Mediatrix (Review)

Mediatrix

Mediatrix (2011)

Directed by Cory Udler

I'm pretty positive Cory Udler is not a big fan of organized religion. Udler, the mastermind behind the infamous Incest Death Squad 1 and 2, seems to wage his war on it behind the camera by satirizing the sheep and the wolves who prey on said sheep. With Mediatrix, it's front and center and mocks the mockery of all that is Christianity and it's inherit beliefs.

Mediatrix is an exploitation jab at the right wing neo-conservative religious right by inserting boobs, sex and rape to get its point across. Focusing on the devious Mary Ann who is a master manipulator on all things spiritual, she seduces the minds of the ultra stupid while challenging the status quo of a priest hell bent on exposing her.

What you end up with in Mediatrix is an odd black humor exploitation comedy that has screwball characters and a pure relentless wicked streak, similar to seeing a car crash during a funeral procession. Clearly it's messed up but oddly funny in a fucked up sort of way.

But that's not to say my fun-o-meter didn't pop up. I had a few gripes on the story, characters and overall lack of cohesiveness. There seemed to be a bit of dead air scenes and a few jokes fell flat. I wanted to see a standoff between the supposed good vs the supposed evil but you got the feeling it was going to be a one sided affair.

But as atheists would say, you play with fire you're gonna get burned. (Hmmm I'm not sure atheists would actually say that)


Boring Plot-O-Matic

It is the story of Mary Ann Van Hook-false spiritualist who parlays her manipulation skills into wealth, power and even her own cult of followers.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

We meet Mary Ann (Paula Duerksen) who raised by a stereotypical spiritual mom rebels by being the town bicycle. Clearly mom and daughter are scam artists de jour but Mary Ann it seems to ACTUALLY have a phone connection to the Virgin Mary (Shannon Lark). When she meets Carrie (Kaylee Williams from 3 Slices of Life) and her husband Will Brackett, they become an easy mark for our spiritual medium. Soon she's using her "assets" to seduce up Mr. Brackett and his associates all while stealing the pastor's congregation. All this leads to a showdown with said pastor.

Mediatrix feels like an extension of IDS with some usual actors back and some new ones in the mix. It has a sense of wacky and can't really be called a horror movie but more of an exploitation attack on how the gullible become gulled. Udler has always hovered his movies in a weird in between place of realistic wickedness and black humor oddity. This has the same feel. It has an indie quirkiness but also falls victim to not knowing what it should be.

It has elements of a black comedy but also seems to be hell bent on being a mish mash of other genres as well. Mary Ann, a tatted up, foul moth, druggie seems to hard to believe. She's a wolf in wolf's clothing yet the sheep are all convinced her spirituality is from the divine. I really didn't buy it. So many religions, especially evangelical Christianity could have been easily mocked and satirized but somehow it doesn't come out very well in Mediatrix. I was hoping to see a punk rock/death metal version of Book of Mormon.

The actors all seem to play heightened crazies. Duerksen gives a glimpse of her goods as the head crazy and does a good job in the role. It'd be nice to see Lark in a lead role as she has a scream queen persona to carry a movie. Udler regulars Matt Ukena, Scott Rawson and Tom Lodewyck also make appearances. Having remembered Williams from Slices of Life, she plays a very convincing sheep.

Mediatrix has fire of wrath vibes to it and has a feel of raw energy that most movies would be afraid to cover. But it also isn't as polished and straightforwardly wicked as Udler's previous Incest Death Squad 2. It's however fueled with an indie DIY spirit that oozes of Americana fuckedupness. For that I'm giving it 2 Hallelujahs.

Gore-ipedia

Head butting

Nude-ipedia

Main character boobies

WTF moment

So the Virgin Mary is a hot coked up punk rock girl?

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Mediatrix is now out on DVD. The DVD has a Behind the Scenes and a trailer on it as well. Head over to the official site, Facebook group and follow on Twitter.

Rating:


Check out the trailer!

