Creature 2013

CREATURE 2013 Directed By Ronny Carlsson. Starring Daniela Melin. (2013).

Carlsson is a young film maker from Sweden who has potential and was kind enough to send us this screener via Youtube.

   The film opens with a jarring buzz sound on the audio track and looks like it was shot with the cheapest digital equipment possible (it's actually a camera phone). There are no beginning credits and minimal amounts of music, It's all in black and white and switches to color for a minute toward the end.    

   Natalya (Daniela Melin), a young girl drives out to the woods and dumps a bag of unseen debris, then it fades out. She confides in her sister over coffee that she painted apples with a lethal toxin that killed someone in her family. It's unclear if she blames herself, but she has schizophrenia and confronts her own psyche, which has manifested in psychical form and faces her toward the end. 
   

Yes I'd like to order more dreariness and foreboding

   The picture does that strobey thing in new horror films that I detest, but the film quality has a forbidding texture that is very appealing. Had I seen The Blair Witch Project, I might've compared it to this film, but I completely avoided that over hyped junk.

The Bjorn Witch Project

   Natalya's actions are never explained and there's no narrative as she makes a bed and sleeps in a rusty old shack. We hear flies buzzing and the irritating slow strobing takes over the screen. The climax shows one of the shakiest painful looking ritualistic suicides I've seen in awhile as Natalya's offal is yanked out by a pair of mystery arms.  
   Creature 2013 has many flaws, but it there is a style that resonates through the mediocrity (which doesn't pass for tension, when it should). The main problem I had was that with so little explanation or inner dialogue, I had to read the description to figure out what was going on. I feel that the director has a definite style but needs to sharpen the writing and lose the blaring audio fuzz all together. 

These spicy hotlink implants are useless

  Carlsson has a few features under his belt and this is one of three short films he's made and for a camera phone, the camera shots are incredibly inventive. I predict the film maker will join the ranks of the latest group of accomplished "newer generation" horror directors.

 We here at TOG support independent filmmakers, are not above shameless promotion (as long as it fits in with our ilk) and appreciate the generosity of the film maker and Film Bizarro for sending this screener.