Pandemic (2009)

Directed by: Jason Connery

Writer: Aaron Pope

 

This movie begins with a man riding a horse and then dying a horrible virus-like death. He didn't even live enough to see out the opening credits, which I imagine was very disappointing to him. Soon after that, a young veterinarian Sydney visits a farmer named Spenser, whose filly is suffering a horrible agony, as if something is eating her skin. Spenser mercifully kills her, but that's not nearly the end of it. Soon other similar deaths start to occur all around the small county of Diablo, New Mexico. It's not long before military arrives and quarantines everything, which is the moment you know crap hit the fan. But the truth is even more terrifying than it looks (insert The Twilight Zone melody).

 

First of all, what really sucked about this movie is that it's actually not horror, but a thriller. The infected people simply die, without turning into crazy bloodthirsty zombie-like creatures. The same goes for animals. Imagine if the authors were brave enough to turn this into a movie about zombie horses! One can only dream...

 

Anyway, what happens next is not a large scale apocalyptic pandemic scenario (despite the movie's title), but a rather low key story about two main characters trying to get to the bottom of the things. Was everything just an accident or is the truth even more terrifying? (insert The Twilight Zone theme again) Sydney is calm and rational, while Spenser is an (apparently) crazy conspiracy theorist who blames the Government for everything. Sydney doesn't take him seriously at the beginning, but when the military forces blatantly attack them on the road in the night, she has to at least consider his side of the story. The truth is of course more horrifying than any of us could have imagined.

 

If you visit the IMDb page for this movie, you will see a low grade and a flood of bad reviews, criticising the story, the direction and pretty much everything else. Now, you can't really argue much against it, this is certainly far from the best movie ever made, but I found it a decent time waster. The reason is probably that I'm a sucker for the conspiracy theories and I found the two leads not too disgusting. I also liked the ending, where (spoiler) it turns out that the truth was even more terrifying than a Japanese long-haired ghost (end of spoiler), and for that I even forgave the lack of zombies, or horror in general. But, the problem for the filmmakers is that not everyone is as tolerant as I am, so I think the low grade is probably because the movie didn't feature any zombie horses.

Doghouse (2009)

Directed by: Jake West

Writer: Dan Schaffer

Danny Dyer, Noel Clarke and the rest of the team go to a remote village to have fun and drink their asses off, only to find the place almost completely deserted. Almost is the key word here, as they'll soon discover that while all the men are dead, the women are still there, albeit transformed into some kind of bloodthirsty zombie-like creatures.

 

Don't have to say much about this one, really. Despite the great cast and a very promising premise, the screenplay is seriously lacking in humor and memorable moments. One would expect a lot more politically incorrect jokes and crazy situations (like in Feast series). As it is, this one plays it rather safe from the beginning to the end, which makes for a pleasant watch (especially with a right group of male friends), but it's hardly awe-inspiring or memorable.

In 3 Tagen bist du tot 2 (2009)

Directed by: Andreas Prochaska

Writers: Agnes Pluch, Andreas Prochaska

In 3 Tagen bist du tot was a completely generic Austrian slasher without a single trace of innovation over the already infinitely repeated formula. I was pretty confused when I heard about the sequel, wondering what could they possibly do to make it even less original than the first film (since, as we know, that's what sequels are for). For better or for worse, Andreas Prochaska decided to make a completely different film. While the first part was about a bunch of teenagers getting offed one by one by a mysterious killer, this one puts one single character in a situation heavily inspired by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and similar films.

 

It's one year after the events of the first film and Nina, the heroine, tries to put the traumatic death of all her friends behind and lead a normal life. However, she receives a mysterious call for help from Mona (the only other survivor, it's the one that impaled herself in the first film, unfortunately without success). She promptly returns to her hometown and finds that Mona and her father have left home, which is now inhabited by some Chinese people. Continuing with her quest, Nina will find herself in an isolated hotel run by a family of weirdos and will have to use all her skills to survive.