Categories: exploitation, exploitation film, incest death squad, incest death squad 2, indie film, indie horror, mediatrix, religious cult

WTF Films: Subconscious Cruelty

I've documented how my horror persona "the jaded viewer" came to be. With posts about the 5 Horror Movies that shaped my horror psyche and 5 websites that inspired this site, its a little glimpse into how the jaded viewer became jaded. The fact that I did a bit of horror trading back in the day has indeed made me witness some of the worst the best and the WTF of horror films.

But I'm going old school here. Some of you have heard of Subconscious Cruelty. Others have not. But if you have seen this visual mind fuck, you know where I'm going.

So introducing yet another ongoing feature, I bring you WTF Films. Films that are waaaaaaaaay over the edge when it comes to extreme underground horror.

Directed by Karim Hussain and produced by Mitch Davis, Subconscious Cruelty isn't an actual story driven movie but more of vignettes that make you question your morality. Truly one of the first shock movies of the 90s and early 00's, its there to obliterate your senses with scenes of full frontal nudity, deviant sex, masturbation, cannibalism and religious defamation.

Plus there is lots of bodily fluids oozing all over the fuckin place. Wanna see what I mean? Check out the clips below (OBVIOUSLY NSFW!)


Here is a weird Japanese trailer of the flick. Hahaha. I like how they compare it to David Lynch and David Cronenberg. It's a little more extreme than that dude.





Here's a couple of scenes of nekkidness and cannibalism and religious fuckedupness.




Not sick yet? Wanna see what they came up with for a birth of a baby scene No? C'mon yeah you do you fucked up mental case you.




I'm not saying it's good or bad, but you do start to wince quite a bit after watching the whole 92 min film. I mean even the clips above are quite gruesome and sickening. Sure it could all be artsy fartsy and avante garde. Showing tons of taboo shit in a film while narrating with Bad Religion like lyrics may be "intellectual" and metaphoric to some. Others will find it just a pile of heaping, smelly shit.

Who knows what the hell Karim Hussain was smoking back in 99. All I know is I remember this film for pushing me beyond what I could take visually in a "horror" film. Insano Steve and I always tried to go over the edge with our horror resume by searching and eventually seeing the supposed craziest, weirdest most fucked up shit possible.

Subconscious Cruelty was one of the first and most memorable.

Categories: avante garde, cult classic, cult horror, exploitation, exploitation film, grindhouse, indepentent horror, indie horror, religious cult, subconscious cruelty, wtf films

End of the Line (Review)

End of the Line

End of the Line (2006)

Directed by Maurice Devereaux

I think I found the new trend in horror movies. Not zombies, or remakes or something French. Nope.

It's horror movies that take place on a train.

Mark my words. 2009 will be filled with killers on trains that attack people.

We've already got a taste of it with The Midnight Meat Train and a few others are coming out like Train and Stag Night.

So it's important I get on the bandwagon and watch this new trend in it's infancy.

Hence, I watched a Canadian horror machine called End of the Line, a very awesome flick that will probably be the instigator of this new sub genre's progeny.

2 minutes in I was flinching from some quick scares. Seriously. I actually got scared and I don't scare easily. When you're a jaded viewer like me, this is very hard to do.

But End of the Line, opens freakin strong, blasts some WTF, adds in some serious bloody splatter and ends with a whimper (it's only drawback).

End of the Line is high velocity fun, stopping at the right moments for scares and gore that it's destined to be a cult classic for the 21st century.

I wish it kept going.

Boring Plot-O-Matic (from the official site)

In this unsettling and creepy thriller, Karen (Ilona Elkin), a young nurse who works in a psychiatric ward, boards the last subway train of the night only to have it stop suddenly in the middle of the tunnel. As those around her are brutally murdered, Karen and a handful of survivors must face supernatural forces, homicidal religious cult members, as well as their own fears and suspicions of Armageddon, in order to survive.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

The quick cut to something frightening is a staple in horror films. And the first half hour is filled with suspense and goosbumpy madness. You know director Maurice Devereaux wants you to jump out of your seat by creating some quick glimpses of the scary. And he does this by establishing the life of our main final girl Karen.

