VEROTIKA (2020)

 

Written & Directed By: Glenn Danzig  Cinematography: David Newbert  Editor: Brian Cox 

Cast: Sean Kannan, Ashley Wisdom, Alice Tate, Kayden Kross, Natalia Borowsky, Kansas Bowling, Rachel Alig

Follows the surreal and bloody trilogy of erotic horror stories culled from Danzig's comic.

Wow!!! I was warned about this film beforehand, but I couldn’t really have expected this. For some people, they will love this film for how bad it is. Nothing truly prepares you for this film. 

Where you have to wonder was it planned this way. As it is hard to take anything seriously. Though that might sound like fun. This is a movie that is not fun to sit through at all. Unless maybe you are just into seeing onscreen nudity. As very little throughout this movie makes any sense.

All the women in most of the roles look like professional topless or naked models. Other than making the film overtly sexual at all times 

In the first story for instance the main female has eyeballs where her nipples are why? As it is never explained and then somehow the albino spider becomes human-sized and then proceeds to murder women for no reason. He is obviously in a latex suit that looks like a bad Halloween costume. Though only strikes when the lead female goes to sleep. 

Every character in this first story has a foreign accent for no real reason and they come off as sex objects mroe than characters. As they are all scantily clad for little to no reason. 

The acting is horrible throughout like in an acting class. The bad dialogue doesn’t really help even when it includes it’s influences with many scenes where the camera just stays and lingers and the characters awkwardly stand around really doing nothing or their last action over again such as a head shake. 

There is a TV reporter who is dressed more like a private detective in the first story. Just as to why in the first story does the lead female go to a porno theater and photoshoot after her roommate is murdered. Then while at the porno theater falls asleep and is groped and nearly raped and once she wakes up just gives the guys a nasty look.

Throughout the film women are the only ones killed. Most of the characters wear wigs for no real reason. 

The film Has modern touches but an old school culture and scenery like the third last tale which is basically the tale of Elizabeth Bathory who believed that by bathing in the blood of virgins she would stay looking young forever and that is exactly what happens in the third story she picks her victims strip them (young women) then bathed in their blood in what feels like real-time. Then will slice open a throat and there to get blood sprayed on her face that is the whole story.

Any lack of nudity in the first story is supplanted in the second and third stories. Only in the second, we get another, what feels like real-time, dedicated to watching strippers do routines in a club That looks almost like a huge basement. 

This is the only segment of the film that feels serious as it is a thriller about a stripper who cuts off faces to put on her wall because she is disfigured and wears a mask when she performs. This is also one of the only segments with an actor of note Sean Kanan from KARATE KID 3 playing the detective on the case. 

I can understand this film is supposed to be more inspired by gothic old-school macabre horror anthologies but it comes across as more ridiculous than inspired. Even the first scene where we are introduced to our host seems there more to shock than to make sense.

The film is low budget and you can tell as it comes across more like a failed student film. This feels like a modern-day Ed Wood movie.

The tales don’t offer a moral or any kind of irony and definitely no twists but they leave room for the anthology host to make ghastly bad joke punchlines for the endings and not even deliver that creatively 

The only reason I could even see this film truly getting financed and recognized is that rock star Glenn Danzig directed it and seems to price the soundtrack. 

Even at 90 minutes, this film feels indulgent. It’s not even the type of film you can have fun picking apart. This movie isn’t fun to watch or sit through. This is one of the worst films I have seen this year and maybe one of the worst ever 

Grade: F