 

The first part of the film plays like a pretty nice mystery, with director Andreas Prochaska taking things slowly and using the wonderful Austrian winter landscape to create some memorable shots and accentuate the lead character's isolation and crap like that. However, while this is by no means bad, whoever watched the first film will want to see some killings and it takes almost 70 minutes for the first person to bite the dust. Also, even outside of the subjective perspective of a bloodthirsty slasher fan, the first hour definitely contains some overlong scenes which serve no purpose.

 

Fortunately, things get better. Immediately after the breaking of the ice, people start dying left and right and killings are really gruesome and at times very explicit (shows that Prochaska has learned quite a few things between the two films). Heads are beaten to a pulp, eyes are gouged out and don't even get me started about male reproductive organs (!). Alas, the fun part ends all too soon.

 

While by no means a masterpiece, this is a satisfying movie which even made me think it would be cool if Andreas Prochaska made another horror. The things that lower the overall grade are the aforementioned first half, which is too slow, a scene of full frontal male nudity and a scene where Nina takes a hot bath - with her clothes on! Oh yeah, there's also this cop from the first part. He doesn't run over anyone here, but he's involved in the most unconvincing scene in the film - without getting into too much detail, his car is supposed to be stuck in the snow and it doesn't look bloody stuck at all.

Feast III: The Happy Finish (2009)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers:  Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

The third part of the best trilogy in the world picks up right where the previous one left off. The survivors from the roof finally manage to get into the jail and they meet another charismatic hero who promptly takes the lead. Their troubles are far from over, however. However strong the monsters, there's always a way to hurt them. But there's no defense from two insane and sadistic screenwriters who take every single opportunity to bring pain and misery to the group.

 

Feast III again brings the spirit of the second part, meaning - more humor and even more gruesome deaths than in the first part, but far less star power and a weaker overall look, especially when it comes to monsters. Of course, when you are enjoying the heck out of it with your friends, you'll hardly pay attention to it.

 

This part brings some more "heroes", most prominently a young martial artist called Jean-Claude Seagal (I kid you not) who spends most of his screen time with the Bartender, which doesn't have a good effect on his health. Their scenes are hilarious, particularly the now legendary Rambo III scene. Other characters also bring their share of fun, but I won't describe any of it lest I spoil it for you. If you liked Feast 2, there's absolutely no way you won't like this one. To freshen things up a bit, apart from the monsters we loved in the first two parts, the survivors also run into some kind of zombies.

 

I have only two small objections here. First, the movie is too short. Barely over an hour for something this good, that's simply unacceptable. Second, a large part of the movie takes place in the sewers and it's very claustrophobic and poorly lit, so most of the time you have no idea what's going on, which takes all the fun out of people dying. Okay, it's not that bad, you get used to it quickly, but still the second part was much brighter and cleaner (in terms of visibility, not the content).

 

We finish the story of this amazing series with one of my favorite quotes ever:

"You only need legs to kick ass, baby boy!"

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Directed by: Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Yoshihiro Nishimura

Writers: Shungicu Ushida (manga), Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Yoshihiro Nishimura has been one of my favorite directors ever since I saw the wonderful Tokyo Gore Police. I definitely prefer him to his colleague Noboru Iguchi, who (with the exception of The Machine Girl, which I loved) reaches for vulgar toilet humor too often, and besides, in my opinion, he harbours a bit unhealthy obsession with human ass.

 

Strictly speaking, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is primarily a Naoyuki Tomomatsu movie, but Nishimura is credited as a co-director and he also did the special effects, so he had a huge influence on the visual side of the movie, if not for the story. Speaking of Tomomatsu, his name wasn't familiar to me before, but after this movie I'll give him a chance, though titles like Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead and Eating Schoolgirls don't promise something that would be my cup of tea.

 

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is a successful J-sploitation splatterfest, which works simply because it's so damn entertaining. If you've seen any of Nishimura's films, you'll promptly find yourself on familiar ground when some cheerful pop music starts to play while fountains of blood flow and severed body parts fly around in slow-motion.

