Allegoria

Allegoria (2022) is a new release I recently watched on Shudder. The storyline follows a group of individuals whose lives are indirectly tied together. Their obsessions are about to manifest demons in or around them that will change their lives forever and flip their lives upside down.

This movie is written and directed by Spider One in his directorial debut and stars John Ennis (Eight Legged Freaks), Krsy Fox (Underworld: Evolution), Tyler Bryan (Frank), Johnny Hawkes (Zombie Strippers) and Bryce Johnson (Darkness Rising).

This movie has a fun soundtrack that reminded me of Clockwork Orange. The opening scene with the teacher was tremendous. I adored the makeup, mask and attire of the burned demon. Very well done. The movie is more intricate and smarter than you may anticipate. The writing is clever and does a great job tying all the short stories together and the end is fairly smart.

Overall this is a slightly above average addition to the horror genre that's worth a viewing. I would score this a 6-6.5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

Well idk. The movie's name is allegoria, but the only meaning I can currently think of behind this is the Spider One trying to show what art can mean in the way of a weird, one could say "crappy" (- me, I said that) film, almost ironically suggesting that, even though this is a poor watch, it is still art? To give credit here, it does end in 1 hour so isn't taxing to watch, but doesn't have a 'scare,' more of the same over-used sequences of the monster popping up behind people in different camera angles. However, the last of these 'tales' implements exceptional camera work and some brilliant acting from the character of Brody, other than that there is no stand out factor, for me, about this film.

This is supposed to be (I think) about a bunch of pretentious artists. But what they are saying about art is at the level of what a high school student might tell you. So they are obnoxious and annoying rather than pretentious. I was just happy to see each and every person in this movie die.

Also I agree with the reviewer speaking about the sound quality. Had to turn the volume up almost as loud as my system would go to hear any of the whisper quiet dialogue and then turn it almost all the way down again at ANY sound effect (yes, that includes simple things like closing a door).

I was watching the movie and about a third of the way through I wondered why I was watching an anthology movie like VHS. A bunch of seemingly random stories connected by a single thread.

It's not a cohesive film from start to finish. Which is a shame because the actors were all really quite good. Sadly it's a lot of monologuing back and forth.

Remember in Black Mass when one person would litteraly speak for five miny without anyone else talking even though it was supposed to be a conversation. It's like that but not quite so bad.

Hope they do better in the future. Tons of potential here.

I feel like a lot of people are going to try to compare Spider One's directing/writing to Rob Zombie's directing/writing, but I don't think that's necessary. Allegoria is Spider One's first full length movie. Allegoria wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen, but it definitely wasn't great either. I managed to watch the entire thing, hoping that maybe it would get better. It didn't. The writing was pretty light on plot, horror, and excitement. I can imagine Spider One sitting at a table as he was writing this, thinking how every little tale was awesome and scary....but really, the stories didn't have much happening. At all. There were nice little ties between the stories with the characters, but that's about it. Really weak writing. Each story had a shred of horror to it, but barely. The ideas didn't feel fleshed out, the stories felt unfinished, and there was a severe lack of horror to the whole thing. The acting wasn't terrible, I didn't feel like anybody in particular did a bad job. The camera work was fine. The music felt a little trite, lots of intense piano key slams indicating you're supposed to feel terror or suspense. But I never felt terror or suspense. Overall, my biggest disappointment with the movie is that basically nothing happened throughout the whole movie. Just several short stories, one after the other, where some characters do some things and talk for 5-10 minutes, and then it's on to the next. Yawn.