But it's the train that's the other "character" we have to get use to in this vague Canadian city that has some a metro. If you live in a city with a subway or transit system and have taken the train late at night, there's a little bit of you that's screaming "I'm fuckin scared".

End of the Line taps that piece and doesn't let go.

The train stops mid-ride and we get intro-ed into the many passengers who will turn out to be our Scooby Gang vent on survival.

We've got:

1.) Final Girl Karen
2.) Hipster Mike
3.) Jock Neil
4.) Guido Mike
5.) Virgin Sarah
6.) Raver Julie

It's an eclectic group of ordinaries that now have to be all Kill Bill in order to survive the night. Nobody stuck out as somebody I could root for and cared about. They were all designed to be slightly lovable and turned into cult corpse fodder.

Oh. Did I mention there was a killer cult from God on this train too?

And that's the middle of the movie. After the cult gets a message on their beepers (they still have those?) they get all slaughtery and start attacking and killing everybody on the train.

The scenes are utterly brutal, as they go all stabby with their crucifixes that turn into knives.

As our gang runs like hell, they meet up with some transit workers and work out a plan and explain motive and yada yada yada.

The cult members (in matching uni's) are a cross between a David Koresh imitation and some Christian conservative, Republican carnies. The brainwashed citizens are insane as they believe all should be "saved".

The kill scenes are savage. Some OJ multiple stabs, throat slashing, a sword head decap and 1 that even made me cringe.

The cult take one of their own and multiple stab a 3rd trimester pregnant woman and her husband. The scene concludes as they lay the newborn with their parents, with the infant semi moving. Wow. On the fucked up scale, that went off the charts.

More chasing and huffing and puffing and a few more axes to the head. Even kids went all mental and tried to kill our scoobies. Wow, there was more kid and infant-cide in this flick than I thought I would see.

The negatives are clearly nitpicks but took away that 1 extra spinkick that would have made this into the spinkick HOF. The movie's premise hinted on the supernatural, then steered me towards some cult crazies then went back to demonology. I wasn't sure if the vagueness of it all was thought bubbled intentional.

I wanted it to stick with just being about some fundamentalist cult crazies but it went waaaaay off which kinda made me say "Huh?". This is further amplified by the ending which was a blah huh.

Add in the fact that our final girl was sorta hot, kicked some ass in the end but her personality needed a total recall. I mean all the characters did.

One of the evil cult baddies was a sexual pervert serial semi rapist. He added some ha ha's and some evilness but just didn't look menacing to make me want this revenge served cold.

End of the Line is the Canadian version of The Midnight Meat Train (which took home the #2 spot on my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2008). As I'm not sure what year this falls into (06 or 07 or 08) it would have definitely made my top 10.

The vagueness of the chaos that erupted and characterology was my only double fault but everything else was super awesome terrific.

I am putting End of the Line posthumously as one of the top horror films of 2008 or 07 or 06.

Now stand clear of the closing doors.



Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)

Multiple Stabbings
Throat slashing
Sword Head decap (gorehounds rejoice!)
Pregnant woman stabbings
Infanti-cide
Kid-icide
Ax to the head
Hammer to the head
Lip biting
Knife to the head

Nude-ipedia (because you like boobies)

Some boobie cleavage

WTF moment

Infant-cide

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

I forgot to mention that the Canadians are rivalring the French, Aussies and Brits in ushering the new wave of kick ass horror. Maurice Deveraux also directed the straight to DVD Slashers (a reality game show horror movie) which I vaguely remember watching.

It'll be interesting to see what he does next.

If movies like End of the Line is whats to come from him, I say "All Aboard!"

Rating:
Check out the trailer below.





Tags:
end of the line, end of the line review , canadian horror , end of the line trailer, gratuitous nudity, religious cult horror movies train

Categories: canadian horror, cult horror, end of the line, end of the line review, end of the line trailer, Maurice Devereaux, religious cult, the midnight meat train, toronto after dark film festival