 

Basically, it's a story of a high-school love triangle, where a poor young boy called Jyugon is sandwiched between Keiko, the vice principal's daughter and (I guess) the most popular girl at school, and Monami, an extremely cute newcomer with mysterious background, with both of them wanting him to be their boyfriend forever. So, why the hell did I just call him "poor"? Well, for one, Monami is a vampire and wants to turn him into one, and Keiko is a bitch, at least at the beginning. Then she dies, is revived by her father (who, in his free time, is an insane Dr. Frankenstein wannabe) and turned into a horrifying cut-and-paste monster made of body parts stolen from different people. And she's still a bitch! Jyugon chooses the lesser of two evils, so he and Monami are forced to fight the disturbingly enhanced Keiko and her mad father throughout the rest of the movie.

 

As with other similar films, the plot is just there to serve as an excuse (heh, like we would need one) for hilarious over-the-top violence, body parts abuse and colourful characters which never get boring. To list everything would be impossible (not to mention undesirable), but some of the highlights are a wrist cut competition, a club of black wannabe girls (this alone in America would probably put the author in jail for a long time due to racism), vice principal who dresses like a witch doctor, inventive body part combinations (a severed arm used as a propeller, eyeballs instead of nipples, to mention just a few trivial examples) and of course endless mutilations whose crowd pleasing potential is immense.

 

It's recommended to see this in the company of your male friends, especially if you can pair it with a similar but longer film, like Nishimura's Helldriver. You can also play it to your girlfriend if you want to get dumped quickly. Whatever you do, don't miss it.

Ghost Machine (2009)

Directed by: Chris Hartwill

Writers: Sven Hughes, Malachi Smyth, Sven Hughes (original story)

To tell you the truth, my hearing isn't what it used to be and I watched this movie late at night, so I wasn't able to turn the volume up as much as it was required. The point I'm getting to is - I heard almost nothing of what the characters were saying at the beginning, so I had only a vague idea of who they were and where the story took place. Sure, they are some military types and it's some kind of abandoned prison, I gathered that much, but I missed the finer details.

 

I guess it wasn't that important anyway. The point is - we have some people in some abandoned prison (presumably) and they set up a rather cool setup for a military virtual reality simulation. Basically, in the simulator they run through the same rooms and corridors that exist in the real life, with the difference that in the simulation they have full military equipment, including weapons of choice. Neat!

 

The slight problem is - a scary female ghost has infiltrated the simulation and is killing people right and left. And it has that irritating super power ripped off from Freddy Kruger that anyone who dies in the simulation dies for real. It also seems to have a power to modify the scenery, erase a staircase here, add a wall there and similar. It seems that sometimes being a ghost rocks.

 

Fortunately, it's not one of those scary long-haired Japanese ghosts, otherwise I would've promptly stop watching. The ghost is well done and a bit scary, but it doesn't stare at you through the screen and the way it eliminates people is anything but ghostly - it uses chains and brings devastating damage to their physical bodies.

 

For what it is, Ghost Machine is a finely made film that keeps interest throughout, but there's hardly anything spectacular in it. For this kind of movie, to elevate above the average status, one ghost is not enough. Had the budget allowed it, they could have made a full scale ghost vs. military war, where the ghosts would use a Hellraiser-like arsenal of chains, hooks and similar stuff, while the army would respond with their ultrafancy futuristic weapons like plasma guns, BFG 9000, railguns et cetera. Oh well, maybe in the sequel... Overall, Ghost Machine is far from a must-see, but it's worth checking it out for its rather original idea.

Exam (2009)

Directed by: Stuart Hazeldine

Writers: Simon Garrity (story), Stuart Hazeldine (story and screenplay)

Well, if you read the title and hoped for a horror story where an university exam quickly turns into a total carnage when a professor starts murdering the students who cheat in horribly nasty ways, you'll be disappointed to discover that's actually just a clever mystery movie that features less than 20 dead bodies. Oh, well...

