In front of us are 4 novels, in the spirit of the series interspersed with an intermediate plot, where someone watches a collection of terrible records with creepy content.
Holy Hell (Intermediate Story)
This time, the framework narrative is represented by an operational filming of a special forces detachment conducting a raid on an abandoned warehouse, where many corpses are found, a traditional stock of terrible videos and various devils.
As in all previous parts – very bad, fragmentary, uninteresting. Without these pieces, it would have been better. But without the signature chip of the series, apparently, nowhere.
Storm Drain
The journalist of the news channel together with her cameraman trying to shoot a story about a mysterious man-rat, allegedly living in the city sewer.
Unexpectedly, this simple short manages to almost immediately immerse you in a dense atmosphere and make you look closely at the footage of the sewer gloom in anticipation of something sinister. Obviously, it is about directing, camera work and various barely noticeable trifles. The authors manage to competently play on this nerve almost to the very end, where they throw a little farce and thrash. As for me, it would be better to maintain the set tone, but in the end - not bad.
The Empty Wake
The second short tells about a funeral home worker forced to spend the night in unity with the coffin of a man who died in a terrible accident.
Extremely hackneyed concept (inspired by the Soviet Vii, which is interesting) and minimal events - it seems all the input for a weak novel. But this episode takes exactly the same as the previous one, only perhaps even more so. Competent directing and camera work with all these switches between manual shooting and several planes of stationary cameras add realism and make you get used to the skin of the heroine, left late at night alone with a corpse, floundering lights and thunderstorm sounds outside. Cozy uncomfortable, for which I personally love many representatives of the genre. The ending is equally battered, recalling not only a number of films, but also a handful of games. But it's hard to take as a minus what works well. As a result, a small, integral, atmospheric novel, quite adorning the film.
The Subject
The third episode tells the story of a mad scientist who experiments on the reunification of the human body with robotic mechanisms.
Diamond of this collection. The concept, although interesting, is also not to say that it causes a sense of novelty. However, similar short films usually focus on drama, philosophy, provoking existential fear in the viewer. Here from this there are only rough strokes, and the narrative instantly turns into thrash action (which is expected from the author of Safe Haven from the second part). And this makes the episode an order of magnitude more original. Thanks to a considerable number of extras, the illusion of the scale of what is happening is created, and surprisingly, the authors managed to write down the characters of a couple of characters passing through the entire plot in just a couple of dialogues. Also, scale points add competent work with the environment and the use of its verticality. Worked and designers, creators of props and others responsible for the visual appearance of bizarre creations of mad genius. In general, the climax of this film and the best of the novels.
Terror
The latest story tells about a group of American redneck extremists (actual in the form of anti-republican propaganda?), who plan to use to restore their order in the country not only the power of guns, but also the forces of a completely different weapon that has otherworldly origin.
A unique story with a number of excellent concepts. The first half of the novel is intriguing and looks with great interest. However, proper exhaust in the end can not be obtained. It all comes down to banalism, cheap staging and even cheaper props / makeup (compare with at least the second novel – sky and earth). And strong directing or camera work, able to pull it out with the atmosphere and some delights, as it was in the first two novels, was not enough. This is the moment of maximum proximity in terms of performance to the first part. But due to the general concept, it is still impossible to call the episode directly bad.
General impression
It's time to stop avoiding the elephant in the china shop and touch on the subject of the picture. Thanks to the chosen theme of the nineties, the name of the series is finally fully justified. The film looks like a tired VHS record, not a cheap digital camera, which immediately adds a handful of extra glasses to the atmosphere. Moreover, such a pleasant retro image was achieved not only by post-processing digital recording, but also by various manipulations with analog equipment.
What do we have compared to the previous parts? Here I risk to touch someone's feelings, because fans of this series, oddly enough. But to me, the first part is absolutely cheap in all respects short films at the level of amateur student crafts. Ideality, one-button staging, ridiculous quality of scenery and makeup. The concept of mocumentari is not an excuse here, nor is flirting with exploitative themes. As they say, thrash and garbage are not the same thing. It is good that the 4th part was made including the authors of the most successful (from the past) second part. The above was already interspersed with something more interesting and qualitative. But there was still enough low ground. The third part took the second scale and the level of swing (even the budget as if added), but returned to the stupidity and amateur level of performance of the first.
And now the 4th part has made a qualitative leap on all fronts and is definitely a representative of cinema from a completely different league. The one where there are already quite strong author horrors. Well, if you close your eyes to the clown with special forces... And it's pretty clear how this was achieved. Unlike the previous parts, this time everything was shot relatively consistently and the filming teams largely overlapped. Thanks to this, the collection has a certain integrity and “strongness”, a decent minimum level of staging has been maintained.
But the effect of a priori perception of the subsequent parts is worse than the previous ones, does not allow the above qualitative difference to manifest itself in estimates on aggregators, where the 4th part receives fairly average scores for the series. Therefore, you should not focus on them when choosing a picture for viewing.
As a result, a strong almanac, which can be safely watched by those who did not get along with the previous parts. And an idiotic intermediate bit of the plot ... you can rewind.
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