A CLASSIC HORROR STORY : Tuesday 3rd August 2021.

With Greater Sydney still in COVID lockdown, and as a result all cinema's closed until August 28th at least now, I've been reviewing over the last few weeks some the latest feature films released recently onto Netflix. One such film that I watched from the comfort of my own home this week is the Italian horror film 'A CLASSIC HORROR STORY' Directed and Co-Written by Roberto De Feo and Paolo Strippoli. Produced for a budget of US$3M, the film was released recently onto Netflix on 14th July and has garnered mixed or average Reviews so far. The film is over dubbed into English.

The film opens up with a masked figure dragging a heavy wooden club behind him, raising it above his head and swinging it in the direction of a bound, gagged, bloodied and clearly petrified woman tied down on a kitchen bench. Before the club makes impact however, we cut away to early twenty-something Elisa (Matilda Lutz) speaking in hushed tones in a diner to her mother from her mobile phone saying that it is in her best interests to return home to Calabria for the purposes of having her pregnancy aborted. She agrees reluctantly and then receives a text message saying that her car pooling vehicle is pulling up outside with her driver Fabrizio (Francesco Russo) and other passengers Mark (Will Merrick) and his girlfriend Sofia (Yuliia Sobol) and Riccardo (Peppino Mazzotta). The vehicle in question is a camper van and so the five happy car poolers head off. Into the journey Fabrizio asks if anyone is thirsty and if so to take a look in the fridge. Marks stands up and grabs beers for everyone. Elisa declines but is coerced by Mark into drinking - she takes a mouthful. Later Elisa has to pull over as she is feeling sick. The others take the opportunity to stretch their legs. As evening falls, before driving off Mark takes the wheel and says that he is driving, to which Fabrizio has little choice but to accept. Later that night, whilst driving slightly under the influence of alcohol, Mark crashes the camper van into a tree when he dodges the corpse of a goat on the road. Elisa wakes up the next morning to see the group administering first aid on Mark's broken leg. They also realise that they are inexplicably no longer on the road, being now in a clearing surrounded by forest, and in that clearing is an old ram shackle cabin. 

The group venture up to the cabin, but find that there's no one at home, the door is locked and being rather spooked they decide not to forcibly enter. Riccardo and Fabrizio decide to go off attempting to find their way through the forest and back to the road. The pair come across three deformed scarecrows crucified with five pigs heads on stakes in a makeshift altar. Terrified, they leave. 

Meanwhile, Elisa wakes up after a nap and with Sofia and Mark both sleeping, she notices the front door of the cabin ajar. She enters the cottage, where she discovers a ritualistic mural depicting the three deities: Ostro, Mastosso and Carcagnosso, which symbolise the leadership of a satanic group that worships them in exchange for abundance and wealth through human sacrifice. Fabrizio recounts the story of each one of the deities - one had his eyes torn out, the other his ears cut off and the other his mouth ripped open. They decide to spend the night away from the house and sleep in the camper van. Later that evening they hear screams from inside the house, and going to investigate the cabin leaving Mark alone, they discover in the roof space a young girl trapped inside a cocoon of hay. To everyone's horror, her tongue sits in a jar on the floor. 

A siren blasts and red spotlights light up the cabin. Elisa is the first to notice Mark being dragged by three masked figures who bind him to the living room table. Observing from the attic directly above where Riccardo is trying to silence Sofia's screams, they see Mark have his ankles smashed by the same wooden club and his eyes impaled by a pair of sharp skewers. The three masked men drag Mark's lifeless body outside while the rest of the group waits for dawn to escape the cabin and through the forest, taking the young girl with them. They stumble across a graveyard of abandoned cars and camper trailers from all the previous victims, and come to the harsh realisation that they are not the first. The girl reveals her name, Chiara (Alida Baldari Calabria), to Elisa through her diary which she locates in her family car. When the sirens sound again, the group decides to get the hell outta Dodge.