 

Exam actually doesn't have anything to do with universities - it's about a job interview for an extremely powerful company. Eight candidates are put in a room and given a pencil and a piece of paper each. The invigilator, played by Colin Salmon, tells them that there's only one question and only one answer and he gives them the simple instructions: 1) Whoever damages their paper will be disqualified, 2) Whoever tries to contact him or the guard will be disqualified, and 3) Whoever leaves the room will be disqualified. I paraphrased a bit, but those are the general guidelines. However, for the candidates it is extremely important to remember (and follow) the exact way the invigilator phrased the rules.

 

The exam starts, the invigilator sets the timer to 80 minutes and leaves the room (but will reappear quite a few times through flashbacks) and the people are left alone with their papers and the guard who stands quietly by the door. Then they turn their papers to see what the question is, only to find out they are completely blank. And here's where the fun begins. It's not a simple matter of answering the question, they have to find the question first.

 

One woman starts to write something like a motivation letter and is promptly thrown out by the guard (a note for the more bloodthirsty readers: she's not decapitated, shot, or even murdered at all, just escorted out of the room). This is when the other candidates realize they have to pay extremely close attention to the invigilator's instructions. Their first discovery is that anything that's not explicitly forbidden is allowed - so they can freely talk to each other. At first they think that the infamous question must be hidden somewhere on their papers, so they start to analyse the surroundings and try to find a way to get the bloody thing to appear. If you've ever played a point and click adventure, you're on a familiar ground.

 

The strength of this movie lies not only in what its director/writer Stuart Hazeldine does, but also in what he avoids. With a setup like this, there's a number of clichés the movie could have fallen into. For example - a there-can-be-only-one type of contest where the characters discover that only one of them will win and all others have to die for some reason. Or that they all are going to die because they share some connection or a dark secret, which is the very reason why they are here in the first place. Or that the mysterious organisation is really evil and they do some weird experiments on humans or something like that. Instead, (at least for the most part) there's not a question of anyone dying - it's just about solving a mystery of the missing question and getting a job.

 

You might think this takes out a huge amount of suspense, but you would be wrong. First of all, the mystery itself is very interesting. It keeps you guessing from the first scene to the last and it packs quite a few nice surprises when our heroes come up with progressively more imaginative potential solutions, only to find them completely useless as the question stubbornly refuses to appear. So, even if human lives weren't at stake at all, we have an enjoyment of a nice little enigma without an obvious solution. However, we find out that for some of the characters getting this job is extremely important. Through some cleverly written dialogues, which give us enough information to understand the character motivation, but avoid unnecessary infodumps, we are informed that some kind of pandemic is happening outside, that many people have died, and that some of the candidates have had close encounters with the virus. The reason why they need the job is closely related to the true nature of the mysterious company, which is slowly revealed as we approach the end of the movie.

 

The story is very well written and, as I've mentioned before, is somewhat reminiscent of the point and click adventure games, where characters have to solve some problem by closely analysing their environment and, if necessary, combining different objects. The great part of its appeal comes from the way the characters are kept in total darkness as to what exactly do they have to do. They try something and it doesn't work. Then they try something else and it also doesn't work. Then another thing, and it doesn't work, too. In the process, some of them are disqualified either by making stupid mistakes, or by being tricked by someone else. Then suddenly they (and we) realize that the movie is almost over and they still haven't found the question. Is there a question at all? How many can be accepted at all? Would they all have passed if they had just sat in their places the entire time and avoided breaking the rules? So by constantly keeping you guessing about the nature of the whole thing, Hazeldine skilfully prevents you from complaining about the body count being lower than in a Yoshihiro Nishimura movie.

 

When it comes to the characters, there aren't many surprises there - there's a usual irritating I'm-so-smarter-than-you-so-I'm-gonna-boss guy who promptly takes the spotlight, along with some predictably tame women, but it will turn out that some of the other people are prepared to do much, much more than it seems at first. A nice touch here, and one that also adds to the detachment of the setting from our regular world, is that the characters avoid using real names and instead invent nicknames for themselves. When the nickname moment came, I thought "Of course, now they're gonna screw it all up and instead of using some obvious thing like skin colour, they're gonna go for some politically correct crap!", but I was again pleasantly surprised when that irritating white guy from the beginning of the paragraph immediately named them Black, White, Brown, Brunette, Blonde, etc. One of the ladies complained about this, to which I immediately yelled "Shut up!" at her, and fortunately the other characters ignored her, so the politically incorrect nicknames remained.

