predictable, but the action kept my interested throughout. I liked how they did a good job exploring the topic of relationships gone wrong and the fact that one of persons is still obsessed with the other. It does a good job developing the main character’s obsession with the girl that dumped him. Even though the action was good, it could have been more suspenseful, as the outcome and the twist was predictable. The twist was probably the problem that I had the most, as I got it right away, which hurt the film, but I enjoyed enough to this a positive review.

Fall to Pieces is an interesting characters study that outweighs the mistakes that this film has.

Review Rating: 3 Stars.

If you’re a filmmaker and interested in having your horror film reviewed in the horror chamber, you can reach the Chamber Keeper himself at horrorchamber@filmarcade.net or if you have any film in any genres that you want Film Arcade to review. Send us an email at screeners@filmarcade.net.

In the next edition of Reviews From the Horror Chamber, which won’t be two months apart. I’ll be finally be getting to “Resurrection County” and Tempe Video’s latest release “Blood Scarab”. Until then, have a frightening day.