When Machine and Man Merge, Which EVIL Will Emerge? “Re-Flesh” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 13, 2023

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In a dystopian future, machine and man have merged into an asymmetrical symbiosis where machine is preponderantly present to corrupt man’s benevolent humanity. Such corruption removes compassion at the core level with the use of neurol inhibitors of technological ascendency over mankind in a gruesome, unpleasant fashion. The exhibited process is exampled with a masked nurse pushing a wheelchair bound masked man down a dank and dark hallway and into a reprocessing room where he’s plugged with a cable attached to his arm. From there, the man is fitted with a virtual viewfinder displaying five short reprocessing-to-repair files, transmitted before his eyes to incite organic machinery violence that’ll absorb and eradicate years of human psychological evolution. Slowly through the images and videos of visceral excision does the man morph into an automaton of flesh, blood, and commingled organic cabling and mechanical veins that will render him resolved as biologically re-fleshed.

Japanese splatter punk Body horror inspired “Re-Flesh” becomes “Deep Web XXX” and “Suffering Bible’s” director Davide Pesca’s tribute to the very distinctive denaturalization of the man-machine mix cinematic movement from the unabashed narrative risktakers hailing from land of the rising sun, Japan. Made popular by the likes of auteurs Shinya Tsukamoto and Shozin Fukui and cult favorites like “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” and “Tokyo Gore Police,” “Re-Flesh” adds to the niche palate with an unconfined, Italianized take to ambiguate that blurry line between the soul and the soulless as man comes to terms with a terror-inducing technological takeover. Writer-director Pesca’s underground anthological tale pits the human condition, it’s mortal coil if you will, up against the cold and heartless tech to create coded layers of neova carne, or new flesh. Pesca and fellow coproducer Massimo Bezzati reteam after “Night of Doom” to collaborate the 2020 released production under their respective indie companies Demented Gore Productions and M.B. Productions.

The five-story anthology with the interweaving wraparound of a man being reprogrammed casts a lot of visual performances without the need for dialogue. Dialogue is reduced to only a pseudo medical television advert or surgical endorsements for a better, prosperous life to eliminate human flaws, advancement in new, and improved, flesh, and can even cure homeless afflictions like drugs and addictions. Pesca keeps a simplicity about his scenes by keeping sullying dialogue removed to just retain the beauty of body horror and a sonorously cacophonous industrial soundtrack. Each story’s characters are also fairly simplified. Without dialogue, individual complexities and depth remain shallow in what is “Re-Flesh’s” sole celebration of horror based cybernetic organisms. This creates no emotional attachment to any of the characters being violated by fiber optic cables and experimentally operated on with crude animatronic gizmos, but Pesca does implant an imploration of at least one emotional response from his audience through gratuitous nudity on half of the female protagonists going through a rapture and ruination of bodily rape and mutate connected by inhumane sentient cybernetics. Most of the women protagonists are half-naked women ensnared by the inescapable new world of merged new flesh but the tail end episodes dig a little deeper, perhaps even stretch the theme to the limits of cyberpunk horror, to where women are more than just ravaged victims. “Re-Flesh” sees skin in the game from Alessandra Pellegatta (“Night of Doom”), Giacomo Clerici, Mery Rubes (“Rage Killers’), Reiko Nagoshi (“Devil Times Two – Quando le Tenebre escono dal Bosco”), Giulia Reine, Paolo Salvadeo, Amira Lucrezia Lamour (Devil Times Two – Quando le Tenebre escono dal Bosco), Alessandro Davoili (“Alice Was My Name”), Ivan Brusa (“7 Days, 7 Girls”), and Marco Cinque.