 

Obviously, I can't say much about the ending without spoiling it, so here are just a few general remarks: Both the mystery of the question and the point of the entire exam are explained, along with the motives of the recruiting organisation, and I liked the explanation. The nature of the question is not contradicted by anything that happened earlier in the movie, so there's no cheating on the part of the authors. So it's not one of those movies that end with another mystery (like Cube) or an earth shattering plot twist that you'll never forget as long as you live (like Saw), but the conclusion is logical and doesn't ruin the preceding events.

 

The atmosphere has a nice otherworldly quality to it. I have already mentioned the lack of character names (that always works well), but other things also must be mentioned. The soundtrack uses some great ambient music that goes very well with the progressively revealed apocalyptic nature of the whole thing. It never tries to jump in front and grab your attention, but instead does its job of providing a good atmospheric background. Second, the entire movie takes place in a single room. We get a few glimpses of the adjoining hallway, but other than that there's not a single exterior scene. The examination room doesn't have windows (obviously) and even the beginning of the movie, which shows the candidates preparing for the exam, is done entirely in close-ups, so it doesn't show any of the surroundings. It can't be stressed enough how risky this is - if you choose to put an entire movie in a single room and provide the information about the outside world only through dialogue, you can easily end up with a boring piece of crap, unless you are Alfred Hitchcock or Sidney Lumet. The fact that Hazeldine managed to pull this off speaks volumes. I'm glad that the majority of the viewers seem to share my opinion, as Exam has a pretty high IMDb rating. So, Stuart, when's the next movie coming out?

Nine Miles Down (2009)

Directed by: Anthony Waller

Writers: Everett De Roche, Anthony Waller

 

With its pretty high production values, Nine Miles Down was a refreshing change from the crap about which I usually write here. Unfortunately, the story didn't exactly follow, so it all boiled down to a large overall "meh".

 

The entire movie takes place in a remote drilling station somewhere in Sahara, which the security patrolman Duncan McL..., sorry, Adrian Paul, is sent to investigate after the contact with the scientists working there had been lost. As he arrives, he finds the place completely deserted, with some disturbing writings on the walls, signs of struggle and a gratuitous slaughtered jackal in one of the rooms.

 

Obviously, the first thing you want to do when you arrive at a place where something sinister had obviously happened is to spend the night there, so he does, and surprisingly he encounters no demons, ghosts or anything else during the night. However, in the morning he runs into a hot blonde scientist who just jogs around and doesn't seem horribly shaken by the things that happened.

 

Our suspicions immediately arise. Is she evil? Is she the Devil? Is the place itself evil? Is Adrian Paul insane? Why the hell is Waller showing us extreme close-ups of Adrian Paul's ass? How are sad events from Adrian Paul's past related to the horrifying visions he experiences?

 

While I appreciate some of the tension and the mystery surrounding the place and the characters, the movie simply didn't "do it" for me. Generally, when a character torments us too often with his or her visions and flashbacks and whatnot, I get bored rather quickly. Nine Miles Down wasn't boring, but I never cared about any of the characters enough to appreciate the ending or feel any bit moved by it or some crap like that.

 

One of the reasons for me not enjoying this that much might be the high expectations I had from the authors - Everett De Roche wrote some great films like Long Weekend, Razorback and Fortress (which was prevented from being one of the best films ever made only by the weaker direction), though, in all fairness, he did also write crap like Storm Warning, and Anthony Waller directed An American Werewolf in Paris, which most people hate, but for me it was great fun. Of course, this is all highly subjective, and if you read the reviews, you'll see many people enjoyed it more than I did, so... give it a shot.

