Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.
Until the release of the Lord of the Rings films, I had no idea that New Zealand even had a film industry. I mean, I know they did because there’s a national cinema everywhere, but I was relatively unaware of films from New Zealand. In my defense, if you look up New Zealand film, there aren’t a whole ton produced there until relatively recently, which is odd considering the fantastic landscape a filmmaker has to work with. I was unaware that then 1997 film The Ugly was a Kiwi film. Of course, until I located the Fangoria list, I didn’t know this film existed at all.
This is an odd little number of a film. It wants desperately to be a real horror movie, but had evidently very little budget, and so used some worn down locations for filming and made use of what make up and special effects it could to get the point across. It feels very much like a freshman effort, a film that has a few good ideas and a nice film school trick or two, but doesn’t have the complex plotting or pacing of a more experienced director and writer. As it turns out, it is the debut full-length writing and directing credit for Scott Reynolds.
