The greatest movie ever!

Purely Joyful Movie!

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

First of all, this is a low, low budget film. A basement film. A film clearly made by a gang of enthusiastic amateurs rather than a Hollywood production studio. The acting is basically what you'd expect from a movie starring your stoner friends. The sets are what you might find around town, or what a relative might lend you for the weekend. The camera-work, editing and cinematography, while occasionally inventive, are far from professional. Hell, even the special effects are rudimentary (when they're not flat-out laughable).But I kinda liked it. I didn't love it, and I'm not even really recommending it, but it's definitely the most unique and troo-kvlt horror flick I've seen in quite a while. Basically, what you have is a bifurcated storyline in which two distinct threads unfold and eventually merge. In the first, a young girl struggles to understand her relationship to her spooky parents and the creepy old house she's seemingly trapped in. In the second thread, an escaped gang of teenage rehab patients finds themselves drawn into the same spooky house. Presiding over all this is the young girl's grandfather, a mysterious figure named Reverend Salo (played, for no good reason, by The Amazing Kreskin).The plot of this movie, however, is inconsequential. Horror is almost entirely senseless. Like Suspiria (which it resembles but can't begin to compete with), Horror cares more about building atmosphere and presenting disturbing visuals than about telling any kind of coherent story. While one might hazard a theory this way or that about why the events of the film unfold the way they do, it hardly matters. I listened to enough to DVD commentary to realize that director Danta Thomaselli's explanation is far less enlightening than what the average viewer might come up with on their own. "This is a movie that challenges all reality," he says. Uhhhhh, yeah. Take it to the man, Dante.Again, in spite of all that, I did like this movie. Its heart is in the right place, even if it doesn't have a brain in its head. The visuals are imaginative, unsettling and clearly tied to a personal sense of what horror is all about. And, at 77 minutes, it never gets a chance to wear out its welcome.6/10 (though I get the feeling I'm being waaaaay too generous)

Writer and Director: Dante TomaselliReleased: 2001Stars: The Amazing Kreskin, Lizzy Mahon, Danny Lopes, Vincent Lamberdi, Christie SanfordRated: RId been asking around about Dante Tomasellis "Horror". Since many people have been talking about Dante Tomasellis films around a lot, I got curious and finally decided to see what all the hoopla was about. The responses I got from people where mixed. They were somewhere along the lines of "I was disappointed" and that it was "Dreamlike" or to "not try to figure this one out". Well I went in knowing that this was gonna be an unconventional type of horror film, not what we are used to seeing on an every day basis, and in the end this helped me in the viewing of the film, and in understanding what Tomaselli was trying to achieve (and ultimately did achieve) with his film "Horror".The story is about a lot of characters, but mainly about the Salo family. A family composed of Reverend Salo Jr. his wife and his daughter Grace Salo who is constantly suffering from abuse from their freaky zealot parents who only care about their "religion". Not only that but they drug her so she is constantly hallucinating with horrific images that plage her. She thinks she speaks with her dead grandpa and so forth. Through out the film she decides to unravel the mystery of her dead grandfather and she finds out a lot more then she bargained for. At the same time, a bunch of kids escape a drug rehabilitation clinic and end up at the Salo home and end up experiencing a lot of surreal paranormal activity. Thats the set up. The rest of the movie is...nothing less then sheer psychological, trippy, drug induced, surreal terror. First off we got to try and remember that this is an independently produced horror movie (Read:low-budget)so its strength wont be in its special fx, or its balls to the wall action. Its more quiet in nature, and more cerebral then your typical horror film. It seems that Dante Tomaselli was obviously shooting for a more psychological film that would scare you not from what you saw...but by what you didn't. What your mind could conjure up. Lets face it, whos scared of goats? But when you know that goat represents evil, possibly Satan himself, well, then things turn scary. In my opinion Horror is a genuinely spooky and creepy film. Its filled with haunting visuals that include flying Halloween pumpkins, melting wax dolls, zombies, and evil demonic goats, all stemming from some really good direction. Unlike many horror films that we see today, which are really just action films with a little bit of horror sprinkled in, this one is above all else a Horror film. That's what it wants to do, scare the pants off of you. And I think it achieves it. AS far as the story being a bit hard to grasp, well, the way I see it this was done deliberately by Tomaselli, to create a nightmare like feel to the movie, we feel that we are watching these kids nightmares or hallucinations, a flashback or drug induced trip. Either way this flick was genuinely eerie with its images and I gotta give Kudos to Tomaselli for going out of his way to create such gloomy atmosphere on such a meger budget.OK now lets get down to one of the most captivating parts of this film...Reverend Salo played by The Amazing Kreskin, a real life "mentalist". The scenes where he "hypnotizes" some people inside of a Church, that was scary in a real sort of way. Specially when you find out that it was all really done on camera. Those actors and extras that were hypnotized on the movie, were hypnotized for real. It is creepy to hear them talking about their experience in the DVD extras. Reverend Salo and Salo Jr. (two religious leaders of a strange cult) were the creepiest parts of the film, though I must admit that I wished they had explored them a bit more, or maybe dedicated more of the film to them. In my opinion it would have been cool to give us more insight on this crazy family of religious fanatics. They are interesting characters, and it would have been cool to know more about them, but I guess NOT knowing about them that much, just adds to the mystery of the characters. They become enigmatic...and what we don't know, we fear. In the end this films is more towards the Psychological/horror sub-genre, and it's a bit more demanding then your usual film. It stears more towards the artsy horror film, something that is not at all bad and that in my opinion we need a more of. But of course its an artsy film that doesn't forgets that it is first and foremost a horror film. I cant wait to see what other Horrrors Dante Tomaselli has in store for us. Rating: 4 out of 5

Rating: 3/10*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHAEAD ****I'm not sure if this is the kind of movie that you have to see a couple of times before it starts to make sense. Although the camera work is not bad at all and there is suspense in it, it totally lacks a story line or interesting characters. The worst is that none of the characters are portrayed in some more depth so it starts to make sense; as a viewer you're just thrown from one scene into another. This movie is reminiscent of movies like Mulholland Drive, Pie and Lost Highway. Some scenes are not that bad, but although it's only a 1:10 movie, it gets boring quick. It hints to Italian horrors a la Fulci pay homage, but lacks depth and script. If you like psychedelic movies as the ones mentioned above, i'd say go watch this one. But if you're looking for a solid story and at least one actor you can connect to, leave this one in the video store. It does try hard to be original, but originality is not a synonym for watchable or decent.Greetings Dub

I like horror movies. Don't let the title mislead you, this was not horror it was CRAP. A van full of losers escape from rehab and end up being pursued by bad visions, some evil folks and a Big Black Goat That Is Supposed To Scare You.Slamming doors, horrible done "evil" pumpkin heads and an entire cast of characters you won't have a shred of empathy for.I've seen worse, but not much.