Movie Review: THE 7TH DAY (2012)

The 7th Day Directed By Jason M. Koch.

From the makers of PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED (2005) and ISLE OF THE DAMNED (2008), two frolicsome horror-gore-comedies, comes … a different sort of love story. Allen Dean (Mark S. Sanders) is a bearded dishwasher in a jerkwater town (lower middle class Baltimore) who has issues – with women. And men. And other living things. Allen is a serial killer with many interests: torture, mutilation, necrophilia. He kills chicks, he kills guys, a real swinger. He can't stand his next door neighbor, Bill (Michael Brecher). There are even people who feels are beneath him. Living in his filthy, fly-speckled home, Allen finds time to torture some poor unfortunate girl (Jessy Danner) in his basement. He dreams back to his fond family memories, where his older brother abused him sexually and his mother (Helenmary Ball) subjected him to “smother love.” Cruising around the neighborhood in his battered compact car, Allen scores drugs and casually kills the people he meets. All the while, monstrous journalists with tape recorders record his every thought and every move. Surprisingly, his confessions to these spectral beings pose more questions than they answer.
Eventually, Allen screws up the courage to ask his fellow restaurant employee for a date. It doesn't go well. 

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THE 7TH DAY is an ingenious no-budget recreation of Hell as experienced behind the eyeballs of a remorseless psychopath. All the locations we see in the film are immediately recognizable: litter-strewn empty lots, dilapidated homes and disused businesses. Unflinchingly looking at life on the down, down low, THE 7TH DAY has quite a few tricks up its grimy sleeve. The gore on display is something we've all seen before, but done in such a way to disturb, annoy and disorient. There is lots of humor on the way – one wouldn't expect anything less from the makers of PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED and ISLE OF THE DAMNED, now, would they – but even here it carries a lethal sting.
What separates THE 7TH DAY from countless other serial killer movies is the ending. Rest assured, we expect the worst – but the filmmakers have an especially dirty trick awaiting the viewer thus far. This reviewer expects that a lot of people will get tied up in knots and angry, kicking in their TV sets in the more extreme cases. In some ways, THE 7TH DAY is a black comedy, where the joke is played on you. Runing less than 80 minutes, the film's biggest prey just may be the typical horror movie audience's expectations. Dig it. 

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