(This film was featured at the Third Annual Sin City Horror Fest.)
You may remember from some years back, an excellent and very weird little film called CURDLED. In that movie, a woman working on a crime-scene cleaning crew developed a morbid and growing romantic fascination with the serial killer whose messes they were hired to clean up.
ONE MUST FALL puts a very different spin on that scenario. Two down-on-their-luck office drones replace their dead-end jobs by signing up with a crime scene cleaning crew. But a question not asked very often does arise: what if during the process of cleaning up, they discover that the perpetrator of a crime has never left the crime scene?
They soon learn the terrifying answer, as they're preyed upon by the city's first reported serial murderer. And he is one for the books. Practical effects lovers who hate CG embellishments are going to LOVE this, as director Pantoja makes sure that his effects team gets to plumb their budget as much as possible, for some incredibly gory "murder-death-kills" that wouldn't be out of place in many of the major, more extravagantly-budgeted slasher franchises.
The cast is game for all of the grueling paces that director Pantoja puts them through, but you won't walk away from this one without the memory of actor Barry Piacente stained on your brain indefinitely, as the grandiose and remorseless serial murderer who gets off on torture and murder...and those who cross his path will be lucky if he gets right to the 'murder' part!
Unless he returns as a supernatural killer of some kind, ONE MUST FALL doesn't look like it's going to be spun off into yet another franchise. But even if not, it's a great one-off, and a perfect introduction to Pantoja's work, a director whom I hope will become another major name in the genre!
You may remember from some years back, an excellent and very weird little film called CURDLED. In that movie, a woman working on a crime-scene cleaning crew developed a morbid and growing romantic fascination with the serial killer whose messes they were hired to clean up.
ONE MUST FALL puts a very different spin on that scenario. Two down-on-their-luck office drones replace their dead-end jobs by signing up with a crime scene cleaning crew. But a question not asked very often does arise: what if during the process of cleaning up, they discover that the perpetrator of a crime has never left the crime scene?
They soon learn the terrifying answer, as they're preyed upon by the city's first reported serial murderer. And he is one for the books. Practical effects lovers who hate CG embellishments are going to LOVE this, as director Pantoja makes sure that his effects team gets to plumb their budget as much as possible, for some incredibly gory "murder-death-kills" that wouldn't be out of place in many of the major, more extravagantly-budgeted slasher franchises.
The cast is game for all of the grueling paces that director Pantoja puts them through, but you won't walk away from this one without the memory of actor Barry Piacente stained on your brain indefinitely, as the grandiose and remorseless serial murderer who gets off on torture and murder...and those who cross his path will be lucky if he gets right to the 'murder' part!
Unless he returns as a supernatural killer of some kind, ONE MUST FALL doesn't look like it's going to be spun off into yet another franchise. But even if not, it's a great one-off, and a perfect introduction to Pantoja's work, a director whom I hope will become another major name in the genre!
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