The Ugly

Virtuoso feature début in which the young New-Zealand director Scott Reynolds succeeds in linking the unpleasant tension of a horror thriller with the more pleasant anxious suspense of a psycho-thriller. Protagonist is the serial killer Simon. He has spent five years in the clinic of the sinister doctor Marlowe (a role by Roy Ward, a New Zealand actor who has acted in many Dutch films, including Modern Crimes by Alejandro Agresti). Marlowe regards Simon as lethal and incurable. Simon himself claims to have been cured and on the basis of his right to a second opinion, he is visited by the attractive and intelligent psychiatrist Karen. At first she seems to side with Simon, but she finds out that she is gradually being taken over by the bloodthirsty demons still active in Simon.Reynolds succeeded in giving his film an original appearance and great suspense, especially in the portrayal of the macabre, black blood-spewing demons. The film regularly chooses the perspective of the cruel and insane world of Simon. Through flashbacks he repeatedly experiences his savage crimes and in his visions, his destructive urges become frighteningly concrete. Reynolds is clearly a passionate lover of directors of the calibre of Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock, but also of a cheeky innovator of the horror genre like Sam Raimi. (GjZ)