User Reviews

"Carpenter Brut: Turbo Killer" is a short film from 2016 that runs for a bit over four minutes and was written and directed by Raphaël Hernandez and Savitri Joly-Gonfard under the alias Seth Ickerman. I am not sure what this is exactly, a kickstarter or a fan movie or whatever, but for that it is really solid. There is no denying this looks fine, sometimes amazing even. The music fits very well too and if I say that, it surely means something because I would say that in general this music genre, mostly on the electronic side (we don't hear any vocals, any human voices), is nothing I appreciate too much. The very same also applies to the film genre: I am normally not a huge sci-fi fan, but it worked well all in all I must say. Sure the story is not exactly great, at least partially because it's pretty difficult to grasp (honestly reading the plot summary, I never would have seen this kind of plot in here and I kinda doubt anybody else would), but we need to keep in mind how short this film is and that it is quite a challenge to come up with true depth in 250 seconds of running time. It could have been better if the female protagonist did anything other than dancing in a gate and sitting in a car and the (male) antagonist is not too great either, a bit on the cringey side and for him it was intended I think to be taken seriously, which I couldn't do, while for the guy in the suit there was some poking fun potential included, especially the first time we see him. But it's all good.

Some scenes look like they could have been taken directly out of a Robert Rodriguez movie and this is definitely a compliment, even if they were probably rather going for the atmosphere and tone of a John Carpenter film. I guess they succeeded there too to some extent. Haven't really seen that much by the man. I wonder if they will ever follow up on this one here, perhaps with a full feature film. At least there is a Kickstarter. Perhaps I'd watch that. The visual side (in addition to the music) is the project's biggest strength for sure. I am not sure how much money went into the making of this one, but it does look fairly expensive and never cheap the way many other short films do, especially when it comes to science fiction works. Especially fan films. I am not sure if this can be categorized as such. Maybe it is actually a music video. Even then, it would be very much on the above-average side in terms of quality. It's a bit of a pity that none of the people working on this one here, neither in front of the camera, nor behind it, have really enjoyed a breakthrough at some point. But who knows, maybe it's still gonna happen, probably more like in France than in America. Don't be fooled by the American alias from the two directors. Until then, if such a breakthrough happens, these four minutes here are not a must-see by any means in my opinion, but still fairly entertaining. I give "Turbo Killer" (fitting name for sure as well) a thumbs-up. Only little hesitation there. It's good enough. By the way, this was seen by so many people on Youtube where it got uploaded by the official Carpenter Brut channel and the link is here on IMDb. Feel free to check it out.