Reviews

(contains 1 dialog spoiler)

What happens when someone takes a bunch of foreign actors who haven't been in many movies before and makes them speak English?! Exactly!! You burst out laughing. That's the first problem with Urban Explorer. The acting is just an insult to the audience. Now the second problem besides the acting is the dialog. It is absolutely ridiculous. Lines like -this is the piano that Hitler used to lure in slaves- are really laugh out loud jokes you could expect from an episode of Family Guy. I mean if they were going for a Grindhouse or comedy-trash film then a line like that would just be perfect, but Urban Explorer doesn't want to be funny. It wants to be dead serious and scary as hell.  So we go on... We deal with the bad acting and the awful dialog and get midway into the movie where the storyline takes a twist into the torture porn genre. (Mind you. I have nothing against torture porn and i hate calling it that!) So what happens then?! You know a German horror film usually isn't really a German horror film unless it bluntly imitates another film?! (Please close your eyes and guess now.) Exactly! Urban Explorer starts imitating hostel in very obvious original way. However, since the actors are totally awful the film somehow feels like it's this slapstick version of "Hostel"! It's like you're watching a freakin' Tom and Jerry episode! So we keep going. Laughing as the pseudo-scares keep coming. When we get towards the end, Urban Explorer than has its slapstick take on "Creep" and "Midnight Meat Train" keeping the imitations coming like there's no tomorrow.

Well... There you have it folks! Another movie with a great lighting good effects and an original premise getting ruined by bad acting, awful dialog and an unoriginal storyline. Too bad! This movie really makes Alone in the Dark and Sweatshop look like Academy Award winning films. Only watch for laughs! Unintentional laughs that is...

(my spoilers are very minimal though! :)

First of all, if you're looking for a high budget Hollywood horror film, this film is definitely not for you. However, if you're a fan of old school b-movie horror films from the 70s/80s or Troma Comedies like Poultrygeist you are so going to love this one.

The movie generally has a type of "Creepshow"/"Tales From the Darkside" setup. You have a main story that features 3 little horror stories. The first story features a giant sperm starting a rampage on an entire city. As random as the plot sounds is also as random as it is delivered. A special treat are the visuals in this one. What makes the visuals so crazy looking is that they use effects that were used around the 50s and earlier when all the films were black and white. Seeing these cheap effects in color really makes it look like nothing I have ever seen before. The second story is a werewolf-beach boy musical with homosexuality as a central subject... Yes... That's right! It sort of reminds us of Elvis-like cheesy beach flicks from the 60's and the werewolf craze of the 80's. What at first sounds like a random genre mix is actually very entertaining. One must also credit the musical numbers because they are very very catchy. The final story is a gritty black and white story in German featuring Hitler and Eva Braun trying to create a superhuman. It's really like Bela Lugosis speech in ed Wood's Bride of the Monster ("I shall create a new race of super humans which will take over the world") coming to life. What makes it quite funny is that every actor is speaking normal German while Hitkler himself speaks this fictional South Park German. This one does get a little lengthy towards the end and isn't so focused on the visuals like the other 2, but it does have a lot of great jokes.

All in all, Chillerama really is a great homage to old school b-movie horror flicks ranging from the 1930's to the 1980's. Everyone who loves old school trash films will really have a lot of fun with Chillerama.