Daemonium: Soldier of the Underworld (2015) 2h

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! If there's one thing I love it's over the top Japanese horror.  It's strange then that this film comes to us from Argentina because if you switched out the Spanish for Japanese then I would have assumed this was 100% Japan A-Number-One!  Most of my notes for this movie start with "HOLY FUCK" or "OH SHIT" and then end in exclamation points, so let's get into it.

Daemonium: Soldier of the Underworld is a mix of the supernatural and modern-apocalyptic cyberpunk.  That's a lot to take in, but trust me, that's the only way I can describe it.  A wizard is hired by some military operation to summon a demon in order to make a trade for power.  The wizard does it but the leader of the group chose not to follow the instructions he was given.  This leads to the demon (looking like a mix between Mumra and the offspring of Darth Maul and a sand person) killing almost everyone, but making a deal with one survivor named Razor.  Razor becomes a powerful man but has four bodyguards created in order to protect him from the return of the Demon to collect Razor's life.  The wizard is being hunted, Razor is a military tyrant, and demons are controlled by humans with sick shit like gatling guns for arms.

This movie has everything!  Great make-up so that each of the demons on screen is different, katana fights, Japanese rope bondage, school girl outfits, and a final fight straight out of a manga with rad dive kicks and Ora! Ora! Ora! punches!  The costuming varies from Shadowrun to Colonial America and everything in between.  I've never had two hours fly by as fast as they did with this film and I would've wasted another hour taking everything this film had to give.

The plot is a bit of a loose thread.  It could easily unravel the whole thing but luckily no one pulls on it so we still get a cohesive story.  Besides, when you're watching people explode and sick fight scenes then it doesn't matter!

 I give Daemonium: Soldier of the Underworld 5 Gendo Ikari's out of 5:

White Coffin (a.k.a. Ataud Blanco: El Juego Diabólico) (2016) 1h 15m

You should be familiar with the analogy of something having layers like an onion.  While it makes sense, I've never spent time peeling an onion for anything.  I don't think that I know anyone that has actually been cooking and thought "I need to peel this onion to use it."  With this film though, I finally had a real understanding of what it means to have layers skinned away to reveal the new.

White Coffin takes us on an insane adventure.  Virginia's daughter is kidnapped (after she has already kind of kidnapped her own daughter) by some sort of strange cult.  While in chase with the initial kidnapper our heroine is run off the road by an ambulance and killed in a car crash.  Her body is resurrected from her coffin and thus begins a twisted game of riddles, a white coffin, and multiple women attempting to save their children from this murder cult.

When I read the description of this film I wasn't too into it.  The moment Virginia is resurrected then I was ready for whatever.  This movie had so much going on, but it paced itself well and each reveal became more intense until the finale.   Then the ending became a series of madness upon madness.  I loved this film.  It's one of those movies that I will pull out when I want to have rad discussions with friends after it's done.

I give White Coffin 4 cult members out of 5:

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Hypersomnia (a.k.a. Hipersomnia) (2016) 1h 30m

I was going to start this by saying "I'm not a fan of films with human trafficking," but then I don't really think any sane person is a fan of films with human trafficking in the plot.  Although, people really like CSI:SVU and that show was nothing but terrible crimes happening to people.  I've seen some crazy shit on that show.

With all of that in mind, let's move on to Hypersomnia.  An Argentinian film that reminded me a lot of Black Swan, just without the whole dancer thing.  Our protagonist is an actress that begins to have issues with feeling as if she's slipping between two lives.  There is her regular life, and then there is the life of a woman being held and sex trafficked by some members of a criminal group.  A client, known only as The Gardener, is apparently an enforcer as well as a torturous asshole.  We do get a glimpse of him wearing a mask and apron.  The mask reminds me of a mix of Jason's potato sack mask, Scarecrow from Batman the Animated Series, and Decker's mask from Nightbreed.

For the most part we're left trying to guess which is the real world and which is a dream state, or are both real?  Spoilers: They're both real and she has a twin that she sometimes jumps into.  After putting the pieces together she tracks down the warehouse building where this shit is going down and she and her boyfriend attempt to liberate the girls.  The girls had a plan of their own and enact it at this time and begin to wreck shit.  The Gardener ends up being the one person they thought was their friend the whole time that just happens to have some form of multiple personality disorder.  They escape with only the loss of the actress' boyfriend who dies by The Gardener's hands.

Honestly, this film didn't keep my interest.  The use of The Gardener seemed like an unnecessary foil to the actual twins.  The jumping back and forth was done in a manner that felt a bit too chaotic in the editing.  This lack of smooth transitions really take away from any flow this movie could have acquired.  Also, the actress went through crazy conditions to do a play that seemed like it was going to be shit.

