American studio Full Moon in the 90s was one of the first to try to shoot their paintings in Romania. Especially successful was the franchise “Subspecies”, where the theme of vampires was decorated with a unique folk flavor. On a par with other “midnight” films, including the one in question, but there is no close reference to the country, except for the unusual facades of buildings located in a certain fictional gloomy city that has a passage in the sewer into the very bowels of hell. The story is curious concept, as if according to the work of Dante, immerses the viewer in a hot underground place with endless strings of groaning sinners, with terrible tortures, red gleams from the unquenchable flames in hot caves ... Veronica Iscariot lives here with small horns, wings and a cute ponytail. She belongs to a new generation of demons that dreams of breaking free with the blue sky, because it was the ancient ancestors who once lost faith, being here, why should she puff for them, carrying out the service of constantly torturing endless newly arriving souls? But running away to us, the demon meets no less evil than in hell.
Being a cheap b-movie, immediately focused on videotapes, the tape can not boast of a striking visual range, however, surprisingly, its initial “hell” entourage pleases the recreated entourage, showing a curiously fictitious demonic world where the created horror coexists with the almost human way of life of the people with horns. Our heroine finished her studies, having received knowledge about the torture of sinners, her formidable father works on the conveyor belt with cutting off the tongues of liars, and then rushes home to his wife, which carefully cooks soup from the collected limbs of the disgraced clientele. In fact, they are a devout family that prays to God or asks him on his knees for help. If there are sinners, someone has to torture them – the work that the Creator put them to, and he is in charge, so there is no confrontation with him. Funny thing is, it's a pity that the budget didn't allow us to focus entirely on the underworld, moving the scene quickly among humans. And having visited us, the demon lost her colorful attributes, and together with her, the film itself paled noticeably, turning into a gray horror film about a strange girl, which gradually gets acquainted with the surrounding situation, starting to fight injustice with bloody methods. This is not so much due to the modest funding of the production, let the bloody sham be present, justifying the genre. A bit of black humor helps, which is small, but in something impudent, because having settled with a doctor in love with her, a guest from hell, like any earthly woman, is always happy to boast culinary skills in front of her man. Ours too will cook - fingers close, the truth will not reveal the signature recipe for the choice of meat... belonging to its victims!
Summarizing the overall impression of what you saw, you experience frequent feelings that are overcome after watching the studio tapes of Charles Band of that period. It is difficult to call the film successful because of the plot naivety, weak atmosphere and cheapness, where a lot is given to not the most famously twisted dialogues. At the same time, taking into account the orientation of the horror “straight-on-video” with an amusing plot about not a bad and not a good demo that ran to us from the hellish routine, meeting evil and good people, you refrain from recommending to a wide audience, but advise all collectors of specific creations of “Full Moon” to pay attention to this simple horror story.
6 out of 10