You know, being a fan of b-movies, there is a lot of pleasure
to be found in coming across a really obscure, movie which you can totally love
and rave to your friends about without them having the faintest idea what you’re
talking about. When I saw this movie in a budget DVD section, I was hooked in by
the cool title, the movie’s premise, and the claims of winning the award for
"Best Picture" at the Australian Independent Film Festival. All this,
AND it’s a horror movie! Should be great! Huh? Huh?
Made in Australia, this tells the story of Travis, who lives
with his gay friend Regis and the very bitchy Larissa, who Travis is mildly
obsessed with. Travis has a large picture of Larissa on his wall, and has dreams
about her where she’s madly in love with him and they have rambling,
meaningless conversations. Things don’t start well for Travis, he’s has a
hangover and his stereo get repossessed by his old school bully because they can’t
afford the rent on the house. To make matters worse, Larissa (I don’t know
what it is about her that he’s getting so hot under the collar about) happens
upon the scene and takes a liking to the former bully. Unhappy, Travis goes
outside to investigate a plumbing problem and comes across a mysterious rock
which has fallen from the sky.
The next day, Travis has taken the rock to his front garden and starts trying to chip away at the rock, convinced that there’s something inside. This happens to coincide with a visit from two fanatical Christians, doing the rounds in the area, looking for converts presumably. Bill is a portly gentleman with a hilarious stammer, and the other one is Marcia, who Travis immediately falls in love with. With their help he splits the rock open (funny, it broke open just like foam rubber!) and inside he finds a mysterious device covered in bizarre markings which get Bill terribly excited as he recognises this ancient script, asking if he can come back the next day and decipher them. Travis agrees so he can see the lovely Marcia again, who seems a bit concerned that this young man is staring at her (kinda the look women give me all the time, funny that). After being rumbled spying on Larissa having sex with the bully, Travis decides to try out the device by placing it on his head. He finds that if he concentrates hard enough he can create objects out of thin air. Bill warns Travis that the markings relate to demonic forces that were behind the device’s creation, and as Travis starts to use it more and more, he starts to lose control......
I admit, that maybe I had quite high hopes for this movie, I was hoping for a fun little movie, like these small indie horror movie so often are. Unfortunately, this was not to be. This movie is just dull, very, very dull. Its just so uneventful, it plods along with far too much boring dialogue from poorly written characters. Travis is such a whining little troll that I just didn’t much care what he was doing, and the supporting cast couldn’t make it as extras on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which has better special effects too I might add. Even the pretty decent make-up near the end don’t help, it just makes it a big pile of crap with decent make-up near the end. The ending, too, left me very cold and unfulfilled, and really was just very lame and stupid. I wish there was more to write about this movie, but its difficult to even get inspiration for negative comments for this movie, which I actually find quite scary. I suppose that's the real horror of this flick.
