Lucifer's Angels is an effective microbudgeted ($3,000 if you believe imdb) indie that plays to its strengths and hides its weaknesses well. It manages to deliver some decent tension, has a good creepy vibe, and has enough going on story-wise that it moves by pretty quickly - you never have the chance to get too bored over the 60-some minute runtime.
There are quite a few moving parts to the film, but it's far from confusing. It starts out many years ago in a mental institution, where four doctors are arguing over their most violent patients. Several staff members have been killed, and the doctors are trying to find a way to deal with these maniacs. Flash forward to the present day. Four friends head out to the mountains for a camping trip - they manage to get some good partying in, but at one point a local boy stops by and tells them a campfire ghost story about the the large number of people that have disappeared in these very woods, how they may be haunted, and so on. The boy's Pop shows up and tells him to "Git!" but the seed has been planted. But it's cool - Pops likes to drink too, so the party continues.
Meanwhile, some ghost hunter guy is also coming to these woods... he's heard the stories about the paranormal activity in the area and is dragging his girlfriend along for a weekend of fun. (And also, to get a female character in the film.) Eventually, people go missing or turn up dead and bloody, and the remaining folks must work together to get out of the woods alive.
Lucifer's Angels does quite a few things right. The sack-masked bad guys look imposing and quite menacing, and are shot in such a way that they are actually kind of scary (occasionally just popping up and lingering in the background). You know that these guys are bad news from the way they're shot. Probably the greatest strength of the film is that it doesn't try too hard to be something it's not. I suspect they didn't have much of a budget for gore, so writer/director Ricky McDonald wisely doesn't linger on any attack scenes that look cheap and out of place. The gory bits are saved for the end where they can be the most effective. But there still manages to be a decent sense of tension in the film - the chase scenes in the woods are shot better and deliver more scares than those I've seen in a lot of films with way bigger budgets.
Now, it is still a microbudgeted horror film, and you have to deal with the trappings of that particular "genre" (if you will). It does have a kind of 'consumer camera' look, and the acting can be awfully wooden at times. But as far as these sorts of things go, Lucifer's Angels is pretty well done. The woods/mountain scenery looks really nice (particularly in the opening credits), and the woods actually look like "woods" more often than not, rather than some local park.
It also manages to cram a couple of different types of horror into its short runtime. I guess saying what would be spoilery (so, SPOILERS, I guess)... it's mostly a stalk and slash, but there are elements of ghosts, torture porn - you even get a little zombie feeling business towards the end (for some reason). I guess that was my biggest issue: the end of the film kind of comes out of nowhere and feels a little too "kitchen-sinky" for my tastes. For the majority of the film, things move along at a brisk (and well-done) slasher-inspired pace - but then the ending tries to cram in too much stuff to be truly effective. I mean, it's still a serviceable ending. But if it would have been able to do something that was a little more consistent with the feel of the rest of the film, Lucifer's Angels could have been more than just a pleasant surprise.
As it stands? It's still pretty good. Lucifer's Angels takes itself seriously (a risky proposition in these types of films), and is well-paced and well put together. Still, the cheapness of the thing will probably turn a lot of people off. I get that indie horror isn't for everyone. But writer/director/star (and so many other things) Ricky McDonald did quite well with the resources at his disposal.
I would recommend this film.
No comments:
Post a Comment