Starring Dawn of the Dead special FX guy Tom Savini, Joseph Pilato (Captain Rhodes from Day of the Dead) and John Harrison (who gave us the haunting score for Creepshow), this low-budget Pittsburgh horror has virtually nothing else in common with those Romero classics: it's a dreary, badly directed mess of a movie that does little justice to an admittedly intriguing premise.
Pilato stars as cinematographer Dominic, who is hired to work on a horror movie, unaware that director Lacey Bickel (Harrison) is secretly filming his own cast and crew, planning to turn them into the stars of a snuff movie. The vast majority of Effects comes across as an unscripted mess, such is its shoddy nature, and proves extremely wearisome, as the film-makers shoot the breeze, get into fights, and do drugs. It's all so haphazard and shambolic that it is hard to tell what is the movie, what is the movie within the movie, and what is being filmed by Bickel for his snuff project.
Only in the closing moments does anything start to make any sense, but it's far too late: I imagine that most people will have lost the fight to stay awake by then. Anyone looking for an insight into the world of practical special effects will also come away disappointed: barring one or two brief scenes, there's little to be learnt about the art of creating realistic blood and guts.
2.5/10, rounded up to 3 for the opening shower scene-a promisingly trashy start to a really lousy movie.
Pilato stars as cinematographer Dominic, who is hired to work on a horror movie, unaware that director Lacey Bickel (Harrison) is secretly filming his own cast and crew, planning to turn them into the stars of a snuff movie. The vast majority of Effects comes across as an unscripted mess, such is its shoddy nature, and proves extremely wearisome, as the film-makers shoot the breeze, get into fights, and do drugs. It's all so haphazard and shambolic that it is hard to tell what is the movie, what is the movie within the movie, and what is being filmed by Bickel for his snuff project.
Only in the closing moments does anything start to make any sense, but it's far too late: I imagine that most people will have lost the fight to stay awake by then. Anyone looking for an insight into the world of practical special effects will also come away disappointed: barring one or two brief scenes, there's little to be learnt about the art of creating realistic blood and guts.
2.5/10, rounded up to 3 for the opening shower scene-a promisingly trashy start to a really lousy movie.