Alison, Brian, Carlos, and Rick meet in medical school in their Gross Anatomy class. They get to know each other while dissecting 'Norma' whom we get to see the first time in the opening sequence. After the first shot at dissection, we meet Jennifer, Rick's fiancée.Alison is an agnostic. Carlos is into spirits and respect. During the film, the question 'Is Norma dead?' gets discussed in philosophical terms. Jennifer wanted to see the dissected body, and is shocked and repulsed when the internal organs felt warm to the touch. Rick tells her to cool off in the hall while he re-drapes the body. When he comes out, Jennifer is dead in a pool of blood.Come Monday, Rick has dropped out, so Alison, Brian, and Carlos continue on Norma in Gross Anatomy. Rick has pretty well zoned out as Alison finds when she goes to visit him.One of Dr. Blackwell's associates, Ivan, was checking out the cadaver when Alison interrupts him. They have a non-constructive chat. When Brian and Alison investigate a few things, they find Ivan's body in the cadaver tank. Both Ivan and Jennifer touched the corpse and were repelled by it.After Brian and Alison are intimate, Alison discovers one of the morgue staff in the shower, dead, in a pool of blood. This fellow also touched the cadaver. Alison and the hospital's staff shrink go to Dr. Blackwell and ask for more information. Norma turns out to be Dr. Alita Covas, an American found dead in Brazil. She was on death row at the time for killing johns while being a prostitute. Oi, in the opening sequence, there were references to Aztec goings on. Brazil is mighty far south and east of Aztec country.Meanwhile, Rick is descending into madness. Alison visits him and he attacks her.Carlos dies in the library while investigating Aztecs. Alison and Brian get a bloody drawing on their door. Rick commits suicide. Alison and Brian discover more about Dr Covas' archaeological finds; this may prove to be the key.Will Brian and Alison survive this encounter? ------Scores------Cinematography: 8/10 A bit more grainy and soft-focus than I expected, but good on the whole.Sound: 10/10 Good for atmosphere and spookiness.Acting: 8/10 Better than I expected.Screenplay: 7/10 The Aztec vs. Brazil mix up was the film's major goof. On the other hand, the build up of tensions while dealing with real events was rather good.
... View MoreAs a horror fan, i watch over 1500-2000 movies, and got a one big picture of good suspenseful horror movies should be all about.Im not in slashers or gore fest like movies, but story driven kind is my taste....And to finish the title of this review: ...what the man who read scenario had in his head that he wanted to make this a movie.Lead roll? Horrible...The movie is just complete waste of your time if you are horror fan.I've seen many real B horror movies made with 4-5 figures budget, that put this movie to the ground.Just bad and complete waste of time.Floating in tank full of that body's is scene that puts this to the top, or should I say to complete garbage.Tank is about 1,5 m in depth. The guy just floats around 40cm from the top, and the girl just has to take of the shirt and go in to fetch him, like she has 5cm long arms, and cant reach him from the top....Stupid...stupid...stupid...
... View MoreI'm rusty at writing reviews so please bear with me.Before I go on, the dead bodies question: As far as I can work out the film DOESN'T use real cadavers but was filmed in a real morgue. However, even if the bodies were real it would not have been the first film to use real human remains. Personally I don't care either way. I think it might tie in with the main "theme" of the story.I won't bother giving a plot summary as you can find one on this IMDb page but I don't think it is a spoiler to say that the main running theme is respecting/disrespecting the dead. This on its own is pretty standard to me in terms of horror stories - don't f*** with a dead spirit or it will f*** you up. Even so, the beginning of the story was quite promising to me in that the body in question was behaving in a strange way, although the med student characters were quick to explain these occurrences away at first.I was hopeful that they would expand on this and yet the body itself isn't used as much as I would have liked. I think they could have done a lot more with the physical "unusual cadaver" rather than focus more on the "disturbed spirit". If they at least had given more effort to the latter then I think the film could have really built on the parts which could be considered somewhat original. Unfortunately it falls short of this and simply becomes a relatively bland film saved by decent pacing (pacing seems to be one of the main areas of fault in a lot of horrors I've seen).It is a shame, as later on an Aztec goddess comes into the mix. I hadn't realised that the Aztecs had not spread further than Mexico until last night and evidently neither did the film makers. Silly little mistakes like this are generally not important in my reckoning of a film, but it feels worthwhile to point that out. The film makers could have double-checked this fact and in my opinion should have - when making a film or writing a book, it's nice to stick to the facts unless you're going to use your deviation as a plot device.Aside from the error, the Aztec angle could have saved this movie from mediocrity as it moves on a little further than "this is one angry stiff" but unfortunately it sort of feels shoved in at the end as an excuse for an explanation. That is possibly rather harsh, I'll admit. I was simply very disappointed when it more or less rushed to the end after this.As for the possible INTENTIONAL sexism: I think that along with disrespect for the dead, sexism towards women was another theme to the film unless I've misinterpreted the point.I don't want to give the game away so I won't go too far into the details but it's there even from the very first scene where there are two morgue workers talking about another body's "big tits" and one of them says the main body has "an ugly pussy". The way one character talks to the female lead (Corri English), the way most of the men throughout the film look at her, what is said about the body later... I think this was all on purpose, intentional in an artistic manner. My main reason for suspecting this is a) what you find out later about the dead woman, and b) the use of Tlazolteotl, the Aztec goddess. I can't go into much else without ruining parts of the story so I'll simply say that if this was the intent and it was more than just a plot device then it seems to have failed in any point it was trying to make as it apparently has gone largely unnoticed.I've spoken about the parts I have the most to say about so I'll try to quickly cover some of the other relevant points: -ACTING: In most cases the acting is fairly weak although I personally can overlook that, having watched an awful lot of horrendous films. I would say that apart from some awkward cringe-worthy flirting/pillow talk most of it could be likened to one of the more decent soap operas.CAMERA WORK/SHOTS/ETC: I am not great on passing an opinion on the technical side of this sort of thing but for me it seemed pretty solid. In fact, I was a little surprised to find out that this was an indie movie. I thought it was a failed Hollywood flick.PACING: As I've already said, the pacing is decent which you could say partially makes up for the lack of scares and the wobbly plot.PLOT: Has a lot of potential which it did not tap into and seems somewhat messy.CONCLUSION: If you don't go into this film expecting much and if you don't mind a horror which does not actually scare you then you'll probably get a certain level of enjoyment out of this film. Don't pay too much for it and you'll be able to happily use it as something to pass the time when you can't find anything else to watch.Average but let-down by unused potential: 4/10
... View More8 Movies to die for. Sadly I have seen several movies from them and just don't understand the hype. I have seen better on late night TV.Medical students are learning anatomy and doing an autopsy. They have gotten the wrong corpse, she has a vendetta and doesn't care who she gets revenge on.One of the students decides to investigate and researches the back story of the corpse. It's like an episode of Scooby Doo but with a cadaver.Basically, it's not a very good movie and if I had paid to see it in a theater instead of at home, I would have been angry I wasted money to see this.
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