Look no further at this end of 2013 and into 2014 for great horror.
Act One: Despair.
Kicking off with a couple having sex, Thanatomorphose deals with a female who's body starts to fall apart. There is little dialogue, but the effectiveness of the claustrophobic shots are excellent with everyday scenes of life taking on a new twist. This is director Éric Falardeaus first movie so if there's more of this to come, count me in.
The bodily breakdown begins with a bruise and two fingernails falling out, with the use of nudity in the movie adding interesting reality to the proceedings. What looks like, a damp patch growing on the bedroom ceiling echoes the slowly decaying state of the girls body.
After a house party things start to progress, the girl wakes up being sick on her partner in the night. Her body now covered in bruises, he leaves her alone. Later a friend appears offering to take her to the hospital but she makes an advance resulting in her giving him oral sex. She's seen spitting out the semen, and as she stands up her excrement runs down her leg, obviously losing control of her bowels. She crawls to her bed where a dream scene commences with her seeing her partner cut pieces from her flesh and throw it to both males in her life who fight over it in a cage.
Act Two: Another
Next day she wakes up and goes to the bathroom to get herself ready for work. For a second I found this scene kinda moving, how she looks a mess, but still tries to continue being herself. It's obvious that something is physically wrong with her, but psychologically she's struggling with where her life is going too. She goes back to the bedroom, crying, and realizing she can't fix her face today sits on her bed, where we see her insert a finger into a hole in the back of her head.
The patch on the ceiling now is a big black, mildewed mass, and as she lies on the bed and scratches her vagina, we see blood run through the bedsheets. After another short sleep, and sunlight coming into the room, we're shown the temperature in her flat is over 30C (which in many ways confirms the nakedness). She then gets some ice cubes and throws them into a cold bath and climbs in to cool down (maggots seen crawling all over her body).
Afterwards, she brings out a sculpture she's been trying to finish, and as she presses into the clay one of her fingers breaks off and she tries to stick it back on again. She eventually puts the finger in a jar with some alcohol, taking a Polaroid picture and writing down the date of the dodgy digits demise. She then tries to superglue her fingernails back on and puts some stitches into her remaining fingers to make them last longer. It's a cut then to what happened to her boyfriend.
She's seen on the bed masturbating and flashbacks show her remembering how her boyfriend had come back to the house. He lets himself in, and finds her in the shower where, through the shower curtain, she asks him to touch her (trying to hide her condition) but he calls her a whore so she comes out and smashes him on the head, over and over, killing him. We then see that he's been lying in the kitchen for a while already, rotten, and covered in maggots too. During this process her arm breaks off so she has to stick it back on with duct tape, and a loose ear gets put in one of the alcohol jars. Shes then seen trying to remove her infestation of bodily maggots with a pair of tweezers. Flies buzz incessantly now in the background. At the end of this second act we get to see in shocking fashion her eyes are now milky cataracts as she stares creepily at the camera. This is a pretty effective shot.
Act Three: Oneself.
After a phonecall to the guy she gave oral sex to, he arrives at the flat to the stench all around him. He finds her black, and oozing on the bed where she asks him to have sex again "what, you don't find me attractive anymore?" (she asks shuffling to the door). He refuses saying she needs to go to the hospital, so she lunges at him stabbing him repeatedly, killing him. From here she goes back to her sculpture which falls to the floor breaking apart, her lungs wheeze as she screams in anger while a glass jar falls from the shelf, with one of her ears falling out, she reaches up in despair and jabs her thumbnails into her eyesockets puncturing both her eyeballs while dropping to the floor.
Her hair has now completely gone and she crawls along the floor, blind, squishy, squilchy, as those fly sounds get louder, louder, and LOUDER. She can crawl no further, stopping, her flesh drips and drops to the floor like strawberry jam. Her rib cage becomes exposed as her body tries to rise a final time, an ear piercing scream coming from her mouth as her lower jaw breaks off and falls to the ground. The camera pulls back as we see her final resting place in the bloodied hallway of her home now. The fly noise lowers to a hush...
Conclusion:
For a first directorial feature Thanatomorphose is extremely memorable and an awesome horror work. The vocal parts (of which there aren't many) could be a little tighter, but it pleases me no end that there are folks out there who aren't aiming for bums on seats in the brainwashed houses of multiplexes. Just as the music charts say nothing about good music, the cinema says nothing about good movies. Listen up!
