Film Reviews:

Kolobos

(Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk, US, 1999)

Notwithstanding the excellent and enticing video sleeve cover, the only unusual thing about Kolobos are the directors surnames. This is a straight forward teen horror body count movie, set in a house of no escape - filled with booby traps.

As soon as the daft set up is out of the way (I won't bore you with the details) the teens start screaming and dying in the expected and predictable manner they did twenty years ago when the genre was invented. Attempts at post-Scream, post modernism by having the teens watch one of their number starring in a series of low-budget horror videos are just plain unimaginative. In many ways, I'd rather have watched the videos they were watching than this stuff, although there are a handful of (reasonably explicit) gore moments to keep the blood hounds interested.

The only real thing in this film's favour is its totally delirious and incomprehensible direction and screenplay. Not only is there absolutely no explanation for how the house is filled with bizarre and deadly traps (laser beam trip 'wires' triggering circular blades flying out of kitchen cabinets - I kid you not!), but the characters (and plot) display little or no logic at all, and for some unknown reason when there is a death the lighting inside the house resembles an illegal rave more than it does your typical suburban household at 7.30 in the evening. But then I guess this isn't your typical suburban household. Suggestions that the only survivor may have imagined the whole thing is simply a lame excuse for the lazy writing. "What the fuck was that?" asks one of the characters at one point. At the end of this (thankfully brief 82 minutes) I was asking myself pretty much the same thing.

Rob Dyer