Despite supposedly walking in a straight line south, the group return to the clearing again, this time without the trailer in place, but a bottle of beer left behind on the ground. As night falls the group opens up to one another as they lay on the cabin floor drinking from the bottle of beer. Elisa wakes up to the sound of the siren and the cabin illuminated in a red glow. She ventures outside the front door to be greeted with all the followers of the sect standing in front of the cabin. Sofia, Chiara and Riccardo are bound and gagged hostages tied to poles on a ritualistic stage. The masked figures representing Ostro, Mastosso and Carcagnosso begin the ritual. Sofia has her eyes ripped out and Riccardo has his ears sliced off, and then their severed parts are placed on the giant head of a scarecrow in which Chiara finds herself trapped. Sofia and Riccardo's throats are cut and they bleed out on stage.

After Fabrizio and Elisa have witnessed these events unfold before their eyes they console each other. In their embrace Elisa overhears that Fabrizio has a receiver in his ear. Further to this, she also realises that Fabrizio drugged the bottle of beer from which they all drank, except him. When she confronts him, he becomes emotionally distraught and orders a cult member to come and get her from the cabin, whereupon she is knocked unconscious. Elisa comes round the next day beaten, bruised, bloodied and blindfolded sat in wheelchair with her hands nailed to the wooden arm rests. She is sat at the end of a long table at the Three Knights Campsite aligned with sect members all about to tuck into a hearty pasta lunch while in the presence of a mayor (Cristina Donadio). When her face covering is removed the gathered members all mock and scorn Elisa for her sobbing. The mayor speaks demanding silence and they all instantly fall quiet, and it becomes obvious that she is connected with the sect and that she considers them all to be her children. 

Elisa is then wheeled into a control room, where she sits in front of a bank of monitors depicting all the events she faced that were secretly recorded by hidden cameras and a production crew who oversaw everything. Fabrizio appears on screen and reveals that he is Directing an amateur snuff movie, trying to make a classic horror story, and that if they were in America the studios would already be demanding a sequel. She manages to free herself from her four inch nail bindings, and gingerly walking out of the control room into the mid-day sun she discovers she is in the camp of the film's production crew. Elisa sneaks up to Fabrizio's trailer and observes through the window that Chiara was in fact an actress hired by him to perform the farce and she overhears the pair discussing the next steps of the recording schedule. The mayor it is revealed is part of the mafia and to be funding the film. 

When Chiara exits the trailer, Elisa blasts her dead with a shotgun while wearing one of the sect's masks. Fabrizio seeing the mangled bloody body of his actress goes after the masked figure and is shot in the leg. Crawling away he begs for mercy, but Elisa shoots him in the head saying 'it's only a movie' all the while recording everything with a portable camera. Traipsing through the forest, she discovers an exit through a fence that limits access to the place as a false military area. Elisa finds herself bloodied on a nearby beach, being recorded by tourists and day trippers on their mobile phones as she walks into the sea after receiving messages from her troubled mother as her phone comes back into signal range. 

Whilst 'A Classic Horror Story' has plenty of blood and gore to keep die hard fans of the genre satisfied, it is light on jump scares and moments of real dread and tension. The film also borrows extensively from other notable entries in the canon including 'Cabin in the Woods', 'Antebellum', 'Midsommar', 'The Evil Dead', 'Wolf Creek' and many more. The film also leaves many questions unanswered, such as how did the camper van relocate from the side of the road to a dense forest clearing without any of the passengers knowing; how is that everyone in the sect is under the control of Fabrizio and the mayor; where were the production crew in the final shotgun scene; were the sect members and the production crew one and the same; how is it that none of the tourists in the closing beach scene came to her aid, and more besides? Sure there is a thread of social commentary and Italian mythic historical context that runs throughout the film which helps elevate it above its peers, and for a mere US$3M production budget the film visually at least looks the part, but aside from that this films isn't as 'classic' as its title would have you believe. 

'A Classic Horror Story' warrants two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-