What a trip this film is, really. Kids there is seriously no need to use drugs to experience something strange and bizarre in your life, just watch this film and all those fucked up fantasies will come to life right before your eyes and you won’t have to put one ounce of poison in your body.
“Red Cockroaches” is one hell of a trip, visually and story wise. For me to describe the story would probably just be to dam confusing for most people to understand, but I’ll try my best to describe it.
The story is about this guy who meets this strange women, in a nutshell everyday she becomes somebody different in his life, A stranger, his sister, his lover, and so on. (And us men have a hard time understanding women as it is, but this one takes the cake.) The world around them is falling apart, acid rain is making people crazy and bugs are beginning to mutate, and things begin to get weird all over the world. So anyway this guy Adam, our lead and this chick who like his sister, whom is his girlfriend who he bangs in the movie and so on, try to co-exist with one another and reveal family secrets and all the mysteries of the world or some shit. Yeah it’s kind of confusing, like “Memento” with a “Dark City” type twist. The Futuristic world the story takes place in is that of our own and full of unseen technology. (It is a low budget Sci-fi film, but effects are limited.) But it can be compared to the world depicted in “Blade Runner”.
Now when I first popped this disc into my player, and watched the beginning I almost shut the film off. It starts off really slow, and about fifteen minutes into the flick, the story really starts to get crazy and bizarre. What really caught my attention was a single shot of a leaky faucet and three plump red tomatoes in a rack focus shot, from that shot on the film became visually stunning, each shot was very well planned out and it turns the film into a bizarre artistic masterpiece that is visually unforgettable. For being a low budget film shot on video and edited on a Mac, this films production value is nothing but top notch in the standards of a low budget film. If you watch the film you might at times dislike the shots that do in fact look like they were shot on a camcorder, but don’t mind them as this film gets better and better with each shot.
The acting is brilliant, at first I just thought it was ok, but just like the film, the cast took it to a higher level with each scene, turning the characters into the messed up being that the story makes them out to be. It’s no wonder that this film won over thirty film festivals, the directing and acting are what make this film work. by far some of the best acting I’ve seen in an indie film.
However there are some low points to this film, and it comes with the CGI effects. The Cockroaches look like cartoons up close, and are just red dots when flying around in the background of random shots. However the good thing that the director did was that he did not use that much CGI, the less is more routine works here. We know their there, but we don’t need to see them. There really is not much when it comes to make-up effects in this film, but the make-up jobs used on the actors to describe their mood and feelings really helped establish those feelings on the screen.
Overall, “Red Cockroaches” is a brilliant film with stunning visuals and great acting, a film that all artistic indie filmmakers should watch and study. Most of you know that I’m not really a big fan of artistic films, but when done the right way they can be visually a pleasure to watch as well as entertaining when the story and script are good. This is a must see film for fans of David Cronenberg, David Lynch, and so on. Get this DVD it’s one hell of a flick.
– Horror Bob
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