 

Death Stop Holocaust (2009)

Directed by: Justin Russell

Writer: Justin Russell

Justin Russell's The Sleeper was a somewhat surprisingly interesting retro sorority slasher, one that I found worthy enough to keep an eye out for the director's other offerings. Death Stop Holocaust is his earlier movie and, like The Sleeper, a nostalgia piece that this time attempts to recreate the look and feel of the 1970's grindhouse films. It's almost completely style-over-substance and, while it's very successful in the audio-visual domain, it fails the most basic movie test ever, and that is the ability not to induce boredom.

 

I was extremely happy when I noticed Jenna Fournier in one of the lead roles. Her part in The Sleeper wasn't big, but she was my favourite character in the movie, not to mention that she's the cutest young actress I've seen probably since Liv Tyler in Stealing Beauty. In this movie, she and her friend Lisa Krenisky go to a remote island to have a nice peaceful vacation, which turns into... a nightmare of terror, no less. I wonder how much they pay the person who comes up with such original taglines.

 

Anyway, it doesn't take long for the two girls to fall victims to a gang of brutal maniacs with scary animal masks that start to terrorize them for no apparent reason. To my endless disappointment, Jenna is killed very early and Lisa is left alone to play a cat-and-mouse game with the killers throughout the large chunk of the movie. If there's anything scarier than a silent killer wearing a pig mask, it's the disturbing fact that other people on the island seem to be in liaison with the killers. That and the scary Japanese long-haired ghosts. In fact, I would argue that the Japanese ghosts are even scarier, but that's beside the point.

 

The main problem (which Justin successfully solved in The Sleeper by introducing dozens of characters) is that the attackers are very soon left with a single helpless female victim. Obviously they can't kill her because the movie would be over, so the only thing left for them is to act like a bunch of complete retards and, instead of killing or torturing her, to simply let the girl go for no reason every time they capture her, which is often.

 

With any trace of story hopelessly gone, the movie soon turns into tedious and repetitive exercise for nerves where the only thing happening are Lisa's pointless nightmarish visions that serve no purpose except as another means of attack on the viewer's senses. All this is powered by Lisa's too literal understanding of the "scream queen" phrase. She screams and screams, and then screams again, and she's loud and while I have no objection to the logic of that (in that situation I would have been screaming, too) it's just so damn annoying. Many times I thought "Just off her already and let my ears take some rest!".

 

Even though the movie is brutal in places, it simply lacks the atmosphere and it's hard to feel sympathy for the main character, so I find The Sleeper a much better film. While it sucks for Death Stop Holocaust, it's good for Justin Russell, since it shows obvious improvement. He just needs to do one thing in his following movie and that is to give the lead role to the wonderful Jenna Fournier. It's a sure win.

War Wolves (2009)

Directed by: Michael Worth

 

Writer: Michael Worth

 

 

 

 

 

The best short description of this movie would probably be - an action horror psychological drama about werewolves without werewolves. If you're a fan of werewolves (and who the heck isn't?) it's best to accept straight away that the creatures you're about to see are a completely different thing, it will reduce your suffering significantly. True, you could reduce it even further by watching something else, but what fun is life without pain?

 

The beginning of the movie, which of course sets the tone for everything that follows, is stunningly confusing and is a prime example of how not to direct anything. Some people (soldiers) are playing football (or, rather, that weird game similar to rugby that Americans like to call football even though it's mostly played by hands) somewhere. No idea who they are and where they are. Before we get a chance to even begin to get to know them, they are suddenly on a battlefield somewhere (no idea where) and are having their asses kicked by some bloodthirsty creatures. Of course, we don't see any violence or anything else even remotely interesting. Before we even get a chance to begin to understand what's going on, we are thrown a few months (or years?) forward. It appears that those soldiers are actually not dead, but have been bitten by the not-werewolf creatures and most of them are now turned into not-werewolves themselves. The only one who's still fighting the disease is, conveniently, Michael Worth, the writer/director of this mess. Some hot not-werewolf chicks (one of them his (former?) girlfriend) are coming to get him and make him join the dark side.

