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Andrew Copp
Indie, underground film-maker with potential, working hard at promoting his pocket-change-budget horror movies and who seems to have shifted from experimental underground movies to much less interesting but somewhat thoughtful exploitation. A recurring theme in his movies is trauma and its repercussions, both psychological and violent, resulting in a unique mix of serious dark drama and exploitative gory horror with nudity. This clashing mix, along with the overly amateurish feel of his movies, acting and gore effects are holding his movies back. His first and most well known feature Mutilation Man showed some inspiration and highly surreal atmosphere. Died in 2013. Experimental low-budget feature by Andrew Copp exploring the effect of the past and traumas on a psyche through memory vignettes, symbols and surrealism. While strange doctors poke around inside a man's brain, we unravel key events and memories from his past. A rape, violence, a revenge killing. Traumas and guilt pass on from the victim to friends, anger causes more violence, and so on. Crude symbolism mixes with amateurish but sometimes effective artsiness, offering scenes such as a man who feels so guilty over his gender due to his girlfriend getting raped that he nails and chops his disease-ridden penis. Ghosts of the past and various angels or demons haunt him and his relationships as he seeks redemption, and Copp attempts to emulate Cronenberg's fleshy psychological horrors as masks, scars, and traumas all take on gory forms. Interesting at times, a feeling of amateurish copycat work for the rest. A man with a very dark and brutal past roams a post-disaster planet where people cannibalize each other, performing acts of gory self-mutilation to cheering crowds and burying himself in the earth at night. Using flashbacks we learn of his guilt over a violent past and his torn and suffering mind. The cinematography and sound are the stars here, using creative editing, very gritty and grainy film-stock, minimal dialog and a very dark aural atmosphere, sometimes reminiscent of Begotten. Nightmares haunt him with symbolic and twisted visions of demons, angels and rebirth, while he searches for redemption. Has great acting and is fascinating at first, but then it becomes somewhat repetitive and empty. After treating a rape victim, a medical student with a pregnant wife is haunted by repressed memories of a rape he witnessed as a teenager. He decides to take revenge on the perpetrators to cover for the guilt of not helping her. He unleashes all of his anger on the repulsively deviant, violent, and vicious rapists, uncovering a sadistic streak in himself as he tortures and mutilates their flesh, until the twist ending. This is one of those movies that are conceptually good on paper, but the execution is so amateurish that it almost never builds compelling energy or fulfills its dark potential. The acting is the worst offender, with poor and unconvincing protagonists (although some of the supporting actors are scary and good). There are some ridiculously sloppy moments, such as the laughably calm reactions of victims, and the gore and special effects range from silly home-made blood-spurting knives, to mediocre disemboweling and skinning. Inspired by 70s war-veteran exploitation, this low-budget movie tackles the abuse of war veterans, their hawkish orders, and the lack of treatment for their resulting mental disorders. A shell-shocked special-ops soldier is convinced by his psychotic brother that America is full of anti-American dissidents and that his mission is not over. So he runs around fighting headaches and killing anyone that steps out of line, until he meets another ex-soldier, a traumatized female seeking relief from her nightmares. This is mostly psychological drama with a couple of cheap over-the-top gore scenes and some interesting characters and issues, but once again the lack of energy and convincing acting completely undermine the movie, like watching a horror movie on downers. |
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