Kolobos (1999)

Rating: D-

Dir: Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk
Star: Amy Weber, Donny Terranova, Nicole Pelerine, Ilia Volok

Inexplicably, there are some good reviews of this on the Net – for which I’m actually grateful, as it’ll make it easier for me to sell my copy on Ebay [bid high, bid early!] For all you get here is the usual disparate bunch of wannabes who agree to be locked up in a house, Big Brother style, and are offed at irregular intervals, in ways which echo the artistic creations of the least mentally stable (Weber). It’s all very derivative – the navel-gazing discussion of bad horror movies as in Scream, the contrived lock-in from House on Haunted Hill and even the soundtrack that seems to be random eight-bar sections from Argento movies, spliced together. The lack of actual explanation as to what is actually happening is rather Argentoesque too, but there’s not the same sense of visual style to distract you – or, if the truth be told, prevent you from nodding off.

It’s nice that the directors deliberately set out to create unpleasant characters, which makes a change from the usually accidentally annoying ones, and also amusing to see ex-scream queen Linnea Quigley in a cameo, mercifully keeping her clothes on. That, unfortunately, is where the originality seems to expire, and when all the participants are mad, bad or dangerous to know, you cease to care. They seemed to be aiming to replicate some kind of nightmare, and if truth be told, there is a dreamlike quality to much of this. Certainly, you may find yourself waking up – only to find the movie still playing…