Rating: B
Dir: Kiah Roache-Turner
Star: Ben O’Toole, Monica Bellucci, Caroline Ford, Tess Haubrich
This Australian film, from the director of Wyrmwood, is about Howard North (O’Toole), initially a lowly sanitation engineer. His world is thrown upside down by the discovery that he’s descended from a line of demon-hunting necromancers. However, his mum, Finnegan (Bellucci), went rogue and is now working on a plan which will vacuum up a million souls through the Internet, giving her almost unlimited power. Fortunately, just as Howard is about to become one of her victims, he’s rescued by the last remaining trio of necromancers, who bring Howard up to speed on the situation and prepare him to go into battle against his Mum. As his friend Rangi accurately puts it, “You’re gonna need heaps and heaps and heaps of therapy after this.”
The grade above is an entirely appropriate rating, for this is an unashamedly B-movie – and I mean that almost entirely as a compliment. There’s a down-to-earth tone which is delightfully at odds with the subject matter: in that way, as well as as the Howard-Rangi relationship, it reminded me of Tremors. I can also see influences from Bloody Mallory, not least in necromantic sisters Molly (Ford) and Torquel (Haubrich), and you may want to cross the Tasman Strait for The Frighteners while you’re at it. Yet there’s undeniably enough that’s new and fresh here to pass muster, and it’s all done with a butt-load of energy. This helps overcome the parts, especially towards the end, where I wasn’t entirely sure quite what was happening.
The most unexpected name in this is obviously Bellucci, who has gone from The Passion of the Christ, the two Matrix sequels and Spectre to… /gestures vaguely. On the other hand, she was also in the glorious Shoot ‘Em Up, so is no stranger to the less intellectual end of the cinematic spectrum. Still: Australia? Maybe she thought filming would take place in Austria. Y’know, the one without the kangaroos? Quite why her character sports a strong French accent and an Irish name are refreshingly unexplained, and Bellucci certainly seems to be having fun with the role. She’s not alone though, with the performances all round perhaps being the best aspect. Admittedly, the broad Aussie brogue may require subtitles for some, and O’Toole occasionally looked like Iron Man (top).
Let’s not hold that against him. In some ways, it’s ahead of the curve in its depiction of literal “mobile phone zombies”, turned evil in this case by a Pokemon-like app that becomes all the rage. [So that’s what Temu is for. It suddenly makes sense…] There may not be many surprises in the plotting, with death nothing that cannot be overcome with what seems to be a supernatural 3-D printer. It’s very much a universe I enjoyed visiting for the duration, and is perhaps one with potential for a global franchise, each country offering their own take on the mythology: Nekrotonic: UK or Nekrotonic: Japan. I’ll definitely have to check out Wyrmwood: Apocalypse down the road.