David Pesca is no stranger to short, gore-laden, underground films having been a featured segment director on a pair of anthologies in the last decade from “A Taste of Phobia” and “After Midnight.” For “Re-Flesh,” Pesca doesn’t have to share the spotlight in his very own tech-themed, feature length compilation that narrates transmitted computer files as tech insidiously infiltrating our insubstantial innards. The first three episodes revolve around phones and solitary women become enslaved to the devices with a link of invading their bodies with a foreign object, whether be adopted a virtual, grotesque pet to being the reason for infection that spreads throughout the body like a flesh-eating disease, to being beamed up and constrained for a thorough, if not sexual, examination of one of mother nature’s creatures. I’m intentionally skipping the review of fourth short and head straight into the terminal episode that is more dystopian splatter punk than the others with an experimental bio-cybernetics company called Neo Vita, or New Life, ridding the world of lowlifes by module implants that turn them into society-controlled puppets. Yet, all these stories are not terribly straight forward with the rub being the ambitious nature of interpretation and the fact there isn’t a dialogue track for most of the runtime. Taking a step backwards to the fourth short, I found this particular short doesn’t fit “Re-Flesh’s” theme with a demonic woman damning three inert souls to a black void of pain and death. Perhaps, a construal could be constructed to lay in code into the technology sequence strand, but the code would be a fractional stretch in comparison to the surrounding system. As a whole, “Re-Flesh” may side more with gory sanguine than an illuminating story but does depict the scourged with a front row seat in this bloodcurdling network of body horror.

Befitting to be distributed on SRS Cinema’s Nightmare Fuel – Extreme and Unrated sublabel, “Re-Flesh” emerges as a bizarre aghast mix of tentacle erotica and technical dysfunction onto a 480p DVD, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Technical dysfunction also applies to the image quality. Though combating some lossy compression issues, the standard definition resolution and budget filming equipment sustain a level of image softness under a desaturated color palette. Depth and delineation range from hazily outlined to a complete wash out from the frame’s JPEG conversation. Pesca operates under a wide-stylistic format that incorporates varied black-and-white schemes (a gritty B&W wraparound story compared to a more defined desaturated monochrome for the fourth segment), natural lighting, harsh gel lighting and tint, and green screen for CGI backdrops. The English dub stereo 2.0 mix will obliterate your sound setup if not careful and without a subwoofer with a booming LFE industrial soundtrack that has produced an inherent crackle and since there is no in-scene dialogue or ambience, all of which is 100% done in ADR, the lower frequencies engulf the other channels that may pop in for phone effects or squishy surgery sounds. “Re-Flesh” is an Italian film, but the cybernetic implant advert shot, originally spoken in Italian, is dubbed in a burned-in expeditious English dub that is what it is. Bonus features include a promo and original trailer, a behind-the-scenes featurette entitled Backstage which is a look at some of the gory scene effects the first two segments, the short “Electric Dreams” which is an alternate graded version of the second segment, and other SRS trailers. The traditional DVD snapper case comes with the illustrated front cover art of the man plugged in under a faux harsh white neon glow with the disc art containing the same art but superimposed with a red hue layer. There is no insert inside the casing. The unrated feature has a runtime of 72 minutes, more than enough time for this type of anthology, and has a region free playback. A kitschy and schlocky graft of “Re-Flesh” will get under your skin, but this anthology quickly grinds gears toward a blue screen of death.

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Uncalcified Penal Glands and Designer Drugs are an EVIL Around-the-Clock Cocktail. “Synchronic” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Well Go USA Entertainment)

Posted by Steven Lewis on February 3, 2021

A new over-the-counter designer drug called Synchronic has been at the center of a string gruesome deaths in New Orleans. Simultaneously, two best friend paramedics, Steve and Dennis, individually battle their own life-altering personal problems while responding to the grisly emergency calls. With each horrific scene of Synchronic’s doing, Steve decides to take matters into his own hands by purchasing the remaining supply in all of New Orleans after Dennis’ teenage daughter mysteriously disappears after ingesting the drug. With no leads on the missing girl’s whereabouts and after being visited by the time abstract ramblings of the chemist responsible for creating the drug, Synchronic’s harmful hallucinogenic properties have more tangible dangers than what meets the eye leaving Steve no choice but to pop one of the pills to understand where, or when, his friend’s daughter may have disappeared to.

