Allegoria

Right, well I was lured into watching the 2022 horror movie "Allegoria" because of the interesting cover. Well, that and the fact that it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen.

Had I known that this was an artsy horror anthology, I would have avoided it like the plague. I am not overly much a fan of horror anthologies, as they more often than not tend to be questionable and dubious. And that was also the case with "Allegoria". Yeah, it wasn't a great viewing experience. The short stories, or segments, that make up "Allegoria" were not particularly entertaining. And I have to say that I found it to be a bit over-the-top, as writer and director Spider One (and that name by itself is a warning signal, isn't it?) just tried to be too avantgarde with these short stories.

Something that spoke in favor of "Allegoria", was the fact that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble. That is something I do enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. The acting performances in "Allegoria" were good enough, despite the fact that the movie as a whole failed to really entertain me.

The special effects in "Allegoria" were actually good, and that did count for something. But it was hardly enough to make up for the shortcomings of the story narratives.

This is definitely not something I would recommend to horror fans. Nor is it something that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Allegoria" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.

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.

Some decent effects in a movie thats both boring and badly made. The stories "twists" rarely makes sense. And it has this artsy fartsy feel, like the filmmaker thought he was contributing to high art. Plus the sound is very uneven, sometimes you cant hear anything only for the volume to suddenly go bursting high.

Again a quote like "Just because you can make a movie doesnt mean you should" makes sense.

Dissapointing.

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.

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.