Shock-O-Rama Cinema | Buy at Amazon | Review by Sinferno
Even though I have a unique movie collection that by and large could not be rented at Blockbuster, traded in at a local CD Warehouse or seen anywhere on TV except as a brief shot of the plastic box it came in (usually as Exhibit: A in some serial killer true crime show) I like to think of myself as something of a purist, in all things actually. And that’s why when this latest film's case suggested that it was the mutated bastard offspring of “CLERKS and GHOSTBUSTERS ” I stared dubiously. So many B movies try and rip off established ideas on a miniscule budget and call it their own. A movie that hints at such chicanery right at the onset surely must be derivative and stupid from the get go. Was it? Sadly, yes. But there was some other stuff going on so let’s see if it appeals to you.
NECROVILLE chronicles the story of Jack and Alex, the two lovable losers who are down on their luck and work at a job they hate and this job just happens to be monster slayer in a town called Necroville, a place where the dead walk the earth and attack humans in slow, predictable movements and with budget creature effects. These two Hardware Store Van Helsings are dispatched by their pothead Rastafarian boss to kill various werewolves, vampires and zombies and in between dispatching the baddies they ridicule and verbally lambaste each other on a personal level. A common sore subject? Jack’s promiscuous, bitchy girlfriend who might be more than she seems… And if you can’t figure out the rest of the plot by now, you are certainly too young or unfit to be watching these types of cinema so please inform an adult now and step away from the player.
For the rest of you, I suppose there is some sort of entertainment value here, but for those of us who have seen thousands of movies, this film suffers from an obvious identity problem. It struggles to be several different types of film and somewhere along the way it fails at all genre attempts because the elements of these films do not play well with one another onscreen. It could be a black comedy, but when the head vampire drinks a baby's brains (live actor used) out of his skull with a bendy straw, that pretty much cauterizes the laugh factor of the film for most audiences. (Myself as well, admittedly, and I loathe children). It could have been an emotionless action flick, but the special effects, stunts and action are too limited to provide a substitute for plot itself, unlike a good TRANSPORTER movie. And I suppose it could have been a supernatural thriller, but the schlock buddy movie banter and Three Stooges interpersonal violence between the main actors pretty much destroys any effect at horror.
So this movie that was obviously some film students attempt to include elements from all of his favorite genres comes across as an amateurship work by all accounts. Not that all movies that span, corrupt and twist genre are bad, its just I feel that aspiring filmmakers should aspire to mix no more than two such opposite genres at a time, like Tariantino did when he explored the comedy of violence in PULP FICTION. Or the mixing of horror and staunch documentary as in BLAIR WITCH. As it stands, NEROVILLE is like watching the remains of five different cult DVD’s that somehow got fused, cobbled, melted together with a blowtorch and yet still left somehow playable, just not quite watchable.
| Yucko/Neato Factor: The only thing worse than medically realistic depictions of baby eating to show insane cultist horror, is the depiction of unrealistic baby eating just because someone thinks it is funny. Humor and Horror meets infanticide? You lose on both counts NECROVILLE. |
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| Production Values: I’ve seen meaner, scarier zombies working at the DMV. |
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| Realism: The “gunshot” is computer rendered. I say “gunshot” because it is the exact same “gunshot“, as in singular, used multiple times over different monster’s bodies. This movie is so cheap they can’t even afford imaginary ammo. |
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| Value for Price: $17.99. For double this you could probably film the sequel. Two short films included. LEGEND OF AERREUS KANE a silent, black and white Stephen King, Dark Tower/Gunslinger knockoff, and CUM-UPPANCE a film about a chronic masturbator (I would have actually added a finger if they would have left this last one off). |
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| Plot: This film had more sinister plots than a WILD THINGS movie. Pity they belonged in different films. |
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