I’ve said it once before and I’ll say it again, Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson are visionary filmmakers with a penchant for the larger-than-life and otherworldly terrors. From their directorial of a mind-bending death cult in “The Endless” to their producing hand in Jeremy Gardner’s lost love and creature feature, “After Midnight,” and Amy Seimetz deathly contagious, “She Dies Tomorrow,” under Rustic Films, the ambitiously talented duo returns with “Synchronic,” an anything but plain spoken, time-winding, Sci-Fi tale revolving around themes of redemptive purpose and grateful circumstances stitched by the uncanny temporal effects of artificial illicit drugs. Lying somewhere between the cognitive warping psychedelic drug and feeling disconnected from the environment of a dissociative drug, “Synchronic” sojourns random grooves with the needle of time in a culminating enlightenment that now, the present, is a gift worth enjoying. Along with Moorhead and Benson’s Rustic Films, Patriot Pictures, and XYZ Films bring to fruition the filmmakers’ biggest production yet.

Like most of us during pandemic times, but not quite exactly like us who are working stressfully from home, is Anthony Mackie acting comfortably in his hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. The “Captain America” star temporarily hangs up Falcon’s wing harness to play lonely paramedic Steve frequented by his tragic past that has led him down a path of casual flings and an inability to attach to anyone romantically. Opposite Mackie is Irish actor and “Fifty Shades of Grey” star Jamie Dornan as Dennis, a man kicking himself hard for marrying and starting a family too early in life that’s created a bizarre Prince and the Pauper dynamic where Steve and Dennis are envious on each other’s life. Mackie is pitch perfect in the timing of a seemingly tailored-to-Mackie script that is funny as it is engrossing and thought-provoking. “Synchronic” is truly the Mackie show with Dornan playing second fiddle as a compliment to Mackie’s more clandestinely troubled character who aims to upend and mend many wrongs in his life, including those of his best friend, and weaves in and out through the fabrics of time with Katie Aselton (“She Dies Tomorrow”), Ally Ioannides, Ramiz Monself, and Bill Oberst Jr (“DIS”).

Time travelling is a finnicky concept. Lots of variables have to be ironed out in order to break the planes of chronological, set-in-stone, thinking and construe time as an infinite recording always available for repeat and playback. Time travel is perhaps science fiction’s most powerhouse model, producing some of the most influential and staple films of the genre in our time that include “The Time Machine,” “The Terminator,” and “Back to the Future” that have carried out repeated viewings of admiration, a franchise legacy, and been the source of inspiration and remakes. Plot holes and flaws in these films go without saying and are considered expected, but if filmmakers can get away with convincing audiences otherwise, then expect a blast from the past, present, and future. Moorhead and Benson’s “Synchronic” has a gripping and cosmically vast story done in only one small corner of the world, the historically rich and diverse culture of New Orleans, and that isolating effect pressed upon by the distant and ominous unknown, a supremely niche and bracing style from the directors. “Synchronic,” like time jumping films before it, has the anticipated plot holes in the mechanics of the designer drug’s side effects that are seemingly straight forward to the experimenting character only after attempting a handful of pill-popping jumps. There are also no adverse butterfly effects stemmed from any of the Synchronic’s users. You’ll find yourself lost in time over these questions that routinely shoot up other films to smithereens in the ole inconsistency corral thanks to Moorhead and Benson, along with the riveting and hilarious performance from Anthony Mackie, who suck you in with their relatable and humanizing story premised around Steve and Dennis’ life regrets mended by an eye-opening slight tear in the fabric of time to understand what you have now could have been a lot worse then.

