Necromentia is a nice little underground horror movie that is taking a bow for Clive Barkers mighty Hellraiser. The basic concept of people fiddling with the occult to take a peek into the beyond (except for here they don't use a Rubik's cube but rather S/M body carving and occult symbols), the music, the demons with the hooks and chains on their faces... I guess its pretty obvious. Anyway, Necromentia is not a plain rip-off. It deals with the fate of 3 different characters whose fates are connected as you understand by the end of the movie which is kind of told in a reverse fashion. The movie is rather slow but tends to break out into some gory face bashing and twisted body-modification stuff. The visuals are gritty and green-tinted like in so many movies nowadays but the look of the movie is pretty cool. There is also some pretty twisted scenes here like the fore-mentioned S/M carvings (which in one scene start like your typical torture porn just to turn out to be a chick paying to get cut up by some kind of male fetish dominatrix) or a demon with a pig mask seducing people to commit suicide. The whole setup of these scenes is really great, so I was rather disappointed to see hell and its demons presented in such a low-tech fashion. Basically all hell visions are filmed in a dark corridor with steam pipes. In the beginning it works and the eerie feeling of the flickering lights looks great until you see every demon in this setting. The demons are pretty straight and often remind of a Marilyn Manson Video with gas masks and all the typical gimmicks... nothing special except for one which looks really messed up.
There is really some potential here but the way they presented the core of the movie, which is hell, as well as the plot that pretty much leads nowhere are a real let down. So the interesting story telling devices and visual are just not enough to get Necromentia above the average.
