Carnage in the streets crying blood emoji in the sheets

@ BUT Film Festival 2024

The idea of an Albanian set horror movie is interesting even more in a real underground old USSR bunker. Shame this spends 80% of it's run time doing a sordid drama plot about drug dealing that is extremely boring and badly written while a promising villain gets some scrap moments in it. The last 20% are fun slasher hi-jinks which makes you wish for more of it. There's a second part coming and it's going to be kung-fu focused which is a turn from this.

This was fun! You can see that Alex Visani and his crew had fun making Blades In The Darkness. It's a story well told, with loads of dark humor and cool, gory kills! Not scary by any many means, but so much fun!

I'm currently the program director for the BAY OF BLOOD Film Festival here in North Bay, Ontario! As the festival progresses, I thought it would be fun to share my personal thoughts on each feature film that we're screening along with a bit of info on why we chose to screen it.

This is so much fun! It's a violent, stylish low budget slasher with a very well conceived antagonist and some surprising swerves into DTV action movie territory. Really hope it gets a good distribution deal.

Selected for going above and beyond what is expected of this particular subgenre and delivering a piece of Euro-horror that makes great use of cultural contextualization.

Finally a slasher for communists! Blades in the Darkness is an Albanian horror movie that's main problem is that it's about 40 years too late, and that there's really no story or characters to really get invested in. The practical effects were fine, and it's a short movie, but I would've liked to see more details of how and why the killer became who he became. I know he hates capitalism and everything it stands for, but why the Wolverine hands?

MY FAVORITE SCENE--Where did he go to bathroom for 28 years?

It was kind of nice to see an Albanian set horror movie that really leaned into that setting. This is about some would be hustlers that get hustled by the mob and everyone ends up in some tunnels under Tirana. Of course something else lives down there in a bunker that hasn't seen the light of day since the end of communism in Albania. They go all in on the paranoid communist creation as the killer for this slasher and it works pretty well. When it's going full stalk-and-slash with a constant loop of Albanian communist propaganda playing down in the dank bunkers and tunnels this movie delivers. The characters and the set up are ok, although the whole love story/love interest cousin guy thing really falls flat for me. Great killer design in this helps smooth things out, but it could have gone for a bit more claustrophobia.

7/10
Alex Visani si cementa in uno slasher vecchio stampo dal buon ritmo e dal atmosfera cupa che sa regalare tanto sangue al interno di una ambientazione suggestivo e marcio. Il low budget non fa una piega dato che il materiale pratico per gli squarti fanno loro sporca figura,per non parlare del intricata trama che ruota attorno al marciume albanese al interno del bunker, la fotografia e le musiche rimandano degnamente ai film anni 70/80 di Joe D'Amato così come il villain armato di fondenti lame . Il cast regge la pellicola per tutta la durata divertendo anche il pubblico facendo domandare più volte chi avrà la meglio, Manuela Arcuri è sempre bellissima anche nel ruolo da villain ed è proprio lei ad accompagnare le teste decapitate degli ignari personaggi.tra sangue e mistero la pellicola si porta a casa un notevole inizio per una possibile saga nostrana passata in sordina purtroppo.

A pesar de ser un slasher de bajo presupuesto, Blades in the Darkness lucha por mantener nuestra atención con un ritmo decente y buenos conceptos sobre el papel.

Su historia se sitúa en Tirana (Albania), lo que le da un toque especial al estilo Hostel.
La introducción de la película y parte de la trama que cuenta porque el asesino "es así" son muy entretenidas y creo que se explotan demasiado poco en la misma.

A medida que avanza el metraje los fallos también comienzan a ser más constantes, con una recta final que para mi gusto no está bien encaminada y deja con un final bastante descafeinado.

Duelo a muerte... con cuchillos? 😦😦😦

All this because a kid couldn't read his comic book at home??? The horrors of war can definitely be an effect on homelife... that would have been interesting to see in the first scene.
Otherwise, it's schlocky but its servicable enough. There's some choppy editing to avoid violence but the sound is pretty good and the locations used are pretty eye catching especially that drive through the graveyard at the beginning.

But otherwise, its a horror film about people exploring a place they have no business being at. You've seen it before and you know where it going.