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"Catacombs" DVD
Another stinker from
the producers of Saw, folks...let's wade right into this sub-sewer
and see what we've got.
Basically, a young
woman goes to Paris for the first time and winds up at a party
in the Catacombs, a labyrinthine mass of burial chambers and assorted
morbid French inscriptions. After she becomes separated from the
rest of the party, she finds herself believing a horror story
told earlier about a goat-masked monster of a man who kills people
in a grotesque and horrifying fashion.
There are so many things
wrong with Catacombs, even from the earliest beginning, that it's
very, very hard to like it. The Twisted Pictures apparent philosophy
of "casual brutality for casual brutality's sake" is
well in place and in full swing even from the first five minutes.
And worse yet, when
it's not being gratuitously graphic it's being unsettlingly pedantic.
People drink ABSINTHE, for crying out loud. Who drinks fucking
ABSINTHE any more? Yeah, sure, it was all the rage back when Poe
was still writing but damn, this is just ridiculous. Discussions
of philosophy will also abound, and they're wildly out of place.
Oh, and the absolutely
godawful cinematography--with all the jump cuts and non-sequiturs
and constant blood-spraying ridiculousness that seem to be more
and more the hallmarks of Twisted Pictures--is also back in full
display. Frequently, the movie will be lit by flashing lights
so intense you'll think Catacombs is trying to be a replacement
for the Litton Light Test.
Before the first third
of the movie is over you'll be both revolted AND bored. Either
by itself is bad enough--both at once is downright unthinkable.
The second third, sadly, will not get much better. Though there
will be plenty of blood and screaming and running around in corridors
that all look vaguely similar, this won't translate into much
fun for the viewers.
The ending is too much
of a Saw knockoff to believe without seeing it. The sheer precision
of it is just astonishing. If they ripped it off any harder someone
would say "Game over" before the credits rolled. It's
that bad.
The special features
include a making-of featurette, commentaries, English and Spanish
subtitles, audio options, and trailers for "The Eye",
"Saw IV", "Wristcutters: A Love Story", "Killer
Pad", "Born Killers", "Boy Eats Girl",
and a commercial for Fearnet.com. Which, parenthetically, is one
of the scariest things on the disk. It's a pretty well-made commercial--chances
are you've seen it. It's the one with the little girl with the
screwed-up face in the apartment where things go flying around.
All in all, this was
a pretty lousy foray from the guys who brought you Saw, and if
this is the kind of crap they're churning out these days then
they can count me out of any future forays.
Catacombs
*
DVD
Directed
by Tomm Coker, David Elliot
Written
by Tomm Coker, David Elliot
Starring
Shannyn Sossamon, Alecia Moore,
Produced
by Gregg Hoffman, Oren Koules, Mark Burg
90
mins
NR
2008
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