DVD Review: Where the Dead go to Die

The animation reminds me of a Nintendo DS game

The Humans

Written, Directed and Animated by Jimmy Screamerclauz Voices by Ruby Larocca, Brandon Slagle, Joey Smack, Victor Bonacore, Meatsock, Passenger of Shit

The Nutshell

Where the Dead Go To Die“” revolves around a troubled group of children living on the same block. They are haunted by a talking dog named Labby who brings them on surreal hell-rides between different dimensions and time periods. On the night of a lunar eclipse he informs Tommy about the devil fetus living inside his mother. The same night he attempts to help Ralph court the girl across the street, who is an unwilling participant in her father’s child porn tape trading ring. Add in a memory stealing junkie living inside an abandoned church and you have 90 minutes of pure mind melting insanity!

The Lowdown

I don’t even know where to begin with this. I should start by saying I am not easily offended. The movie everyone always talks about is Human Centipede, which I saw and even though it wasn’t a great film, the shock value didn’t inhibit my viewing of it. I’ve watched Salo and Cannibal Holocaust just because they were supposed to be that bad, and once again I felt the films were somewhat boring, but still didn’t feel compelled to turn it off. A Serbian Film‘s worst scene was so fake and overdone, it was almost comedic to me. I am a sick person that doesn’t flinch much with questionable material.

Man’s best friend. No child support now.

I gave the big personal song and dance so I could finally get to reviewing this movie and giving a basis to the degree of perverse and extreme sadism involved in the anthology Where the Dead Go to Die. There is an abortion and castration done with a dog, a father directing his little pre-teen girl in porn and a kid with a second face growing off of his attempting to remove the conjoined face with a broken bottle just to name a few of the extremes. The grossouts aside, this film was not interesting. Most of the dialogue was spoken to match the speed of the animation, which made each word seemed to stand by itself. Most of the inflection used speaking were a hushed almost whisper. The dog character uniquely named Labby, I think was supposed to represent the devil and spoke all of his lines wrapped between panting breaths.

The stories in the anthology were titled Tainted Milk, Liquid Memories and The Masks that Monsters Wear. The first was tried to tell where babies come from, the second was about a guy that would kill someone and steal their memories (this was at least a cool concept) and the last about the conjoined face child.

Two faces are better that one?

The graphics were not very detailed. They had some cool concepts, and sometimes used real images (eyes) layered on the animations. They used a Kinect to capture movement and then turned it into the final image. The problem was the lack of definition. Most images appeared to be from older Playstation 1 or 2 games. Definitely not the quality of motion pictures or even the modern age of consoles. The colors used were mostly dark hues of red and blue, allowing for dismal settings and a dark atmosphere.

I had lost interest before we ever got the first display of extreme violence, and never returned. I personally believe that graphic violence can be used to enhance a story, but generally cannot carry the story alone. I feel this was an exceptionally long (the 95 minutes seemed more like 4 hours) waste of my time. There was not redeeming grace feature in it.

The Package
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The most entertaining segment was watching these two play Dance Central

The first thing I had watched on the DVD was the Kinect Motion Capture Madness, which just stunned me that I was about to watch a movie done with an xbox Kinect. Unfortunately, that was the brightest spot of the entire DVD, including the movie itself. The Ice Cream Sunday short was an appalling live action short telling of a priest who either molested or just idolized molesting a young boy mixed with rosary beads covered in period blood and topped with a hippie suicide. The deleted footage added nothing.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars