The Principals:
Written by Trent Haaga. Directed by Marcel Sarmiento. Starring Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Segan, Michael Bowen, Candice Accola, and Jenny Spain.
“Yeah baby…” “Can you finish going to 3rd base? I have buttocks to intercept.”
The Premise: Two guys with really greasy hair skip class and go to drink in an abandoned mental facility. In the catacombs of the place they find a hidden room with a naked chick tied to a table. A dead chick covered in a plastic bag. But she’s alive! And feral! She must be a zombie or something. So she becomes an undead sperm recipient. It drives a rift between friends because as we all know, someone has to go second into that cold, gritty deadhole.
Is it Good:
It should be. But it’s not. There’s a good concept here and plenty of opportunities to get really under the skin of sexual frustration, needs, and whatnot but though there’s some frank and uncomfortable stuff they miss so many great opportunities. Two teens with a test gash and no one watching? Come on!
It doesn’t help that the filmmaking is borderline amateur hour. The look of the film, the camerawork, and the lack of vision takes what should be Cronenbergian bliss and leaves it feeling like a student film with a budget. Most of the talent isn’t impressive, though Noah Segan tries his damndest to channel Jack Torrance by way of Stephen Geoffreys.
It’s not taboo enough. Not darkly sexy enough. Doesn’t dwell on the mystique or fear involved in sexual relations. So many possibilities gone to waste.
It’s the Tiny Toons version of what a disturbing horror film would be.
Is it Worth a Look: No. And this Shiloh dude is such an empty vessel it’s a miracle he’s not in the Twilight movies.
Random Anecdotes: The many genre sites blurbed on the box ought to be ashamed of themselves. It’d had been nice to see some effort made to explain the origin of the pallid unliving fuckbody. The subject matter guarantees a hard R. Why not push it into really dark territory? I mean, it’s not like a studio contractually required an R rating.
Cinematic Soulmates: The work of Cronenberg. If Cronenberg sucked.
The End.