Special-effects talent Hiroshi Katagiri stretches a shoestring budget to impressive lengths in his crowdfunded directorial debut, Gehenna: Where Death Lives, at least when it comes to the creature department. Katagiri, who has worked on effects for such films as A.I., War of the Worlds and The Hunger Games, populates his film’s subterranean corridors with desiccated ghouls that are far slicker than one would expect from a project shot for less than $250,000, and Gehenna also contains a nifty twist ending. Unfortunately, the wooden acting, expository-laden script and plodding pace end up bloating Gehenna to the point of blunting the impact of these walking corpses.
When a group of developers travel to the western Pacific island of Saipan to view oceanfront property that would be perfect for an upscale resort, their plans hit a wrinkle as they discover a mask-wearing local praying outside a mysterious underground bunker. Local coordinator Alan (Simon Phillips), passes off the strange passageway as simply a World War II relic, a “machine gun nest” used by the Japanese, but prompted by a desire to ensure they know what they’re buying—and perhaps a little put off by the strange, doll-like totems hanging all over the place—the group of developers, led by Paulina (Eva Swan), decides to investigate. They all enter the underground lair, not even bothering to leave anyone outside as a lookout despite having just kicked out an ominous trespasser, and as a result they’re soon locked in a labyrinth of ghostly manifestations, hideous corpses and strange shifts in time and space.
The ingredients are here for a haunting, claustrophobic b-movie, but Katagiri quickly proves to be far more adept at creating creatures to put in front of the camera than he is at operating behind it. As the group meanders around the hallways, which contain old Japanese radios and personal journals that serve as info drops more than anything else, we don’t get that walls-are-closing-in sense of urgency that’s crucial for a film shot mostly all in one accursed place. Instead of a taut fright-fest, we watch the dwindling group bicker and spew sarcasm in one static shot after another, with the occasional ghoul popping out too infrequently to distract us from the melodramatic filler.
Co-written by Katagiri, Gehenna puts far too much misguided effort into trying to flesh out the background of the curse, which stems from the ancestors of Alan’s indigenous assistant, Pepé (Sean Sprawling), even though the film’s title is a Jewish and Christian reference. The movie would be better served simply implying the curse and leaving it at that rather than having characters waste time reading cryptic Spanish words on the wall or nosing through the diaries of Japanese soldiers. This emphasis on understanding the rigid structure of the curse is necessary for the irony of the film’s twist to land, but, in doing so, Katagiri prevents these catacombs from achieving their own sense of place. And the film doesn’t even trust the viewer to quickly grasp its twist, belaboring the point with a tacked-on ending.
While Gehenna clearly would’ve benefited from a bigger budget, far scarier and more memorable films have been made for less. Katagiri’s special effects work remains on point, and he’s cooked up the bare bones of fun little horror flick, but unfortunately Gehenna can’t quite bring it to life.
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