 

But that's not all! There's some hope for human kind after all - the pair of mean not-werewolf ass kickers Tim Thomerson and John Saxon are also in the vicinity and they also seek Michael Worth. What follows is an epic battle between good and ev... oh, sorry, I mixed it up with Lord of the Rings for some reason. What follows is a series of completely irrelevant and uninteresting events which leads, I think, to good guys winning or something. In the process, we get to see one of the most idiotic seduction scenes in history. I was going to post it here, but I can't find it on YouTube, so I guess you'll have to watch the movie after all. Tough luck.

 

The worst thing here (I'm assuming we are prepared for horrible script, weak direction, bad acting, etc.) is the way the monsters look. If you've ever seen a decent werewolf movie, you know that when someone's turning into one of them his teeth and nails grow, his ears get pointy, the nose starts to change etc. That there's the hair growth and then a complete change. But the creatures here never progress beyond this initial point. It's just big teeth and nails (and ears). I mean come on! If they had the money to create real werewolves, the movie would have been... well, it still would have been horrible, but at least it would have had werewolves! Give this one a miss.

Technotise: Edit i ja (2009)

Directed by: Aleksa Gajić

Writer: Aleksa Gajić

Wow! A Serbian animated sci-fi movie, now that’s definitely something you don’t see every day! In fact, you never see it! What’s more important – not only is this not crap, it’s actually a great movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

It takes place in Belgrade in the year 2074. Edit M. Stefanović, a young psychology student and the lead character in the story, after failing an important exam, decides to implant in her body a memory chip that is used to improve capabilities, so to speak. Of course, those chips are illegal, but when has that prevented students from cheating, eh? Anyway, the story takes an unexpected turn when Edit sees the actual formula of Life, Universe and Everything, you know, the one that reduces everything to a single equation (the thing Steven Weinberg wrote about in Dreams of a Final Theory). It is explained that when a computer sees that equation, it briefly becomes aware of itself and then immediately shuts down. However, the chip in Edit’s body reacts in a completely different way – it starts to multiply and gains more and more control, threatening her very existence.

Of course, this all is hardly new, I imagine this kind of stuff happens regularly in Japanese anime/manga, but that’s not really important. While maybe not being tremendously original, the story is very well written and serves to keep your interest throughout. The film is based on the graphic novel Technotise, which was illustrated by Aleksa Gajić and written by Darko Grkinić, and it shares its characters, though the story is different. Aleksa Gajić (primarily a great comic book artist, rather than a filmmaker) wrote the screenplay by himself. Why Grkinić wasn’t involved I don’t know, and the “making of” featurette doesn’t give an answer – in any case, he did work on the film, in the animation department, and he also voiced one of the more amusing supporting characters.

The real star of this movie is the animation. It’s really refreshing to see something hand-drawn after all those 3D animation films which I find somewhat soulless. The graphic novel look is carefully recreated, and while there is some 3D animation in there, it all looks like you have a moving comic book in front of you. The 2.5Dishness is provided by the occasional multilevel background scroll, like in some older platform computer games, and there are numerous funny visual references (for example, the modified Yugoslavian police cars from 1980’s) that give the movie a really unique appearance. Unfortunately, if you’re not from these parts, most of these will fly right over your head, but that’s really not that important as it’s not critical to the story in any way. Okay, I’m not very good at words and stuff like that, but trust me on this one – this looks good! To round the audio-visual appearance, there is great electronic music which really fits the atmosphere and is also a great listen on its own (a feature supported on the original DVD).

If we really have to bitch about something, it’s the characters, which are mostly dull and uninteresting, with some being real pain(s) in the ass(es) (I can’t even begin to think how to correctly plural this). Also, with the exception of some supporting characters voiced by some legendary Serbian actors, the voice acting is weak, to say the least. But that’s about it.

What’s really amazing is the fact that this movie was entirely made in a small apartment in Belgrade, by only 15 or so people (led by Aleksa Gajić, who worked pretty much on everything). Shows how talent, dedication and hard work can largely make up for lack of money. Let that be a lesson to all of you youngsters out there!

I think this one is pretty hard to find outside former Yugoslavia. I know there is a (subtitled) English version, but how available it is, I don’t know. If you stumble upon it, be sure to check it out, and in the meantime watch this trailer to give you a taste of it. Over and out!