Folklore horror from Thailand, "LIZARD WOMAN" gives you a bit of everything; flesh tearing geckos, ghosts, gecko spirits, possessed reptilian transformations, corpses, cursed artifact, blood puking, ritual exorcism ceremony and a lot of lizard poop. Sounds wild, doesn't it? It had its moments, few brutal inflictions, strange developments and a couple of eerie scenes involving the lizard woman.
The style felt largely Western than Eastern in its influences and set-up. Too bad the execution, while slick and filtered with an earthy color scheme, is beyond generic and a plot that's so incomprehensible leading to a reveal that at first simply makes you roll your eyes before the head scratching commences. Hard to understand why they went that lazy direction, but it did explain the jumpiness of certain (although not all) out-of-the-blue scenes to how they tied in to each other. Still making sense of it is another matter.
The first and third acts involving scurrying geckos, a haunted shack and the surrounding forest with night time mist are where the fun and insanity asides. More times than most it does come across laughable than truly threatening. I would say the geckos would have a lot to do with that. A mesh of real geckos alongside rubber toys and even at one stage a hand puppet, but the most prominent; shoddy CGI and this includes gore FX too. While those pesky CGI geckos popping up everywhere look cute, at least the visuals around the lizard woman unnerves, from her appearance to the mimicking movements of a lizard. Treated seriously, be it from its technical handling to its screenplay and lead performances. I just wished it had stayed consistently crazy and simple, as when it does it works. Instead of a structure trying to finesse its b-grade origins by ending on a tired, poorly realised final note.
The style felt largely Western than Eastern in its influences and set-up. Too bad the execution, while slick and filtered with an earthy color scheme, is beyond generic and a plot that's so incomprehensible leading to a reveal that at first simply makes you roll your eyes before the head scratching commences. Hard to understand why they went that lazy direction, but it did explain the jumpiness of certain (although not all) out-of-the-blue scenes to how they tied in to each other. Still making sense of it is another matter.
The first and third acts involving scurrying geckos, a haunted shack and the surrounding forest with night time mist are where the fun and insanity asides. More times than most it does come across laughable than truly threatening. I would say the geckos would have a lot to do with that. A mesh of real geckos alongside rubber toys and even at one stage a hand puppet, but the most prominent; shoddy CGI and this includes gore FX too. While those pesky CGI geckos popping up everywhere look cute, at least the visuals around the lizard woman unnerves, from her appearance to the mimicking movements of a lizard. Treated seriously, be it from its technical handling to its screenplay and lead performances. I just wished it had stayed consistently crazy and simple, as when it does it works. Instead of a structure trying to finesse its b-grade origins by ending on a tired, poorly realised final note.