“Synchronic” is stylish, Sci-Fi craftsmanship coming to you onto Blu-ray home video from Well Go USA Entertainment. The film is also available on DVD and digitally. Presented in 16:9 widescreen format, “Synchronic” barrages with a somber and slick, yet almost alien, plating over the Creole and double gallery architectures in a mesh of robust multicultural with the grimy slums, envisioned by director of photography, Aaron Moorhead, who, in part with Ariel Vida, the production designer, is able to capture era slithers native to Louisiana lineage. The Blu-ray comes with an English language DTS-HD master audio 5.1 surround sound that’s crisply makes distinct every track element defined by individual scenes. Jimmy Lavalle returns to collaborate with Moorhead and Benson once again to compose an unique compositional score that can only be described as driving nails into your soul while also being powerfully moving without being an echo out of inspiration. The release is rated R with a runtime of 101 minutes and comes with a fair amount of bonus features including commentary with Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, a making of featurette, a previsualization (a fancy word here for live-action storyboarding with a camera phone), a VFX breakdown (which is touched upon a lot in the making of featurette), a deleted scene, and an alternate ending that will doggone blow your mind! “Synchronic” is intense medication to repair a kindred friendship falling into disrepair in this literal mind-boggling must see it to believe it thriller. Expect more great things from Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson to come!

Order “Synchornic” on Blu-ray by clicking the poster above!

EVIL’s Infectious Paranoia and Fear Spreads Rampant in “She Dies Tomorrow” reviewed! (Neon / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 3, 2020

A despondent Amy is convinced she will die tomorrow. Wanting nothing more than to be useful in her death, she wishes for her skin to be sewn into a leather jacket, much like hardwood floors are elegantly fabricated from cut down trees. When her friend Jane checks in on her once alcoholic friend to ensure that Amy hasn’t fallen off the sober wagon, she brushes off Amy’s death talk as nonsensical, ruminating verbiage, but Amy’s intense convictions of imminent death spread like a contagion, serving up paranoia, fear, and hopelessness to every ear reached. Like wild fire, the prospect of death begins to infect a chain of people directly and indirectly connected to the source, Amy, and there’s no stopping the terror that looms knowing that’ll their fate is sealed in an ill-fated predestination that is seemingly coming tomorrow.

What if you knew you were going to die tomorrow? What sensations could possibly overwhelm your rationality? Are there differences in how we react between apparent death and actual death? These are all questions posed without much elucidation in Amy Seimetz’s 2020 sophomore full-feature film directorial, “She Dies Tomorrow,” coming eight years behind the writer-director’s 2012 debut road trip thriller, “Sun Don’t Shine.” Seinmetz, who has battled Xenomorph’s in Oliver Stone’s “Alien: Covenant,” tried to escaped animal masked killers in “You’re Next,” and burdened the supernatural forces of a Native American burial ground in the remake of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary,” has wriggled her way in front of the camera with indie and big budget thrillers in the last decade, but has also found a small, but significant, auteur niche behind the camera as well, exploring the human dynamic in an avant garde veneer that involves the very core of what affects us all – death – in what Seinmetz describes it’s spread as an “ideological contagion” and how processing our determined for us death date can morbidly spill into what little life is left. “She Dies Tomorrow” is majorly self-funded project by Seinmetz, whose quoted that “Pet Sematary” paid for the film in full, and it gave the filmmaker nearly total autonomy in stylizing her vision of a dry, dark comedy with science fiction and horror elements that bridge the reality and fantasy gulf. Also, Rustic Film’s Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson also serve as producer. Moorhead and Benson, two filmmakers who I admire quite a lot, have proven to invest and create new and fresh otherworldly features, such as “The Endless” and “After Midnight.”

