‘Post Mortem’ VOD Review
Stars: Viktor Klem, Fruzsina Hais, Judit Schell, Zsolt Anger, Gabor Reviczky, Gabriella Hamori, Erik Gyarmati, Diana Magdolna Kiss | Written by Peter Bergendy, Piros Zankay, Gabor Hellebrandt | Directed by Peter Bergendy
I hate really bland titles for horror movies. Of all the things people could come up with, the films get called things like….. Post Mortem. Of course, it’s nearly never the actual director’s choice and quite often the film is much better than the title suggests.
An ex-soldier of the first World War is now a photographer that takes pictures of the dead, often with their, very much alive, relatives. He visits a small village that has suffered from Spanish Flu, with bodies piling up and unable to be buried because of the frozen ground. Here he meets a young girl, and they will help the town and its unfriendly ghosts.
Post Mortem looked so much better than I was expecting. I was expecting something low-budget but this Hungarian horror movie, at the very least, looks like plenty of money has been spent on it. The locations, the scenery, the props, the costumes and the effects all look extremely slick. I was massively impressed. The snow and frozen covered village and landscapes are one of many things that create the spooky atmosphere. Almost every scene feels like its own ghost story, you end up keeping a close eye on the darkness around and behind the main characters, or you’ll be listening carefully to any cue in the music that might tease a scare that’s coming. The score generally was very good too and this had one or two impressive jump scares. Often, they did go for a loud noise jump scare but everything did work well and it never felt like a ‘cheap’ jump scare.
Unfortunately, the screener I watched was a dubbed version. I know there are some people that don’t really like subtitles, but I would have preferred them here. There are obviously some good performances in Post Mortem but it is sometimes a little hard to tell with the dubbing.
There is a small use of CGI used for the ghosts and it isn’t great. I think the filmmakers know this because they limit the use of it and it’s never used in the really important scenes. They even manage to create some creepiness from it. By far the best use of effects were when the invisible ghosts are attacking the village’s residents. They float and levitate in the air, are dragged at speed across the ground and are thrown against walls. These moments look very impressive. As do some of the make-up, and what are assume are practical effects in many of the dead bodies. There’s one dead body that has a stretched-looking neck and every sight of it really freaked me out.
Post Mortem is full of great imagery and how impressive it looks is its biggest attribute. But that’s not all that it has going for it. This is often a dark and scary genre movie that is consistently tense. Unfortunately, there are a few moments somewhere in the middle of the movie that kind of plod along a bit and it feels like if fifteen minutes or so were taken off of the run time, Post Mortem would have been even better. That said, there’s lots to enjoy here in this impressive ghost story.
**** 4/5
Post Mortem will be released across all digital download platforms in the UK & Ireland from 31st October, courtesy of Smartdog Productions.
