Mudbrick

I really love movies i've seen this compared too such as wicked man or midsommar, but those made sense. They had pace, slow pace but methodical. This seems like there are hints at a message the whole movie, without any practical meaning. I understand you can be vague with folk lore, especially with modern morality involved, but the audience still needs to understand what's going on. Enjoyed some of the ideas, but just never came together in my opinion. Acting was not the problem, but some parts of the script was rather clunky. I wish i had better things to say about this movie because i like supporting movies like this, but it honestly fell flat on so many levels. Cheap visuals, cheaper blood stains. Decent acting, sub par dialogue. Incohesive story tale, incohesive script.

Mudbrick is a 2024 indie horror film, directed by Nikola Petrovic, about Paul, a man who inherits a crumbling old house in his family's Eastern European village. When he returns to check it out, he starts to uncover disturbing secrets tied to an ancient pagan cult and his own family history. As things unravel, Paul has to face the eerie past lurking in the walls of the house and his own family.

What a trip this movie was! I checked it out after seeing it recommended by Hyped on Horror, and I'm so glad I did. I also took their advice and looked up some of the history and lore beforehand, which I highly recommend-it makes the story way easier to follow. The cinematography really stood out for me. It's super simple and natural but somehow adds so much to the overall vibe as the movie goes on. Philip Brodie and Andrew Howard absolutely killed it, and their screen chemistry was on point. It's definitely a slow burn, but not in a painful way-it keeps you hooked all the way through and wraps up with a really satisfying ending.

If you want HORROR, you won't get it here. This is an unwatchably drawn-out, all-talk no-bite family drama in which annoying characters wallow in endless scenes of rural misery, quarrels, torment, suffering, and misfortune.

If you want FOLK horror - you won't get that here either, at least not in a satisfactory form. The story is absurd: in a village in Eastern Serbia, the villagers worship ancient god Veles by praying to a wooden totem on a field, but also to a random tree outside the village, they keep wooden carvings with something they call Veles in their mudhouses, and they constantly repeat Glory to Veles!

If you want SERBIAN horror - you won't get that here either. The film is 95% in English, and 5% in MACEDONIAN, which is not spoken in the part of Serbia where this was shot.

Everything here is offensively fake, forced and unconvincing, starting from the very premise: namely, the father of a man who lived in London dies, and leaves him - a wretched mud hut in a dying Easter European village. And this guy comes from London to Serbia, to that wretched village, and decides to inherit that cottage, to live in it, even though his brother Jakov had always lived there with his wife and daughter!

The film is supposedly inspired by a true event - the only problem is that it happened after World War II, 80 years ago! In a time of post-war misery in some remote village, it made sense for two brothers to have a fierce and tragic quarrel over the inheritance of their father's mud house. Why would a Londoner in the 21st century fight with his own brother in some shithole in the mountains about some mudbrick house - the film doesn't even hint at that. It's taken for granted!

Various things are thrown in this muddled plot, but the execution is unskillful and confusing, so that they produce frustration and alienation, rather than mystery and involvement of the viewer. Instead of horror, we have an unconvincing, rambling and repetitive drama without any receptive elements. Instead of drama we have motivational and character confusion where people do unmotivated and STUPID things all the time, with no consequences.

I have to say this movie is not for those who want some dumb fun. It's a very serious tale of envy, despair, superstition, and ruin; that takes itself seriously.

The acting is superb, and plenty is said with dialogue that is trimmed down of anything unnecessary and it lacks exposition dumps, thankfully.

For the budget this movie had, I was shocked at how good it looked. The scenography will surely make you forget you're watching a non-Hollywood budget movie and the music is noticeable yet subtle to not take away from the experience but add to it.

The acting is simply amazing so that some actors who only have a line or not even a line, say more with that than some actors say with a book-worth of lines. One of the main actors, Andrew Howard, looks so much like a Serbian man that it comes out as a shock he's actually Welsh. The other main actor, Philip Brodie, wonderfully portrays the "prodigal son returns" role, and the rest of the cast well... if you've ever been to a Balkan village, you'd sworn you've seen these people there by how good they portray their roles.

Lastly, the story itself. The writer borrows enough from Slavic folklore and real life to intrigue you but leaves enough as a mystery for you to understand and unravel as you go along. There are "plot twists" but not in the typical sense you might be used to, rather it clicks in your mind as you watch ''til the end.

The only flaw of this movie, if I can even call it a flaw, would be that it's marketed as a typical horror movie. No, it's not a horror in the sense of jumpscares, CGI monsters and gore, it's a horror in a more personal sense, and I would rather call this movie a family horror-drama.

This slowburn dark folk (not really a) horror tale plays out in a small, derelict village in a pleasant but rather impoverished part of southeastern Serbia, in southeastern Europe. Through nice photography we are witnessing this family drama basically, encompassed by tacked-on pagan/Slavic symbolism and mythology, even some kind of a ''pagan'' cult (which doesn't make too much sense since the Orthodox Christianity in Serbia is already inherently merged with the old Serb/Slavic faith through Saint-Savaism).

Anyway, the decrepit village and eponymous mudbrick house look authentic here, since this ancient type of house-building (with mud as a binder) - can still be seen - or are refurbished for modern rural living, - in different parts of the country. What isn't too realistic though, is the family's grip on this grandfathers run-down old house in the countryside, and to see the brother (Paul) coming down from london like he inherited a castle, makes for a bit dubious premise, and the movie doesn't really offer a secret reason why the house is so much important to them. The other brother (Jakov) is played averagely by Andrew Howard (from a nice little film Mr InBetween, and here he looks and speaks like Niko Belic for some reason, which is fine by me). The rest of the cast, whom I've only seen for the first time here, are equally average.

Film's early promising, but ultimately unfulfilled vague 70's folk horror-reminiscent/pagan aesthetic doesn't offer much, and it barely, let alone deeply, touches upon it and nothing seems really dangerous nor frightening, which is the biggest deficiency here. One wonders if the creators actually even wanted this to be marketed and even made, as a truly 'horror' film, or merely a tribute to the older homegrown folk stories.

It did look nice though, didn't drag too long and I certainly appreciated the effort.

5.8/10.