Customer Reviews

Moscow Zero

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Moscow Zero (2006) is a disappointing film. This is an independent film, but it was not meant to be a cheap exploitation movie.

There are some solid actors in the film:
Val Kilmer, Joss Ackland, Joaquim de Almeida, Rade Serbedzija, Vincent Gallo, Oksana Akinshina.

The filmmaker was trying to make an atmospheric horror movie/psychological study of darkness, and she created a soggy, boring mess.

This was a waste of some good, talented actors.

A major part of why the movie fails it that you don't really care what happens to the characters. They are characters without much connection to the audience. The characters are killed, and you don't care one way or the other. The deaths are not interesting or creative or fancy or much of anything except dull.

And there are no scares. You are supposed to be scared, but instead you are bored, waiting for something exciting or meaningful to happen. You watch the entire movie (if you don't turn it off in disgust before the end) and then think, "What a waste of time".

Most of the action is supposed to take place in chambers that are beneath Moscow. So for atmosphere, most of the film is dark, and it's sometimes difficult to see clearly what the characters are doing. Adding to the confusion, it's hard to understand why the characters act the way they do. The meaning is supposed to become clear and unfold as you watch the movie advance in time, except that the characters, like in a low-grade horror film, are doing things without much sense to them. So even when you say to yourself, after seeing the added meaning of characters/items
you saw before, "OK, now I understand what's happening more clearly", it doesn't really matter very much. The story was simple and did not make much sense before, and it still does not make much sense now. You understand what the filmmaker was trying to create, an atmospheric horror film with meaning that would slowly unfold, but she ended up with a talky, low-budget mess.

There are definitely worse movies out there. But because of the actors in this film, I was really hoping for something worth watching. And this is just a time-waster. No thrills. No scares. No interesting story.

The movie would make more sense as a video game. And be a better experience. If the movie was based on a video game, that might explain why it's such a poor movie. The filmmaker was focused on trying to make a faithful transition from video game or script to film, instead of trying to make an interesting and watchable film.

A simpler explanation might be that the director (María Lidón) is a hack who lacks the talent to make a good movie.

Hopefully, if she does make any more movies, they will be better than this one.

I just watched Moscow Zero. Apparently they rated it in the title - zero. Please put me out of my misery. They should make prisoners at Guatanamo prison watch this over and over again to extract information from the terrorists. Then again, we aren't allowed to torture our prisoners anymore, so that wouldn't be humane.

This was the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. Don't even watch it if someone tries to bribe you with money. Your time is too precious.

Let me summarize it for you: Yawwwnnnnnnnnnn!!! (Pause for effect)(Silence with crickets chirping in the background). Oh...okay...you are in a Russian dried out sewer system under a Catholic church. It is a circle. Kids fled with the nuns to get away from communists years before. The nuns told the kids that any adult outsiders were demons. The nuns die. The children await a nun to come and get them, who at some time years before died. They are left to grow up in the dark tunnels They can see in the dark. Adults from above ground have heard rumors of demons below in the tunnels. The kids scratch bones on the walls to scare off demons. The adults above think demons are making scratching sounds. An archaeologist ventures down below to trace the legend out. His friends go looking for him. As the kids run around the circular tunnel, their shadows move along the wall scaring the adults. The adults (supposed demons) scare the kids. They both think each other are demons. A woman is with the men. The kids think she is the returning nun. So they follow her out of the tunnel into the above Catholic church. There is no end, no explanation, no final meeting between adults and kids, no discovery of the truth, nothing, nada. The end falls off the edge of the film's reel before it ends. It's one of these - "What the??? What happened??? I just wasted what seemed like 5 hours on that, and there is no ending???" Actually, after re-reading this review, I should have written the script. Mine was more exciting and less timely.

Should you watch this movie? Is that a question or a joke?
You ask, "Why did you watch the whole thing?" I was hoping that at some time it was going to get better, kind of a gamble after you've invested so much of your time already. I guess I'm just stupid. Don't be stupid yourself. Don't waste your time. You'd be better off watching "Tele-tubbies Gone Wild" on PBS.

