Necrosis (2009) Reviews

• Good movie, but not enough

  actorhaven2010-05-03

  Had a chance to watch this over the weekend, and found that I enjoyed it despite a few shortcomings. As a fan of Heroes, I was really happy to see James Kyson Lee not playing a token "Asian guy", but in fact takes center stage and does a good job, IMO. The rest of the cast holds up well too. The pacing is good for the most part, but a little slow where is shouldn't have been. Which leads me to my only real complaint about this film and that it doesn't have the amount of blood/gore/cannibalism I expected to see based on the trailer and DVD art. They only touch upon the cannibalism in a few flashbacks (which looked cool) but I was really looking forward to seeing more of that stuff appear later in the film. There are some decent blood scenes (removing some buckshot comes to mind) that might make one a bit squeamish, but as a whole the movie fell a little short to be considered a true "horror" for my tastes.

• Underrated Horror Movie

  claudio_carvalho2011-05-27

  Michael "Mike" Scottfield (Robert Michael Ryan) invites his girlfriend Karen (Tiffany) and his friends Matt (George Stults), Jerry (James Kyson-Lee), Samantha (Danielle De Luca) and Megan (Penny Drake) to travel to Sierra, Nevada, to spend the weekend in his cottage in the top of the mountain. When they stop in a bar, the strange Seymour (Michael Berryman) advises that the top of the mountain is not a safe place, and Mike explains to his friends that in 1846, a group of travelers was trapped for months in the mountain while traveling to California. They go insane with the starvation, and without any food, they start killing each other to eat. The episode was known as the Donner massacre. While driving a snowmobile, Jerry sees a ghost girl that advises him that the place is not safe. The six friends are surprised by the severe snow and are trapped in the cabin. When they go to the shed to start the generator, they find the body of the caretaker Lyle (John Dobroth) lying on the snow. Sooner Jerry sees other eerie creatures wandering around the cabin. When Matt learns that Jerry is under the medication of the antipsychotic Seraquin, they fear that Jerry may be driving crazy. "Necrosis" is a low-budget psychological horror movie that uses the idea of "The Shinning" combined with "Evil Dead", with a man that goes insane in an isolated cabin threatening the lives of his girlfriend and friends. The plot is slowly constructed and the greatest flaw is the lack of explanation why Mike brings his friends to a cabin that belongs to his family for many years in a season of severe snow and without supplies. He certainly should have an idea of the difficulties that they might have in that season. When I saw the IMDb rating, I was afraid that "Necrosis" would be a deceptive film; however, I realize that actually this film is underrated in IMDb. My vote is six. Title (Brazil): "Sangue na Neve" ("Blood on the Snow")

