An Aussie-made movie from the same folks that did Wyrmwood about demons on the internet? Sign me up!
Howard works a dead-end job in the family business of cleaning out septic tanks with his friend and co-worker Rangi. After working a full day that ended in a particularly crappy fashion, Howard’s brother pulls up to tell him that his mother wants them to work the night shift as well. Though he protests, Howard relents as the younger brother and has to do what he is told or be out of a job. He and Rangi hop in the truck and make their way to the next site. Along the way Rangi, trying to keep his sanity and stay awake, downloads a weird new game to his cell phone. “It’s like that game where you have to catch all the little monsters, only this time their ghosts.”
As Howard is driving, Rangi attempts to “find ghosts” in the app, and after nearly scaring Howard into crashing the truck, they pull over. In the middle of the road is a ghost on Rangi’s phone, so he “catches” it. Howard notices a weird box on a pole and gets an even weirder feeling from it. As they hop back in the truck Rangi points his phone at Howard only to find he is emitting a weird aura through the app. When he taps the phone, something happens to Howard that he can’t explain.
Across town, a group of Necromancers emerges from a building, guns ablaze. The further they get from the entrance it becomes apparent that they are being pursued by monsters in the form of humans. They hop into their truck full of weird technology and speed off. As they are leaving, and at the same time that Howard is hit by some unseen force inside the app, the gauges inside their truck light up. Not sure what to make of this, the group makes their way to Howard and Rangi. Neither realizes that they are both linked together and in more ways than they are prepared to understand, at least at first.
Nekrotronic is a visually stylized take on mashing up multiple genres of films. Take a dash of the Matrix, a little Ghostbusters, and a sprinkling of Evil Dead. Mix all that up and coat it all in internet/social media buffoonery and you have a movie that isn’t terribly original in pieces so much as it is as a whole thing. Most of the movies I watch during this time every year aren’t going to win any awards, but the ones that stick out to me are the ones that I feel aren’t afraid to do things a little differently. Wyrmwood was the same thing. It was a base story that isn’t particularly original but the way it was presented made it stand out.
Maybe I’m just a sucker for Australian accents but I thoroughly enjoyed all the dialog and writing here. It had just enough references to the stupidity you find on the greater internet without having to fall into the traps of using all the lingo to attempt to sound “hip.” The visuals were a lot of fun as well. The zombie/possessed humans in this felt a lot like the monsters in 28 Days/Weeks Later with their rage and their movements. Just vicious and unrelenting violence.
My one gripe really with the film was the “stinger” ending. While the end of the film did feel like there should have been more, the actual “ending” ending felt tacked on and didn’t do anything to really further the film or the plot. Honestly, it barely felt like a setup for a sequel, if that was the attempt. That being said, if you’re a fan of weird sci-fi mixed in with your horror movies, this is probably a film to check out.
Comments