Act One: Despair.
Kicking off with a couple having sex, Thanatomorphose deals with a female who's body starts to fall apart. There is little dialogue, but the effectiveness of the claustrophobic shots are excellent with everyday scenes of life taking on a new twist. This is director Éric Falardeaus first movie so if there's more of this to come, count me in.
The bodily breakdown begins with a bruise and two fingernails falling out, with the use of nudity in the movie adding interesting reality to the proceedings. What looks like, a damp patch growing on the bedroom ceiling echoes the slowly decaying state of the girls body.
After a house party things start to progress, the girl wakes up being sick on her partner in the night. Her body now covered in bruises, he leaves her alone. Later a friend appears offering to take her to the hospital but she makes an advance resulting in her giving him oral sex. She's seen spitting out the semen, and as she stands up her excrement runs down her leg, obviously losing control of her bowels. She crawls to her bed where a dream scene commences with her seeing her partner cut pieces from her flesh and throw it to both males in her life who fight over it in a cage.
Act Two: Another
Next day she wakes up and goes to the bathroom to get herself ready for work. For a second I found this scene kinda moving, how she looks a mess, but still tries to continue being herself. It's obvious that something is physically wrong with her, but psychologically she's struggling with where her life is going too. She goes back to the bedroom, crying, and realizing she can't fix her face today sits on her bed, where we see her insert a finger into a hole in the back of her head.
The patch on the ceiling now is a big black, mildewed mass, and as she lies on the bed and scratches her vagina, we see blood run through the bedsheets. After another short sleep, and sunlight coming into the room, we're shown the temperature in her flat is over 30C (which in many ways confirms the nakedness). She then gets some ice cubes and throws them into a cold bath and climbs in to cool down (maggots seen crawling all over her body).
Afterwards, she brings out a sculpture she's been trying to finish, and as she presses into the clay one of her fingers breaks off and she tries to stick it back on again. She eventually puts the finger in a jar with some alcohol, taking a Polaroid picture and writing down the date of the dodgy digits demise. She then tries to superglue her fingernails back on and puts some stitches into her remaining fingers to make them last longer. It's a cut then to what happened to her boyfriend.
She's seen on the bed masturbating and flashbacks show her remembering how her boyfriend had come back to the house. He lets himself in, and finds her in the shower where, through the shower curtain, she asks him to touch her (trying to hide her condition) but he calls her a whore so she comes out and smashes him on the head, over and over, killing him. We then see that he's been lying in the kitchen for a while already, rotten, and covered in maggots too. During this process her arm breaks off so she has to stick it back on with duct tape, and a loose ear gets put in one of the alcohol jars. Shes then seen trying to remove her infestation of bodily maggots with a pair of tweezers. Flies buzz incessantly now in the background. At the end of this second act we get to see in shocking fashion her eyes are now milky cataracts as she stares creepily at the camera. This is a pretty effective shot.
Act Three: Oneself.
After a phonecall to the guy she gave oral sex to, he arrives at the flat to the stench all around him. He finds her black, and oozing on the bed where she asks him to have sex again "what, you don't find me attractive anymore?" (she asks shuffling to the door). He refuses saying she needs to go to the hospital, so she lunges at him stabbing him repeatedly, killing him. From here she goes back to her sculpture which falls to the floor breaking apart, her lungs wheeze as she screams in anger while a glass jar falls from the shelf, with one of her ears falling out, she reaches up in despair and jabs her thumbnails into her eyesockets puncturing both her eyeballs while dropping to the floor.
Her hair has now completely gone and she crawls along the floor, blind, squishy, squilchy, as those fly sounds get louder, louder, and LOUDER. She can crawl no further, stopping, her flesh drips and drops to the floor like strawberry jam. Her rib cage becomes exposed as her body tries to rise a final time, an ear piercing scream coming from her mouth as her lower jaw breaks off and falls to the ground. The camera pulls back as we see her final resting place in the bloodied hallway of her home now. The fly noise lowers to a hush...
Conclusion:
For a first directorial feature Thanatomorphose is extremely memorable and an awesome horror work. The vocal parts (of which there aren't many) could be a little tighter, but it pleases me no end that there are folks out there who aren't aiming for bums on seats in the brainwashed houses of multiplexes. Just as the music charts say nothing about good music, the cinema says nothing about good movies. Listen up!