Director: Michael Kuciak
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Trying to recover from a disastrous tour, a fledgling metal band decides to record their new album which contains a series of notes derived from a Satanic piece of music written hundreds of years ago, starting a vicious curse that traps them in a deadly nightmare they may not survive from.
Review:
This was a decidedly enjoyable heavy metal horror effort. One of the better features of this one is the enjoyable setup that takes their frustration and determination to keep the band going. With just enough hints of their disastrous tour that’s supposedly filled with fighting, inner turmoil, and other controversial measures that have followed them back to the current iteration of the bad, we get a great idea of the band at the start trying to keep their careers going. This carries over into the majority of the first half where their determination and desire to keep going in the studio despite all the outside pressures from their label or the burgeoning incidents around them that suggest everything is going haywire which creates a solid setup for what’s to come later.
That manages to be another strong part of the film in their highly effective and enjoyable supernatural-tinged sequences of the curse coming to light. Focusing on the initial introduction of the haunted music by having the affected members freak out unnaturally, succumb to over-the-top physical transformations, and the unnatural behavior exhibited by the affected individuals allows this one to come off quite nicely at building up a rather intriguing series of setpieces throughout here. Once it gets to the second half and it becomes more about the affected minions acting as crazed followers trying to turn everyone else into their grasp through a strong series of hallucinatory visions that show their demonic state allows to play out. This keeps the pace high and the gore effects are quite nice overall which all manage to generate quite a lot to like here.
This one does have a few minor drawbacks holding it down. One of the bigger issues present is the somewhat unrealistic manner this one starts to introduce supernatural elements that don’t raise any kind of alarm in anyone. Despite how great it is that this is at getting the cursed nature of the original musical piece is to their career, the fact that it goes immediately into voices that aren’t there, freak bloody noses that lose an unnatural amount of blood, or straight-up killing themselves in front of everyone doesn’t send up any kind of alarm about the situation. It’s all too much too fast without any build-up and it makes for an unnatural series of reactions to everything which can be slightly off-putting. Coupled with some bizarre usage of slow-motion sequences that don’t need to be done in that manner, there’s not much to dislike here.
Overview: ***/5
An overall fun if slightly flawed heavy metal horror effort, there's enough to like here that it's not a complete wasted opportunity but it does have some flaws that bring it down overall. Those that are fans of this type of genre effort, aren't bothered much by the flaws, or are just generally curious will like it the most while those that are turned off by these factors should heed caution.
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