Review: Necronos: Tower of Doom - 2010

Recensionen på svenska

Necronos: Tower of Doom

Director: Marc Rohnstock

2010

Horror

The Devil has plans for the earth, to conquer it and to enslave all of mankind. They can’t all be killed since the berserkers need something to eat. His mighty minion – Necronos, comes to earth to find the most precious ingredients to ensure his arrival. Necronos is accompanied by Goran – a blood Golem and a mighty witch that will assist him in identifying the most precious of all – the virgin witch. Her blood ensures the arrival of Satan and Hell will come to earth. Necronos is about to raise an army of demons and rule what’s left side by side with Satan.

First of all we need to establish that this is an independent production with a very low budget. Therefore it cannot be compare to high budget films but I don’t think Marc Rohnstock was aiming for that anyway. Usually when it comes to flicks like this the whole point is to make it very cheap and possible learn something in the process. That is why I commend productions like this; they move the boundaries of what can be done. A small budget forces the filmmakers to innovative solutions which in turn makes the industry richer. There are many high budget films that could never have been done if these productions didn’t pave the way.

Having that said it’s no big surprise that this film has the usual problem independent films have. First of all there’s the acting of course but I actually think that better than usual so I can’t complain about that. The second thing is cinematography, possible because of cheaper equipment. This is the most obvious way to tell if a film have had a shoestring budget or not.

Being a splatter film the effects are our main concern though. Those are what’s important tm us. There are two general points about this I think. It should look believable and over the top at the same time. That’s actually a pretty hard task to accomplish. Most films never come close to this, not even major Hollywood productions. The other thing is inventive use of the gore. Just to pull an arm of without any fun way of doing it isn’t good enough. There need to be a point to it. Why is the arm coming of? Just for the gore of it? Some reason that moves the plot forward? Of course I’m only talking about this as an example here but I think this film pulls it off nicely. The splatter and Gore are quite nice and most of the time there’s a point in having it there.

As it is a German movie its dialog is in German of course. I have a hard time with it. Not because of the language itself but as most of the dialog is spoken through filters to make it feel more demon-ish. It’s slightly better than watching a flick dubbed into German of course but it’s still an ugly language. Fortunately it’s subtitled into English which I understand..

The main plot isn’t very deep. But again, it doesn’t need to be. We are interested in the gore and the nudity of course. There are quite a few full frontal nudity shots and there are boobs throughout the film. I like the way this is done since it’s not only perfect bodies. There are actually real people in it as well, some saggy women and fat men, just like people are. It would be nice to see perfect porn star bodies of course but less realistic. I think it’s done in the right way!

But even if the plot isn’t very deep you get details from the beginning. You are introduced to the characters by several texts and some teaser shots. We start a few hundred years back in time with some fantastic shots. There are some really great torture scenes here. I wish they make a prequel that exploits all this in a more detailed way! Most of the film takes place in the present where the virgin witch is sought for and the torture is kind of lost in the process. I wanted to see more blood running on the women’s naked vaginas rather than intestines in a meat grinder.

Will be released by Swedish Dark Entertainment.

UPDATE:
This just in...
Troma Entertainment will distibute the film for the whole US market within the next month.