The original AUGUST UNDERGROUND was a very unsettling pseudo-snuff movie, chronicling the exploits of two serial killers. It had its share of blood and guts, but its real power was in the psychological terror it managed to convey. The impressively realistic special effects were certainly repulsive, but it was the tone of the movie that really stuck with me.
The sequel, AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM is about three times as sick, disgusting and gruesome as its predecessor, but it is also less powerful. The Toe Tag Pictures team goes so over-the-top and takes things to such an outrageous extreme that the movie becomes a freak show of gruesome images and repulsive concepts, with little of the original's chilling atmosphere.
As in the original, the special effects are excellent. The performances are absolutely convincing, particularly the female member of the group, who portrays a demented viciousness that is totally believable.
But when it was all over, I felt that not a whole lot had actually happened.
It's a clothesline of every atrocity and act of perversion that these people could think up, all done in a realistic manner, and nothing else. The claustrophobic terror of the first movie is missing here, and that is what made it so disturbing. Many of the scenes of violence and depravity are taken to such an extreme that they become more absurd than horrifying. A scene in which the threesome make themselves vomit repeatedly on two victims is pretty vile initially, but it goes on so long that I stopped being disgusted and started wondering how the actors were able to continuously make themselves puke.
AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM is certainly worth finding and checking out for fans of maverick, underground and sick cinema. But anyone who's seen HENRY - PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, the GUINEA PIG videos or the original AUGUST UNDERGROUND has seen worse.
