This is How Movies Should Be Made

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

DARK SOULS is a dark and dingy slice of Norwegian horror, made on a tiny budget. The story is about characters who go missing only to reappear somehow different. It's a story that flirts with tropes from the zombie genre but which plays out as a slow-moving police procedural for the most part. There's a lot of low key investigation, a lot of wandering around in poorly-lit locations, and more plot than expected for such a low budget feature. I found the horror content too self-limiting and the film to be lacking the requisite power needed to make it work.

I was first alerted to this film by spotting it on the CV of musician, Wojciech Golczewski, whose incidentals had added so much to the evocative atmosphere of 'We Are Still Here (2015)'. Here, his menacing strings accompany casually stunning jogger Johanna (Johanna Gustavsson), alerting us to the fact that, as she runs through sunny glades, she's in imminent danger. As the film's title suggests, it's only brief moments before a masked man in industrial overalls holds her down and forces a drill into her head.Despite dying, she is soon back at her father's home. Breathing, but with no pulse, she is somnambulistic, only rousing to vomit black putridity over her father. Meanwhile, the driller killers (for there are several) claim more victims – discarding any males and concentrating on females.This story concentrates on Johanna's father Morten's (Morten Rudå) attempts to look after his deteriorating daughter. Watching as he tries to persuade others that the blackened, vomiting creature will 'soon be better' is deeply harrowing. The bemused apathy of the police is similarly distressing.Shot like a documentary in grainy images, the effects are probably the weakest link here. Whilst an abundance of black tar-like substances oozing from hair and bodies is pretty revolting, the execution of the illness belies this Norwegian film's lack of budget. The tone is refreshing, however, and doesn't always take itself too seriously, while certain moments recall the work of David Cronenberg and the rotting, limping, back-haired ghosts of 'Ju-on: The Grudge (2002)' and similar Asian films.It is unconventional also that a middle aged man should emerge as the hero of the piece, his vigilante actions uncovering a dark governmental secret, and distinctively so. As a whole, though, 'Dark Souls/Zombie Driller Killer' doesn't really live up to either its title, or the promise shown in early scenes.

Dark Souls, a strange movie to review because it looks like a compilation of the best of horror so far. We have a killer, we have in fact a driller killer. That did ring a bell, The Driller Killer (1979). I can go on and on. There are so many references towards the classics that you forget to watch the flick itself.The whole story itself is strange. There's not that much explained and towards the end it changes into something like, here we go again, The Crazies (1973). In between we see what happens with the people being attacked by the driller killer. The father tries to take care of his daughter who's being attacked. There's a lot of stuff (no pun intended) coming out of the mouth of the victims being transformed. And there's even an ode to the Italian classics by showing how a drill can enter a face or a body.It never bored me although the acting wasn't always convincing but it's really the story that sucks you into Dark Souls. It will not be for everybody but if you are willing to see a strange story then this is for you.Gore 2/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Coemdy 0/5

If Abel Ferrara's DRILLER KILLER and Larry Cohen's THE STUFF were dropped inside a Magimix and the resulting concoction seasoned with a dusting of tongue-in-cheek humour it'd likely end up looking something like Mathieu Peteul and Cesar Ducasse's DARK SOULS.The film opens with a teenage girl named Johanna (Johanna Gustavsson) jogging alone through the woods. She barely has time to build up a sweat before a sinister figure dressed in orange overalls wrestles her to the ground and bores a hole into the side of her head with an electric drill. Later, moments after she returns home, her father Morten (Morten Ruda) receives a phone call from the police pronouncing her dead. His joking and laughing is soon turned to shock when she starts vomiting up thick black bile.It turns out she is the first victim of a bizarre wave of attacks involving a mysterious black liquid which transforms otherwise healthy individuals into mindless, rotting zombies. As his daughter slowly loses control of her bodily functions and her skin begins to blacken and decay, a distraught Morten takes it upon himself to go track down those responsible.Fans of Chris Morris' JAM will no doubt find plenty of laughs in the ludicrousness of Morten's situation as Johanna slowly becomes his pet zombie but the film is also at times a sensitive portrait of fatherly devotion. And when Morten is shown watching old Super 8 family films with his daughter's limp, rotten body propped beside him it's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.Lazy clichés such as the slasher movie's 'last woman standing' rule are subverted: our hero is not a nubile teenager but a bewildered, overweight father looking for the man who drilled his daughter, leaving her zombified. References to horror classics are skillful and witty, for example the homeless oil diver's expositional monologue which mirrors Quint's famous speech in JAWS. Winner of Best Horror at the Manhattan and Swansea film festivals, DARK SOULS brings slick thrills and oil spills without resorting to easy scares. 5 out of 5Cambridge Film Festival Daily