Thursday 4 October 2012

Review: Swamphead (2011)


First I´d like to thank the filmmakers for providing me with a screener.
An ancient relic is found at the bottom of a local lake which resurrects the severed head of Robert Gross, aka Swamphead. A group of hapless teens come across the relic and their weekend camping trip becomes a nightmare of blood, feces, and more head than a night in Tijuana. Can they destroy the zombie head or will they die trying? Swamphead is written and directed by Dustin Drover and Justin Propp. The acting is kinda hard to comment on, I think a lot of the bad acting is intentional bad acting much as in the way as they have grown ups playing teenagers. One of the actors looks like he´s as old as the actress playing his mom. The camerawork and editing is okay, some scenes (especially during night are almost too dark) and some of the scenes suppsedly taking place at night shifts between daylight and darkness. There is a lot of intentional humor and there is plenty of bad taste comedy that sure to offend some viewers, it often has something to do with feces. There is gore, one of the best fx comes early in the movie and it´s a aftermath scene but it would have been better if we couldn´t see that the victim is noticebly breathing and that his posture shifts throughout the scene (one moment he´s staring up, then his head is tilted to the side, then he´s staring up again and this happens several times). The Swamphead is what it is, a low budget design but it´s nevertheless amusing if you´re in the right mood while watching it. There is no T & A in this.
This review is based upon a passwordprotected screener provided by the filmmakers.
Rating: 3½ out of 7. I kinda of enjoyed this, I interpet it as it´s all intentional comedy (that all the flaws are more or less intentional). It´s a Tromaesque flick and several of the jokes and characters made me think of South Park. This is almost like a live action version of a South Park episode and I´m a big fan of Trey Parker and Matt Stone´s South Park. I wouldn´t recommend this to everyone but if you are a fan of Troma, South Park and shot on video 1980s horror flicks then this is somehing for you to check out.

/JL

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