I want to give this a 0, but I'm going to give Hypersomnia 1 set of Siamese twins out of 5.  Just because the acting in it was pretty good:

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Resurrección (Resurrection) (2015) 1h 42m

Argentina... where the hell did you come from with this film?  Damn!  Resurrection (or, it's original title, Resurrección, which I'm not typing over and over because of ASCII laziness) was not what I was expecting to get into but I'm glad I did.

Resurrection revolves around a priest in the 1800's that is traveling to Buenos Aires to help victims of a plague.  His journey passes by his brother's home and he visits, only to find the wife has locked herself and her daughter in the chapel and the brother is sick with the plague.  After kicking a weird healer out of the home, the priest becomes infected while giving his brother his last rites.  From there we don't know what is real, a dream, or supernatural in regards to the daughter begging to escape as the others want to kill her.

I'm a sucker for religious imagery and Resurrection has that in spades.  There exists the obvious such as stigmata wounds, or crucifixion poses, but it goes much deeper than that.  There tends to be a lot based around the "father," in the literal sense.  Fathers and grandfathers are brought up a few times and their actions and consequences of doing what's good for the family.  There is also the sense of god giving man free will and standing back while the devil tempts them.  Faith becomes a common thread too as it is tested in relation to faith in god, man, science, etc.  Finally, my favorite done here is a moment reminiscent of "Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me..." the night prior to Christ's crucifixion.

Damn catholic upbringing...

The film looks great, the subtitles are actually good, and there's a scene with a woman that gets set on fire and then shot that was cool.  She was trying to kill the priest so it's not as if she's some innocent person.  Also, chickens don't give a fuck about any plague.  They are the fucking supermen of this film as they will just random be downstairs doing chicken stuff.  Bring on Resurrection 2: The Cluckening of Christ!

I give Resurrection 4 Holy Chicken images (by pjusis on DeviantArt) out of 5:

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Day 5: Sendero (Path) (2015) 1h 25m

You know, I was really excited to get back into doing this cut.  The holiday was over, I got my shit sorted, so I turned to Netflix in hopes that it would just feel the motivation and child-like energy I was ready to put back into this blog.  Then it gave me Sendero.  A film that moved slow and tried sooooooo hard to be edgy that all I could do was fart on the couch and count the minutes until I could play video games.

Sendero is set in Argentina and exists in some sort of time warp where I can't tell if it is the 80's or if it's modern times and this section of Argentina is so far behind that 80's style only just arrived.  We meet a group of 20-somethings getting together for a road trip.  For all horror films, this plot is fucking dead!

The group eventually encounter a woman sitting in the road, bleeding from multiple wounds.  Another vehicle shows up and the two guys inside get out and wreck our co-ed New Kids tribute act.  From here we meet the "family" of the two guys and some sort of mother-ish figure.  I'm not really sure what she is because she seems close to the same age, if not younger, and just dressed older.  This is where the ultimate fuckery begins.

We're treated to some confusing dialog, unnatural and excessive props (such as a web of chains keeping a guy chained to what I assume was a free standing window frame), and hyper-aggressive sexual displays.  It's like they saw an Eli Roth film and thought "we can do that," and then got drunk while coming up with ideas of what's edgy.

Here's a great example.  The guy chained the window is getting checked on by one of the two "family" guys.  The family guy eventually whips his dick out and starts jerking it in front of the chained man.  The other family guy, comes in and makes a scene about how the prisoners "aren't ours" and to never do that again, but then proceeds to bend the first guy over a chair and butt fuck him in front of the chained guy.

It's such a "man, this is fucked up, but let's make it more fucked up!!!" scene.  It was things like this that made me roll my eyes.  Add the fact that the subtitles were 1-2 lines behind what was being said onscreen made this film a goddamn knife to my eyes!  I rolled my eyes right into a knife, then rolled knives around my orbital cavities!

I give Sendero 0 Argentinian flag out of 5... but also a million couch farts:

Day 2: Necrophobia (Necrofobia) (2014) 1h 15m

 
This movie wasn't really horror in a new dimension.  It's more of a horror/thriller in a dimension of things I've seen done before, just in Spanish! Think Fight Club, but instead of fighting it's a man having a nervous breakdown... AND MURDER! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Our guy, Dante, found his brother dead of an overdose.  From there he spirals into this odd mixture of time anomalies and dealing with a man in a black coat and hat he thinks is his dead brother.  During the course of this film Dante's (separated) wife is murdered and this sets the deaths in motion.  Dante runs around like an ass and eventually has a real confrontation with the man in black.  It's actually a part of him buried inside (not surprised) and the film pretty much starts over with him in the know.

This film isn't really worth watching.  It wasn't bad.  It just wasn't that interesting.  I can't even make jokes because this shit was just bland.  Fuckin' mayo on white bread boring.

I give Necrophobia 0 pairs of Guy Fieri looking scissors out of 5: