Director: Larissa Anzoategui
Year: 2020
Country: Brazil
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Hoping to make a name for himself, a struggling tattoo artist tries to ingratiate himself into a clique of local metalheads, hoping to find a perfect host body for an ageless demon he wants to summon, and when one of their friends is targeted, a friend group is forced to confront the demon.
Review:
On the whole, this one wasn’t too bad, but it does have its problems. One of the more likable factors is a wholly effective and simplistic setup that provides this with the kind of fun starting point for its supernatural shenanigans. Taking the early stages of the film to tell the story about the demonic succubus’ history and summoning ritual, with him studying the grimoire necessary to invoke her, and the creation of the special tattoo ink that creates a path for her to possess their bodies, creates a fun kind of starting point for this one to move within. As we learn more about the nefarious plan to resurrect her with the series of misfortunes taking place with the different customers she tattoos, as he gets closer to fulfilling his mission, this brings about a kind of burgeoning apocalyptic tale about the being released as the interactions involve the seductive images of the demon calling her into her realm.
While this is going on, the secondary storyline, about the friend group in the middle of the heavy metal community in the city who are slow to realize what’s going on but eventually realize what he’s really doing, gives this some solid fun with how they’re portrayed leading up to the final encounter. The old-school style montages set to cheesy heavy metal about going out to clubs, getting changed for the day, or training in martial arts provide a solid series of confrontations, providing a properly silly tone that matches the action of the demonic entity toying with the tattoo artist for her eventual resurrection. This comes about through some silly but still enjoyable factors involving the possessed victims attacking others around town or getting the main female demon involved in the gruesome attacks on others, getting ready for the final summoning ritual that takes place here, where the occult energy and atmosphere are filled with cheesy, low-budget gore. These all make for a likable enough time with this one.
There are some flaws holding this one down. The main issue with this one is the immensely slow first half, where the lack of action is most prominent and obvious, featuring more time on getting the storylines set up than dealing with the other genre factors present. Focusing on the demonic beings’ background and the general sense of unease the artist has around the rest of the community as he searches for the perfect host body, it hardly has much time to feature the actual genre content during this time, so it takes a while to get to the sacrifices needed to bring her back to life. When this does come about, it’s mainly in the second act where the demon finally gets a chance to do something, and with the cheesy nature of the effects giving away the low-budget origins of what’s going on, there’s a chance that the first half can be a struggle to get going. The other factor with this one is the lack of purpose to the main demon itself, who is mostly relegated to a background part of the film, with a few glimpses in the hallucinations and visions she has for little purpose until then, making for some issues here that bring it down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A rather fun demonic indie effort, there are a lot of likable factors on display here that manage to keep this one going along against a few slight drawbacks that hold it back. Those with an interest in the subject matter, who are fans of this type of indie genre fare, or who are curious about this one, will want to give it a shot, while most others out there will want to heed caution.
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