Archeologists find a skull mask while on a dig in the Amazon. When the woman in charge brings it home, her girlfriend uses it as part of an ancient black magic ritual, which naturally goes horribly wrong (or horribly right depending on how you look at things) and they both wind up dead. Before you know it, the skull attaches itself to a beefy guy and makes him run around the city ripping people’s hearts (and guts) out. It then falls on a tough but crooked cop named Beatriz (Natallia Rodrigues, who kind of looks like Rebecca Ferguson a little) to stop it.
Skull: The Mask is a bizarre action/horror hybrid that is a gory good time. Parts of it kind of reminded me of Evil Dead and Dead-Alive (especially the scene with the preacher). Even then, it manages to feel fresh and original.
The old school gore effects will be the main draw for many viewers. In addition to all the heart and gut ripping our titular killer does, he also strangles a guy with his girlfriend’s guts, rips out throats, hacks off faces, and crushes heads. The standout scene of carnage comes when the skull man shows up to a Halloween costume unnoticed and mows down several partygoers in gruesome ways. Another memorable bit occurs when a woman is murdered in a pool of blood while wearing a T-shirt of the shower scene in Psycho with Janet Leigh.
The action and fight scenes offer a mixture of Kung Fu and Saturday Night Wrestling maneuvers. I lost count of how many times the killer choke-slammed his victims. (That’s a good thing.) The trippy cosmic hallucination sequences are pretty cool too.
After somewhat of a slow start, things really sizzle once the mask finds its host. Then, it’s off to the races. I mean, not only does it feature a badass slasher, it also contains some shit I’ve never seen before (including a guy dressing his bullet wound with a tampon). Who could ask for anything more?
No comments:
Post a Comment