• Rogue Cinema Review

  UnknwnProd2010-05-03

  Necrosis is a nifty little ghost thriller in the vein of The Shining. The plot concerns a group of six young people who travel to a beautiful cabin in the woods in the dead of winter for a little getaway. Unfortunately for the group, the cabin sits directly on the land where the ill-fated Donner Party was stranded in a huge snowstorm over 150 years ago. As we all know, the actual Donner Party resorted to cannibalism in order to survive their winter ordeal in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, eventually making it into California in the spring of 1847. Although the locals try to warn the group of young people, their warnings go unheeded. As the snow begins to pile up, so do the mysterious occurrences as well as the number of corpses. Are these events truly caused by ghosts, or is cabin fever causing certain members of the group to lose their grip on reality? Director Jason Robert Stephens has assembled a terrific cast, including Heroes star James Kyson-Lee, indie scream queen Danielle De Luca, 7th Heaven star George Stults, Penny Drake (of Zombie Strippers fame), and 80's mall-pop icon Tiffany in her first starring role. The women are beautiful and the acting is generally strong, a real plus for a low-budget horror film. As a bonus we get cult horror film actor Michael Berryman who plays the misunderstood local who tries to warn the group of their impending doom. Although only his third feature, Stephens shows he is a good director that can turn out a quality product. I especially enjoyed his scene transitions using shots of nature such as clouds forming and reforming as well as wintry scenes. Stephens also knows how to set up a shot, so there are plenty of unique angles and tracking shots that keep the movie interesting. While the plot isn't terribly original—it's the same basic idea as The Shining, including the open-ended idea that the hotel (or cabin in Necrosis) could be haunted or it could be the imagination of a mentally unbalanced person suffering from cabin fever—Stephens is able to keep the story fresh enough that it doesn't seem like a complete ripoff and manages to be fun. Kyson-Lee plays Jerry, a man with a history of mental illness who manages to keep his illness in check with the use of medication. As the snow sets in, the men find the body of the cabin's caretaker who apparently froze to death. Deciding to keep it to themselves so as not to upset the girls, Jerry later realizes that the body has disappeared. While the others rationalize that an animal must have taken the body, Jerry remains unconvinced. Shortly thereafter, Jerry begins to see the ghosts of the Donner party. Before long they begin to talk to him. Some of the group members die in mysterious accidents while others are murdered by Jerry. There are some flaws in the film. While the acting is generally strong, I found Danielle De Luca's character to be a bit too whiny and annoying for my tastes. She is constantly whining and harping on her boyfriend, Jerry (Kyson-Lee). I found all this incessant henpecking to be quite irritating, creating an unsympathetic feeling towards De Luca's character. There is also a terribly unrealistic scene where Samantha (De Luca) slips on some ice and "falls" down a steep hill, having to be rescued by her friends. The entire scene was not only horribly fake, but didn't need to be included because it doesn't move the story along. That being said, I don't blame these faults on De Luca herself; rather the director is to blame for creating such an irritating and helpless character and for including this brief but laughable scene. But the strengths in both characterization as well as story far outweigh these relatively minor quibbles. While the use of CGI was minimal, it was also unrealistic enough to be picked out fairly easily. There are a couple of snow scenes that are obviously digitally enhanced which distracted me enough that it took me out of the picture. I also felt like the climax of the film occurred too quickly. While the remaining two survivors (Drake and Stults) are able to subdue Jerry (Kyson-Lee), the film ends with them still trapped in the cabin, still in the middle of a snowstorm, and with the generator running out of gas. Worse still, one of the survivors is beginning to see strange things. So the viewer is left not knowing whether the two survived or whether they didn't. And if they didn't, were the ghosts real or was cabin fever beginning to set in again? Normally I prefer open endings like this, but in this case I didn't feel like there was any resolution at all and that too much was left for the viewer to decide. There is a decent amount of gore—a few gunshots, several relatively quick scenes of cannibalism, and a fairly protracted scene showing one character picking the buckshot from another character's gunshot wound. The violence is realistic and effective but is over fairly quickly, so even the squeamish shouldn't be too put off. In fact, the film is billed as "unrated" but it looks more like an R-rated film to me. I suspect it is unrated because it wasn't submitted to the MPAA. Overall I really liked this film. It's not without its flaws, but it is a solid effort and looks really good, even for a low-budget movie. It doesn't take itself too seriously and is a fun film to watch. The packaging is also really nice and DVD extras include the trailer, Making of Necrosis, and director's commentary. If you would like to purchase this DVD, you can get it from BrinkDVD. Review by Cary Conley from Rogue Cinema (5/1/2010).

• Atmospheric

  BakuryuuTyranno2010-12-12

  Many people head off to their vacation or weekend away, something like that. But on entering a bar, one of the locals gives an ominous warning. Naturally, being a horror movie cast, these people head towards their cabin anyways and unsurprisingly, spooky stuff starts happening. As it happens this same path was where the Donner Party travelers ended up... What makes this film effective is the writers avoid spelling out whats happening. Sometimes, knowing is effective - Jigsaw wouldn't be nearly as scary without knowing his motives - but sometimes not knowing is scarier, and towards the climax the writers got a bit heavy-handed. Thankfully they didn't explain everything. While the characters aren't deep, they're not generic stock archetypes either and at times are entertaining to watch.

• Cool movie!

  rachelcoxs762010-05-02

  Finally got my DVD shipped to me after a bit of a delay, and I can say this was a surprisingly good film! After reading some of the other reviews posted here, I wasn't expecting much. Tiffany's role was really the only reason I purchased this film. However, after watching it, I came away very impressed with what the filmmakers did with the subject matter. I was worried it would be too gory, but it definitely leans more towards the psychological - suspense type genre (which I rather enjoy!). The movie is about six friends who travel to a cabin hideaway in the Tahoe mountains to spend a weekend in the snow. Unfortunately for them, a powerful storms drops down and traps them. Soon, they discover that the location is the same spot where the Donner Party perished over a hundred years before (and resorted to cannibalism to survive).As their situation grows more dire, one of them begins to have hallucinations of the Donner Party ghosts, which leads him to isolate himself more and more from the group, until he finally snaps. I felt the characters meshed together very well, and the story and pacing moved along nicely. My only real disappointment with this film was that Tiffany's role was not as large as I had hoped. She looks great, btw! After watching it, I came back on here and really cannot understand the 1 and 2 star reviews. If you were expecting blood constantly splattering everywhere, you will be disappointed. But, if you want to watch a cool low-budget indie flick, just ignore the haters and check this one out! RC