Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

41st Kill

So, I guess I know what movie the writers of Fortitude were watching in 2009, then. And it clearly made an impression.

There's something borderline amateurish to the way this film has been shot and assembled by its director, Mark A. Lewis, but I feel it somehow manages to stay just on the right side of competent. There's a little sluggishness to the editing, a little awkwardness to the acting, but it just about scrapes through. And although it starts a little lethargically, I have to say, I became morbidly engrossed in this thing. I started a bit like this, but then I started to feel this way, which developed into this until eventually I descended into a state of mind not a million miles away from this.

OK, there is some slightly dodgy CGI here, and I really wish horror movies with killer bugs would resist the urge to give their creatures high-pitched squeaking noises, because everyone knows bugs are most terrifying as a silent, crawling menace. You feel them as a tickle on your skin, you don't hear them coming down the hall. For some reason, they have to describe them as "vertebrates" which is just distracting - I'm not sure what added horror value we get out of these things inexplicably possessing a backbone. But despite all that, the film benefits from an incredibly stripped down narrative and what is actually a pretty simple monster premise. They're creepy, they're parasitic, they lay eggs in you and then they eat you from the inside. It's not hugely original, but it's still just about the most disgustingly horrifying thing any mind can contemplate, so it'll do just fine.

Quite how someone of Val Kilmer's prodigious talent and industry stature found themselves in a film like this I have no idea. He's not in it much, but even so, he has this ability to portray a character reading a prepared statement in a way which makes it completely compelling, in what seems like an almost instinctively, effortless way. The film gets about ten million bucks of production value just from his part-time presence.

I can see why many might find this a little light on both substance and style, but I was impressed with its stripped-down suspensefulness. And it really does take you to some icky places.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

The illness these bugs cause tends not to result in very spectacular looking deaths, as the creatures only start to emerge once their host has died, but there is a moment where the victim emits a truly disgusting sludge from their mouths which has the exact colour of poo, and that's unspeakable on its own. But I want to make mention of a pretty amazing arm severing scene here which is not really a kill at all, but it sure is fucking horrible to look at.