Psychological horror film, Wounds was the first film watched for review this past weekend, and was a good start to my blogging time. Directed and co-written by Ron Krauss (Alien Hunter), this vaguely meta story featured some great looking makeup effects and prosthetics, though the same couldn't be said for some of the VFX.
Caleb (Jack Kilmer - Lords of Chaos) is a young SFX makeup artist who has been given the opportunity by his studio owning uncle - Jefferson Price (Eric Roberts - Heretics, Devil's Knight) to do the SFX on a low budget vampire horror film being made. Caleb is struggling with this, unable to achieve the realistic effects that he wishes for. Jefferson warns him that if the film is a failure, it could lead to the closure of the studio, and in turn, Caleb losing his home (he is living in a small apartment in the studio complex rent-free). Under pressure, he goes for a walk one evening and witnesses a man being stabbed to death. This event inspires Caleb, who returns home and recreates a throat slash that he had practised on the corpse of the stabbed man. This new effect of his is a hit with the studio, and he comes to realise that for each of the effects he is working on for the film, he is going to have to first act it out on an actual person. He becomes seen as an effects genius within the film crew, but the pressure of the job, and his gory extra circular activities start to weigh on the young man, having a negative effects such as hallucinating about his victims, and seeing blood everywhere he goes. It seems only a matter of time before Caleb's sanity leaves him completely.
The practical makeup effects and prosthetics here looked good on camera, both when used for the kill scenes, and when used as effects for the film within a film being created. The mix between these two parts was done by transitioning the real kills into the fake with some nifty use of editing to achieve this.
Caleb was a loner from the start, not the easiest protagonist to like, but his passion for horror came across well. Kilmer does an admirable job, towards the end I didn't feel his more unhinged performance worked as well as the earlier more measured one. Being obsessed with films, there were plenty of clips from iconic horror films shown as part of his research. It was fun to see Nightmare City, Night of the Living Dead, Scanners, and Videodrome among the classics being watched. Paris Jackson (Scream: The TV Series) plays Caleb's potential love interest, Ginny, with the boy becoming obsessed with her, adding another point of strain to his fracturing mind. I'm used to seeing the prolific Roberts in smaller roles in indie films, so it was nice to see him having a larger role for a change, here playing a character with the third most screen time, and someone who adds more pressure for Caleb by being so demanding of him.
As great as the practical effects were, this wasn't the case for the VFX work. This mostly comes into play during the hallucination sequences that sees room filling up with seas of blood. Something about these looked a bit off though, and didn't really look to fit into the sets as something that looked real - a shame when the practical effects did look so great. The kill scenes here were a lot better, and had some variation to them - throat slashes, a stake through an eye, a vicious hammer attack, and a lovely looking facial burn. A story like this needed to sell violence, and it worked.
For all its dark themes, Wounds remained entertaining, the somewhat implausible story stopped things from feeling too bleak. This was a love letter to the craft of making horror films. The film within a film sections were fun, such as the fake-start that begins the film. It was also neat that a whole bunch of clips from other horror films were shown. I liked the bait & switch ending which subtly subverted expectations, ending a decent horror on a suitably twisted point. Wounds had its world premiere on October 8th at Screamfest LA.
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