Returning to collaborate with Seinmetz is the director’s lead star from “Sun Don’t Shine,” Kate Lyn Sheil, portraying “She Dies Tomorrow’s” first despaired, Amy. The New Jersey born actress has built a career working with Seinmetz, co-starring alongside her in such as “You’re Next” and in television with “The Girlfriend Experience,” the latter being co-created by Seimetz, but Sheil has also established a wealthy career on her outside the Seinmetz bubble, landing a reoccurring role on the Kevin Spacey turmoiled Nextflix series, “House of Cards” and staying steadily busy with filmic roles over the last five years that has been continues even into the new decade. As Amy, Sheil decompresses Amy’s gloom upon the world in a manner of a stumbling, lost soul trying to find ways of being useful after death. Amy’s alcoholic issues are relatively on the backbunner, adding past strife to her character, but not really the centric focus of Amy’s communicable mellow anxiety. Each of the infected express their contract in a multitude of different ways. “Poltergeist” remake’s Jane Adams engrosses Jane’s fear around how she’ll die that then spreads to her on-screen brother, Chris Messina (“Birds of Prey”) and his snarky wife, Katie Aselton (“Black Rock”) who process as a natural parental fear and duty to comfort and control what they conceive as the inevitable. As the spate of infections increase, the fear lineage evokes honesty, regrets, sympathy, acceptance, and wonder from the support cast that includes Josh Lucas (“Session 9), Michelle Rodriguez (“Resident Evil”), Adam Wingard (director of “The Guest” and “You’re Next”), Jennifer Kim, Tunde Adebimpe, Olivia Taylor Dudley (“Dude Bro Party Massacre III”), Kentucker Audley (“V/H/S”), and Madison Calderon.

“She Dies Tomorrow” cultivates responses to the spreading of the ideological contagion rather than express just exactly how these people will die. Are they so sure they’ll die tomorrow to the point of inflicting self-harm? The story never really takes it that far to exhibit where the individuals, riddled with anxiety, their mortal status will land, whether it’s gratuitous gruesome or just nature taking course. Seinmetz makes light their becoming stricken with dying. While I mean in a more dry humor context, I also literally mean the filmmaker makes light, like the luminescence emitting from a rainbow firefly, glow upon characters’ faces inside Jay Keitel’s cinematography when death strikes their senses like an epiphany. The grim future washes away everything in their past, a key point of obsession honed in by the filmmaker that platforms the short span till death overshadows much, if not all, of our past achievements in life. The obsession is so strong and overwhelming that you, yourself, will start thinking about your own demise, whether it’ll be tomorrow or another 50 years from now, to which then sympathy for each of these characters will begin to set in and remain until the credits roll. “She Dies Tomorrow” seethes as a colorfully cosmic thanatophobia amplified by the current pandemic climate and common death anxiety, furthering Amy Seinmetz’s growth as a gifted filmmaker.

Neon presents the distribution of Amy Seinmetz’s “She Dies Tomorrow,” coming to drive-in theaters on July 31st and landing on video on demand the following week, August 7th. Since this was a digital screener of an upcoming move, there are no home video specifications to review, but Jay Keitel’s scenes are softly lit, down to Earth, and turn ethereal during the flashing of lights. The score by the composing duo, Mondo Boys, reteams Seinmetz with the soft, haunting melodies that can invoke a classical sadness and presage inside princely compositions that included interweaving Mozart’s Requiem into the mix. There were no bonus features included with this screener nor were there any bonus scenes during or after the credits. “She Dies Tomorrow” is a well-crafted, well-timed harrowing allegory on the psychological properties of coping in the face of death.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcMFjCPkP3M]

Buy the “She Dies Tomorrow” poster! Catch the film in Theaters and Video-On-Demand!

EVIL Can Never Replace Love in “After Midnight” reviewed! (Umbrella Entertainment / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on March 31, 2020

Well known country boy Hank has everything he could ever need in the small, rural Florida town: having an establish family lineage, being the owner of a local bar hotspot, and obtaining the love of the beautiful Abby. Their gleaming happiness suddenly goes dim when Abby abruptly takes off, leaving a note with little information of her whereabouts or her plans. Fraught in her absence, Hank drinks himself into a stupor most nights of romantic nostalgia while also fending off his rustic home from a beast out of the surrounding woods that continuously scratches at his front door nightly. Hank’s friends believe he’s suffering a mild mental break as night-after-night, the snarling beast evades Hank every effort to capture and kill it.

