This strange horror offering has a blood-spattered teenage boy showing up at a police station. What happened to him, and how does this event tie in with the murder of a girl the previous year? This off-beat little horror film came out of the blue (for me at least), because prior to seeing it in my local video store, I'd never heard of it. I rented it, and let me say that while it's not the best horror flick I've seen lately, and it certainly does have it's fair share of problems, it's definitely a breath of fresh air from most of the crap released into cinema these days that people call "horror". Considering it's tiny budget, "Shallow Ground" pulls off some pretty impressive stuff. The film is shot on 16mm but looks great visually, I was shocked afterwords when I found out it WASN'T shot on 35mm. The actors were hit and miss but that's to be expected from a film of this caliber. Steve London's score is very good too, nicely dark and foreboding. One of the best aspects of the film though are the great make-up effects by Patrick Magee. There's lots of disgusting-looking corpses and blood, and the death of the Helen (Patricia McCormack) was great. There's almost no CGI used in this film (thank God) and horror fans will most certainly be pleased by the gruesome set pieces on display here.
Still, there's some stuff that didn't work so well too. The plot takes a long time to unfold and really isn't that interesting. The characters were mostly 1-D, and the ending, though cool, makes no sense whatsoever. This is an odd little horror film, certainly not bad but not *quite* great either. Still recommended, though, as it most certainly is unique and well-done.
7/10.
Still, there's some stuff that didn't work so well too. The plot takes a long time to unfold and really isn't that interesting. The characters were mostly 1-D, and the ending, though cool, makes no sense whatsoever. This is an odd little horror film, certainly not bad but not *quite* great either. Still recommended, though, as it most certainly is unique and well-done.
7/10.