Hellstone (2017) User Reviews

Jeff's Review

[jeffh-06890 · 9/10 · 20 April 2018]

I need to preface with 2 points 1 - This is in German and has subtitles ( they were fine ) 2 - This is NOT a 9 star movie, but I'm giving it 9 stars anyway... I'll explain...

Premise is simple... Guy is chased by satanists in the woods. I honestly don't want to say anymore because I don't want to give spoilers...

There is not much dialogue... so it's hard to comment on the acting... some of it looked a bit rigid, but actually got a LOT better later in the movie.

I like the fact that the movie did NOT use junk CGI, and instead opted for traditional puppets / real fake blood / etc... Yeah, some of it was cheesy, but I liked it... Props to whoever handled the special effects...

That part out of the way...

Camera work was FANTASTIC! I haven't seen a low budget flick shot so well in ages... A little bit artsy at times, but not overly so... Great framework... perfect slow motion shots... really high caliber work there...

If that wasn't good enough... The audio was EVEN BETTER. The background music / soundtrack was PERFECT! The audio, in my opinion, is some of the best I've ever seen ( or heard ). It worked magically with what was happening on screen... The audio practically drives this movie... it intensifies the suspense and scares 10 times over... AWESOME AWESOME job on the audio / soundtrack...

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So... is it really a 9 star movie? uh, maybe not... but I am awarding MAD bonus points for some very pro work done on an obviously low budget flick... Parts of it even reminded me of Dead Alive ( one of Peter Jackson's early films and another favorite of mine... )

Two thumbs up from me. ( I'm going to recommend to a few friends as well )

Pig Latin?????

[vmalast · 7/10 · 22 October 2018]

I agree with Jeffs review. Audio is in German not, pig Latin (what is that anyway. It that like Pennsylvania Dutch, which is neither German or Dutch)? Subtitles are clear and easy to read. It really is good for a 0 budget movie. It's not the greatest but it's far from the worst.

9/10 review is flat out lying and this is a pile of plagiaristic garbage

[horrorgasm · 10 April 2021]

I don't know if this guy is the director or a friend of the director or what, but that review is nonsense.

There are mostly practical effects in here, yes, (though there actually IS some bad CG in here too, and it's quite bad) but they're nothing to write home about. It looks like someone was trying hard to do Evil Dead 2, but with less budget and skills involved than even Evil Dead 1. Wow, dudes in robes and rubber masks running around and a creature that is very blatantly a cheap homemade copy of the granny from Evil Dead 2. Super exciting. (and no, it's not even remotely on the same level of effects as Dead Alive, another movie that came out almost 30 years ago either)

The camera work was acceptable at the best of times and clumsily shaky at the worst (even in static standing still scenes), and the shoddy editing doesn't do it any favors either. It's hard enough to take a scene seriously in as low budget of a movie as this as it is, but when you have student film level crap like "character is in the woods, sees some bad guys, turns around to run away, then hard cut to a separate scene of car keys landing on ground even though the guy was very clearly not holding his keys before". It's just sloppy and makes you feel like they didn't care about the production, and if even the people making it don't care why the hell should I?

The audio is as generic as it gets. It's just utterly generic spooky music. The bad guys and creatures didn't make a single memorable noise. Absolute BS.

Look, I'm willing to give low budget horror movies a lot of slack. There are many horror movies with ratings as low as this one that I actually enjoy, but this movie just feels like a cheap and blatant ripoff of Evil Dead and a few other low budget 80's horror films. You can try to dress it up as "paying homage", but when you steal creature designs right out of the movie you're "paying tribute to" and keep piling it on by having dude go into a cabin in the woods and listen to a spooky message from an old man on an old reel to reel tape player while thumbing through a crusty old grimoire full of spooky monster drawings and arcane scribblings while playing with a ritual dagger until totally-not-granny-from-Evil-Dead-2 comes in and HE FIGHTS IT WITH A CHAINSAW....screw you this is just plain damn plagiarism.