It seems that After Dark decided to distribute a film that was in that "so bad it's funny" category, worthy of MST3K-style commentary throughout. In fact, that's really the only way I'd recommend watching this film, because anything else will lead to utter disappointment. This movie starts off featuring Ellen, a woman who receives an African mask of a fertility deity she ordered to help her and her husband with their sex life, only it looks nothing like what she expected—a all-too- classic devil/demon looking face, which she insists leads to an actual demon taking over her body and mind (and haunting her dreams). Her husband, Bill (an Antonio Banderas knock-off), is driving her to have her committed to a mental hospital, when the car runs out of gas in a remote location. He goes off to get more gas, leaving her alone to see that this demon is in the woods where the car stalled and is actually after her. It pursues her to a house where four young adults are having a small party, and people start dying.
There's so much I wasn't expecting from this film (due to the level of professional cinema making I've come to expect from the movies distributed by After Dark) that I was already disappointed three minutes in. The camera quality is no better than a mid-grade porno and the acting and scriptwriting are no better. There's pretty much no exposition whatsoever—no character building to see Ellen's decline from a simple married woman to a possessed psychotic/schizophrenic, so don't expect to feel any sort of connection or sympathy for her...or any other character, for that matter. The editing, the blood-and-gore effects, the music—it's all pretty cheap. Even the demon mask itself looks like a cheap plastic mask you could find in any Halloween or general costume shop with a "Made in Taiwan" sticker on the back.
Even the "twist" an hour in is something I saw coming...but, admittedly, the second twist a short while later was sort of a saving grace for the film (if you can even think of it that way). In fact, the last 15-or-so minutes had me reminiscing a little of "Evil Dead." Perhaps that's the sort of cheesy, hokey mood of horror film making these people were out to accomplish. It's just about as cheap, if you factor in the difference of years between the two films. So, if you're really in the mood to watch something that's so bad that's it becomes all too easy to make fun of it during the entire ride, you could give "Nightmare Man" a try. There might be better films to suit that style of MST3K "horror," but I don't normally go in for such flicks myself, to be honest. Of course, if you're looking for an actually well-made scary movie to truly unsettle and disturb you, avoid this like the plague.
There's so much I wasn't expecting from this film (due to the level of professional cinema making I've come to expect from the movies distributed by After Dark) that I was already disappointed three minutes in. The camera quality is no better than a mid-grade porno and the acting and scriptwriting are no better. There's pretty much no exposition whatsoever—no character building to see Ellen's decline from a simple married woman to a possessed psychotic/schizophrenic, so don't expect to feel any sort of connection or sympathy for her...or any other character, for that matter. The editing, the blood-and-gore effects, the music—it's all pretty cheap. Even the demon mask itself looks like a cheap plastic mask you could find in any Halloween or general costume shop with a "Made in Taiwan" sticker on the back.
Even the "twist" an hour in is something I saw coming...but, admittedly, the second twist a short while later was sort of a saving grace for the film (if you can even think of it that way). In fact, the last 15-or-so minutes had me reminiscing a little of "Evil Dead." Perhaps that's the sort of cheesy, hokey mood of horror film making these people were out to accomplish. It's just about as cheap, if you factor in the difference of years between the two films. So, if you're really in the mood to watch something that's so bad that's it becomes all too easy to make fun of it during the entire ride, you could give "Nightmare Man" a try. There might be better films to suit that style of MST3K "horror," but I don't normally go in for such flicks myself, to be honest. Of course, if you're looking for an actually well-made scary movie to truly unsettle and disturb you, avoid this like the plague.
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