8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Special Effects in the Dark, December 7, 2007
This review is from: The Redsin Tower (DVD)
Fred Vogel is obviously growing as a filmmaker.
He's transcended from the simulated snuff series "August Underground"
(for which he will always be remembered)
and is now tackling actual storytelling with real cinematography.
The story can essentailly be divided into two halves,
The first half accounts the events leading to the party at 'Redsin Tower'
And the second half depicts the surrealistic madness that ensues once inside.
The former half is where Vogel starts to shine as a budding filmaker.
(though he still has a long way to go in terms of lighting & dialogue)
The story follows two main characters:
The reluctant girl who just broke up with her long-time boyfriend, just before the night of a party,
and the broken-hearted, obsessive nerd out for vengeance.
Vogel keeps things from getting too stale, in the scenes following the ex-girl and her slutty, goth-friend, with his unabashedly raunchy dialogue.
And actually manages some poignant, emotional scenes surrounding euro-nerd.
The latter half of the movie is where things start to fall apart.
Once inside the Redsin Tower, you lose all sense of direction.
The setting is so dark, I was struggling to make out pretty much anything.
This is all the more upsetting, because this is where all the carnage takes place. (Revenge of the nerd, the blinding spirit rape, the unholy transformation & birth, the worm vomit, the writhing torso, the dance of the spastic corpses etc.)
(Honestly, the only brutal scenes that were visible, were the ones occuring in flashbacks, which just so happened to be the best scenes in the film)
If you're 'ace in the hole' is your gore-effects, why would you hide them in the darkest setting possible??
That's like going to see your favorite band perform, while wearing ear-plugs.
Totally senseless.
Gore is what people know Fred Vogel for. Why not flaunt it???
The fact that I was always asking "what's happening??" during any-given death scene became increasingly frustrating.
It wasn't until I let go of all sense of coherence, that I started to enjoy the surrealistic descent into madness taking place onscreen.
I'll eventually have to give it a second viewing, with the brightness turned all the way up.
All in all, I really enjoyed it and will gladly display it in my horrific collection.
It should have been better. (And would've been, if the brutality was visible) I would have given it 4 stars, had the lighting been better.
But I can't complain.
It could have been alot worse.
I hope to see alot more from Toetags (both literally and figuratively)
Their take on horror is disturbingly refreshing.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
IF you've got it, flaunt it.
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