“After Midnight” is a sheering melodious and delicately programed romance-horror from “The Battery” writer-director Jeremy Gardner allotting co-directorial duties again with continuous collaboration beside Christian Stella. As Gardner’s third film in the director’s chair, second inside the realm of horror, “After Midnight” brandishes more a sappy love story that sings the tune of a love lost warrior where the relationship woes lie within the deepest, darkest corners of himself rather than being a frontline horror sprinkled lightly with dusted coating of amorous renewal. “After Midnight” is a topsy-turvy monster movie not for an insouciant genre fan who rather skim the surface for blood on the topsoil than dig feverously for the originating root. If you’re also a fan of the mysteriously acclaimed, H.P. Lovecraft-inspired “The Endless,” the filmmakers behind that film – David Lawson, Aaron Moorhead, and Justin Benson – produce “After Midnight” under their Rustic Films label in association with Vested Interest, Cranked Up Films, and Kavya Films, casting that querying memento clinging like a foreboding, nagging scratch needing to be itched.

Not only is Gardner the director, he also stars as Hank, enduring the multi-hat involvement in his films in thematic fashion from his previous films, spearheading the roles in “The Battery” and “Tex Montana Will Survive!,” and Gardner has also branched out beyond his work, having roles in the visceral Joe Begos’ films “Bliss” and “The Mind’s Eye.” Gardner sports his common wear of a U-shaped V-neck t-shirt and bushy beard overtop his large frame and wields a sharp tongue, whiplashing small witticisms as he charms his serenading rustic charisma upon Brea Grant as Abby. The “Dead Night” actress enacts every man’s inherent fear of being lost without their better half when Abby hightails from Hank’s steadfast stance on life. Grant provides a flood of emotional drought through a series of Hanks’ melancholy, good times flashbacks that provide backstory fuel to Hanks’ quickly withering grounded state. Gardner and Grant’s chemistry eerily dons the routine life span of young love and weary complacency without so much showing the beat work argumentative discussions and differences of a diminishing relationship; their natural banter never derails even amongst a bedeviling beast with nightly visitations on a drained Hanks’ doorstep. “After Midnight” fleshes out with a cast of superb supporting roles with nearly Henry Zebrowski (“Cut Shoot Kill”) stealing the show as a half-wit yokel, Justin Benson (“The Endless”), Ashley Song, Nicola Masciotra, Taylor Zaudtke, and creature performer Keith Arbuthnot as the man in the monster suit.

Speaking of the monster suit, the unknown origin creature is very Guillermo del Toro-esque with a quasi-rubbery look, but still renders terribly real with the puppetry facial expressions and Keith Arbuthnot contorting his body to exuberate natural movements. However, don’t look to be thrilled by a ferocious beast as the constant the source of contention. It’s more of an afterthought, a pleasant afterthought, filling Hank’s Abby void or is it? It’s a question you’ll be contemplating when the credits role when a monkey wrench finale disrupts your premediated blue print scheme of a reason for the creature’s existence. Romance and melancholy cross paths in an overwhelming heap of love sickness, guilt, disappointment, and jealousy in a well thought out, smart dialogued version of a self-growth narrative.

There always seems to a malevolent monster behind the scenes, perpetrating the demise of a flourishing relationship exemplified by a beautifully wicked allegory in “After Midnight” distributed onto DVD home video by Umbrella Entertainment. The transfer is presented in the original widescreen, 2.35:1 aspect ratio, on a region 4, 83 minute runtime disc. The presentation is virtually flawless with palatable natural coloring, gleaming southern-sweat coated, natural looking skin tones, and overall details with Hank, and Hank’s house, looking specifically grimy and unkempt. Greenery is of a brown lush backdropped inside what could be anywhere small town America. The English language 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound audio renders a nice range and depth with the monster’s muffled scratching and growling outside the door, the shotgun blasts are powerfully exalting, and the dialogue clearly couriers through all relationship qualms and Hanks droll dialogue. As of many Umbrella Entertainment standard feature releases, there are no bonus features nor a static menu. “After Midnight” is a contagious love story for not it’s mushy, heartfelt, weepie doting into the tears of self-pity, but for that lingering presence of sinister cynicism the monster epitomizes, a stark terror scratching every night under the skin until the unbearable hole in our hearts is finally sated by love’s return.