In my 36 years of life I never would have believed that I would actually view a movie that would top the absurdity of "Starship Troopers 2"; however, once in a four year cycle a film will come along that will throw me into a petite mal seizure and have me at my keyboard 20 minutes later wiping dried vomit from my mouth and brushing Cheeto crumbs off my face and shirt. Congratulations Moscow Zero you are now number 1 in the category of "most incoherent and random direct to video production EVER".

Disclaimer: I have no issues with direct to video productions or low quality sci-fi vids; sometimes an entertaining gem will rear its head and will find its way to my DVD collection, but not this monstrosity. I will break this review down in segments for your reading pleasure.

First the cover: Obviously the budget of the film was liberally sprinkled on the packaging of this vid. What do we have on the front: Val Kilmer and some dude in priest garb. I have no issues with having a couple of cast members on the cover except Val was in the movie for maybe like 6.2 minutes; plus rocking the priest next to Kilmer was similar to that "green leafy plant thing" restaurants set next to a T-bone steak for garnish...... Why? Who the hell is this "priest"? Why is he looking constipated on my DVD cover? Next we have some promising end of the world Moscow visuals, I have no issues with these visuals, so I'm pretty neutral, lets move on.

The cast: This is the only bright shiny side to the movie. These are some solid actors and with the right script (anyone but this one) and the right director (anyone but this one) we might have come up with a solid 3 to 3.5 star movie. I will say that Oksana Akinshina is one beautiful woman and during my struggle to survive, make it through the movie and be able to at least walk in a straight line and eventually (hopefully) hold a ball in one hand, peeping at her blue eyes are what helped me weather the storm.

The plot (or lack of one): I'll try and bottom line it for you.

A researcher in Moscow goes missing, in some "secret" underground tunnels. Tons of narrative from said researcher while he walks around, sleeps, talks to himself about how smart he is and is being generally annoying while lost "of course". I think the director was shooting for a cyber punk/ poltergeist/ Indiana Jones feel. We then have one of the many "ghostly" visuals of little children running around the tunnels giving off the "wasn't talented enough to make it into the Ring 3 movie" vibe(how is this scary?). We learn a short while later that the gates of hell have opened and we are supposed to feel a sense of dread (rather I was feeling a sense of fatigue and a vague absent feeling in my right arm and may have even wet myself, but that could have been after passed out).

The movie is the same tired story: Eccentric hero assembles a crew of "red shirts" and heads down to a supposedly bad place where they hook up with a lippy hottie, have the lame "has been star" cameo (justifies the DVD cover), then the crew rolls deeper into apparently worse territory where 50% of the crew die because of there own stupidity then we have some supposedly "clever" explanation of what "hell" is and an even a more "clever" (stupid) and obscure ending. Then blood starts running from my nose and I wake up on the floor face down in a pile of Cheetos.

This movie should have been called: Give 80% of the movie budget to Val Kilmer for a 6 minute cameo and divide remainder of budget = $100 with the director, cast, crew and misc. expenses.

The result: Save your money, but if you're still not convinced, instead take a $20 bill out of your wallet and light it on fire; it's the closet emotional response you'll get without actually seeing this monstrosity

Okay, listen up LUNA, stop making movies!!
This film actually pisses me off...it's that bad. Can you imagine how many
hungry children in the world you could have fed instead of wasting
all that money on making this unwatchable crap? And leave Val Kilmer
alone! He's a great actor and certainly unworthy of your lack of
vision, talent and storytelling.

SO there!

This movie is pretty good. A lot of the plot does not make sense and definitely leads a lot to be explained.. but never is.
It does capture creepyness well with the use of shadows, darkness and perhaps ghosts of little children and religious imagery.
The film makes the audience think a little bit, and wonder. if you want spoon fed horror or lots of slash, blood and gore this is not for you.
This movie could have been a lot better, but it is worth watching and does have some scary disturbing scenes.

