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Dante Tomaselli
A director that likes to deliver horror on the wings of nightmarish hallucinations and strange Lynchian elements. He still seems to be developing his craft however, and so far, his movies are too messy to be enjoyed as cohesive wholes. After a couple of bizarre horror movies, he moved towards more conventional, albeit highly atmospheric horror. Reviewed until 2016. A step up from Desecration but this is the kind of movie that only makes one appreciate Lynch even more. Another collection of disjointed, creepy horror scenes put together in a way that is supposed to be nightmarish and surreal but only ends up being an incoherent mess. A mesmerist, creepy parents, a daughter, and a group of stoned teenagers escaping from a rehab clinic walk in and out of a meandering story-line from one bizarre or creepy set-piece to another involving ghosts, a goat, possession, zombies, vampires and a kitchen sink. There is no payoff, nothing makes sense or comes together, the movie doesn't flow properly to be a nightmare, and it isn't coherent enough to be scary or interesting. But there is interesting potential and some creepy scenes. An extremely disjointed movie about a teenager whose mysterious, seemingly demonic mother died in mysterious circumstances. When he accidentally kills a nun with a toy airplane, this sets off a series of surreal and horrific events such as flying scissors, Freudian nightmare sequences, zombie nuns, mysterious puzzle pieces, fatal balloons, and a dozen other bizarre scenes that just get boring after a while due to lack of coherency or flow. It's not even put together in a way that would make it nightmarish. Tomaselli goes mainstream, delivering a strange, messy blend of genres and horror icons. There's the backwoods family of Chainsaw Massacre psychotics with a love for hammers to the head, pill-popping and butchering, an unseen Jersey Devil flying monster, a mysterious, evil cabin in the woods a la Evil Dead, cult-worshippers that seem to come and go, and other random horrors. But the plot never does anything, the acting ranges from poor to acceptable, and this is disappointingly cliched and ordinary for Tomaselli. |
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