Dir - Jean Luc Herbulot
Overall: GOOD
A unique supernatural crime film from West Africa of all places, Saloum is named after the delta system in Senegal where a group of mercenaries lay low on their route to the city of Dakar in transport of a Mexican drug lord escaping from the 2003 Guinea-Bissau coup d'état. Rooting its story in a real, war-torn setting gives the movie a palpable atmosphere and Congolese writer/director/producer Jean Luc Herbulot stages the plot as a contemporary Western, except with some vengeful folklore spirits thrown in halfway through to raise the harrowing stakes. There is a lot to keep up with in the busy plot and plethora of characters who engage in pivotal dialog exchanges, (including sign language), that makes for an intense enterprise long before an ancient swarm curse descends upon the land. The performances are stellar and though Herbulot utilizes shaky, hand-held cinematography to the detriment of being able to follow many of the action sequences, it still creates an appropriate, guerilla-style aesthetic. The CGI-realized spirits are hardly intimidating, but this minor visual disappointment plays second fiddle to a brutal tale of redemption, brotherhood, and survival that ends up being more grounded than frightening.
Dir - Alejandro Brugués/Mike Mendez/Demián Rugna/Eduardo Sánchez/Gigi Saul Guerrero
Overall: MEH
Another clumsily executed horror anthology with inconsistent tonal issues for days, Satanic Hispanics brings together four Latino and one Latina director who have all delivered genre offerings of varying quality before, yet unfortunately most of them are on their F-game here. Mike Mendez' wrap-around segment "The Traveler" has a frustrating premise where an immortal bad-ass spins all of the tales to a pair of condescending detectives who have no logical reason whatsoever to believe him, that is until the inevitable finale where his warnings of course come true. Considering that Demián Rugna is the most consistently good filmmaker here, his "Tambien Lo Vi" is not only the best yet also the only entry without an abundance of doofy humor, accidental or otherwise. Eduardo Sánchez drops the ball with the painfully unfunny "El Vampiro”, Gigi Saul Guerrero's "Nahules" is an awkard and unintentional schlock-fest, and the worst is saved for last with Alejandro Brugués' moronic “Hammer of Zanzibar”. Save for Rugna's segment, there is an abundance of actors in filth-covered monster make-up who scream like idiots into the camera, as well as groan-worthy dialog and comedic beats that consistently miss their mark. Bloated to nearly two hours in length, it is a chore of missed opportunity.
MAD GOD
Dir - Phil Tippett
Overall: MEH
Dir - Phil Tippett
Overall: MEH
An impressive achievement considering that it was thirty years in the making, special effects man Phil Tippett's Mad God is a visually dense treat of grimy, dystopian stop-motion animation, yet its unapproachable narrative and relentlessly glum tone grows weary after awhile. Tippett initially began it in 1990 while working on Robocop 2, picking the project back up decades later and eventually finishing it with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign. A dialog-free, surreal trek into a hellish, industrial underworld, there is no conventional plot. Instead, the film follows through with a linear series of set pieces that prod deeper and deeper into a sickening landscape where wretched monsters destroy lesser lifeforms to the point where an entire new cosmos seems to be created with the blood-turned-gold-dust from an infinite worm creature; a cosmos that is rapidly shown to undergo the same tragic, apocalyptic fate as the previous one. It is all guess work as to what could possibly be going on story-wise besides it being some kind of essay on nature's infinite destruction, yet it may be a detriment for viewers who do not wish to endure such unwavering bleakness without a single bone thrown their way. Visually though, Tippett does startling work, creating a richly detailed universe that is as endlessly inventive as it is nasty and downtrodden.
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