Phantasmagoria (I) (2017) User Reviews

Unexpected

[buymearudder · 5/10 · 11 November 2023]

I found the DVD of Phantasmagoria in HMV. It looked quite interesting as since it was only a fiver I thought I'd give it a go.

So, I took it to my Uni Dorm and we watched it together. Something we didn't know, this was distributed by a website that sells Underground Horror and porn films and this is part of the "Exploitation Collection" and was made on a budget of about 15p.

The film's sound levels are all over the place, there's a lot of wind noise which makes cuts obvious. The score is good, with a great synth backing at parts - occasionally ruined by the wind noise.

The directing is sometimes competent but mostly it's a lot of obvious cuts to similar angles.

The performances from Rachel Audrey are not great, she has the same tone for every line, Mari K is a lot better. All of the heavy lifting is done by the location filming and the grain on the footage.

Another thing we didn't realise is that Phantasmagoria is Twin Peaks fanfiction, made all the more strange that our house had just finished watching Twin Peaks the week before. How had I managed to find this film of all in there!

Funny to watch drunk at Uni, nonsense visual sequences with no depth, a lot of unnecessary nudity, good score with terrible sound mixing. There's also a few times where actors hit the camera and the cameraman's arm is in one shot. The behind the scenes Q and A reveals they weren't working with a script which is obvious.

This film isn't great, I'm surprised to have found it in HMV at all because I've seen better student films.

A return to the golden age of horror films

[thomasfisher_260 · 8/10 · 28 September 2017]

Went to check the UK premier of Phantasmagoria last night. I've previously been exposed to the music of the artists involved but this was the first time I'd witnessed their visual dimension.

As history has educated us, music within horror film is critical to convey the atmosphere and frame any scene. We're immediately immersed in a darkly psychedelic and disorientating sonic assault that lures us into this unreal world of uncertainty and palpable anxiety.

A radio reporter heads off to an Eastern European destination to investigate some strange phenomena occurring in a city district. From the outset, matters are wholly surreal with her journey to the said destination and her initial findings upon her arrival. She meets one of the local residents who is subject to an, as yet, unspecified malign influence that has the local community in it's grip. Matters deteriorate from this point onward featuring possession and exorcism and all manner of ritualised behaviour and a feeling of drug induced nightmares from which we may never be released?

The soundtrack reveals a whole variety of influences from horror and exploitation films from the 70's and 80's but utilising the sound elements in a more cryptic way than perhaps some of their contemporary music producing counterparts.

The end credits acknowledge certain directors including David Lynch and certainly not since seeing Eraserhead have I seen a film that captures the intensity, claustrophobia and downright weirdness of that title. Other directors and films are definitely referenced (for example, maybe Possession and certainly The Exorcist) and you get the sense that throughout the genuine creepiness of it all that the film makers are having a good time in the making of this film.

There's no compromise in the delivery of this piece and in a wholly satisfying way we are at the mercy of the director(s?) and the journey they wish to take us on. This approach is woefully absent in film-making of more recent years as any production companies and associated directors generally bow to the demands of the moral masses to satisfy financially driven agendas. Once again, much like in the heyday of the horror film in the previous century, we the audience are simply witnesses to another world where we have no say in what occurs. We are beholden to the Mater Suspiria Vision.

Spoilers follow ...

[parry_na · 8/10 · 15 December 2017]

This independent production contains much that is good about low budget, independent films. Every film trick in the book is thrown at the beautifully macabre, grainy locations to make this journey as unsettling as possible. It's clear the narrative isn't hugely important. The acting is often eccentric, accentuating the unreality of the mood - the staple observer, Rachel Audrey (as Cooper) turns in an often self-conscious performance, whose early bizarre grinning 'to camera' is accompanied briefly by a laughter track! Very strange.

Cooper meets up with a frightened, sick local girl played by Mari K. She speaks fearfully of The Beast. It may be the demonic force within her to which she is referring, which gives cause to a disturbing, even erotic, exhumation.

Director Cosmotropia de Xam throws everything at the audience to unnerve them, and the result is a moody, melancholy tour of some truly breath-taking locations: a study of decay.

The DVD of this art-house horror also contains 'The Contaminated Photos of Valentina Crepax' which is exactly that - a selection of images from 'Phantasmagoria' treated with all kinds of effects that blur, fracture, disintegrate, explode, evaporate and unfurl into one another. It is all grotesque and very effective.