Apparently the gates of Hell run underground in the tunnels beneath Moscow and when the tears of the repentant start flowing they'll swing open and let loose any lost souls still wandering around down there. Some lazy construction workers re route a river resulting in the displaced water being mistaken for the tears of the penitent so all Hell breaks loose. Literally. Into this inferno ventures Owen (Vincent Gallo), an American priest searching for his friend and colleague Sergei (Rade Serbedzija). Aided by two guides Owen finds out that if he wants to get to Sergei's last known location he has to make a deal with the gatekeeper of the underground Andrey (Val Kilmer). This is about as much as I'm sure of since the film is so damn dark you're never sure what you're watching. Either way I don't really care if Owen and Sergei make it alive. Gallo and Kilmer share one brief scene together. Each one is fine on his own but Kilmer's screen time is limited to about four or five scenes. Val has always reminded me of Marlon Brando in many ways. I think the comparison makes more sense with regards to this film since Val is heavier and his delivery is mumbled and hard to understand. It's also the kind of bizarre cameo Brando specialized in towards the middle and end of his career. Gallo fans will be happy he's given a leading role but will wish it was in a better movie. It is a nice touch having a wild man like Gallo wear the cleric's collar though.

There are no introduction at all in this movie, the movie maker believed it best just to jump straight to the action. I found myself rewinding as I believed my DVD had skipped or something, leaving some introduction out, all you see is a priest organizing a search for someone in the dark under gourds of Moscow, there are no explanation as to how or why, oh yes and there are some legends of demons.

Now done differently the movie might have been good. Basically you had a group of children which was hidden in some underground catacombs by a order of nuns, the nuns told the children that outside adults where demons and so the children stayed down there until they adapted and became a sort of creature of the dark them self, so people living in the tunnels think the children are demons, while the children, and it is not really clear if the original children are still children 90 years later or if they have grown up had children and so on and it is their descendants in the movie, think the adults are demons and they hunt these demons, kill them and eat them. And basically that is all there is in the movie, a group of people running around in the tunnels with no explanation for why and a much of mutated, cannibalistic kids trying to protect them self from demons.

Like I said, the concept could have been fun, but they way it are done with no back story, no explanation and little or no plot, and not even any scare effects to carry the movie over, it turns out to be one long yawn. Unless you are a horror movie fanatic and just need to see every horror movie there is out there, then stay away from this one. This movie is bad, and I do not mean bad in a good way as with much B horror. I mean bad as in boring.

Moscow Zero is a tiresome film. It takes a good premise and does nothing with it. The plot centers around a priest (Gallo) searching Moscow's underground for his lost buddy. There is supposed to be some supernatural angle but it is very weak at best.
For some reason, Val Kilmer is in this movie, playing a gangster that runs the underground. He says a few lines then thats it for him! There must be a big demand for illicit activities in those tunnels..

The ending of the film is a real mystery, it just ends. Nothing is really explained. You can skip this one..

Moscow Zero looks a little bit interesting upon glancing at the DVD cover and reading the film's synopsis. Sadly though, Moscow Zero is an empty and pretty tedious bore that manages to do little to get your heart pumping during its eighty-two minute running time. Vincent Gallo stars as a Russian priest who hires a team to help him find his missing friend (Rade Serbedzija) who had ventured beneath the city upon hearing a legend of a gateway to Hell. What Moscow Zero manages to do well is fairly little, but it does offer an effectively creepy and somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere. It's refreshing to see a film that doesn't boast any blood and gore (in fact, there's little to no violence in the film at all) and relies on atmosphere, but other than that, Moscow Zero offers little else other than the usually great Val Kilmer in what amounts to little more than an extended cameo. The film falters however in terms of its pacing, and is just pretty much more boring than anything else. Not to mention a weak storyline and a confusing conclusion, Moscow Zero just fails. All in all, if you're looking for a decent, atmospheric thriller; Moscow Zero is worth a rental at the very least, but you're better off looking elsewhere.

This horror /suspense film set in Moscow is a dark journey below the beautiful architecure of an old orthidox church. The Legend states that Hell is below with the river styx to cross only to meet demons and watchers. Only those who can navigate this labryneth of halls demons watchers and towers will be able to reach the upper room of this large cathedral and enter into heaven. A mystical film that bears watching more than once to "get" all the mutilevels of Religion, Mystisism, and spritual warfare in a cold dark country. Is this Cathedral a link to Heaven or a Hellish Damnation on Earth? YOU decide.....