Condemned
Director: Eli Morgan Gesner
Starring: Michel Gill, Johnny Messner, Ronen Rubinstein
RJL Entertainment
January 5, 2016
Reviewed by Brian M. Sammon
Sometimes a simple idea can be done really well for a low budget. A recent example that springs to mind is Last Shift. And then sometimes there’s just not enough there, either in ideas or money, to warrant a feature length film. Sadly, Condemned falls into the latter category
A poor little rich girl runs away from her bickering wealthy parents to live with her boyfriend who is squatting in a condemned apartment building in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The dump is filled with various scumbag clichés such as junkies, hookers, paranoids, sexual deviants, crazies, pimps, and a drug cooker. Into this cesspit of filth a virus is born out of their combined waste that first causes everyone to get puss-filled boils all over them and then turns them into hallucinating, bloodthirsty murder machines. Naturally the doors to the building are all locked (and I guess they forget how to break window glass) and our “heroes” must fight to survive and try to escape.
The problems with Condemned are, unfortunately, many. First, it takes far too long for anything interesting to happen. Since the plot is so thin, this movie is heavily frontloaded with character stuff that tries hard to be funny, but ultimately falls flat. Also, when 90% of your characters are repulsive excuses for humanity you: (A) don’t want to spend all that much time with them; and (B) once the bad things finally do start to happen, you don’t really care if they make it out alive. The direction is competent for the most part, but the cinematography and overall look leaves a lot to be desired. Everything is coated in a green pallor, I guess to give things a sick, grimy look, but to me it just looked like all the movies that followed The Matrix in the early 2000s. Also the psychotic visions the infected have could have been pretty neat, but there is a strange digitization to all of them like a glitch YouTube video that is as unexplained as they are annoying. Once the blood starts to flow it can be gloriously gory at times, but the splatter is not so awesome to forgive this film’s other sins. And once things actually start to happen it’s nothing you haven’t already seen before, and done better in REC and even the U.S. remake, Quarantine. If you have seen either of those films then there’s really no reason to watch this one.
On to the extras on this new Blu-ray from RJL Entertainment. Perhaps the best feature is a “42 Street Mode” where you can watch the film with a live audience commentary track. While not informative, it was kind of neat. There is a collection of various cast interviews and a script reading for a bit of behind-the-scenes action. There is also a segment from the TV show “Entertainment Tonight Canada” that has an onset interview with actress Dylan Penn.
As much as I like to root for the little guy when it comes to horror movies, I can’t this time as there’s just not that much to this flick. It’s got some decent gore, but you’ve got to wait far too long for it to start. I would suggest watching some other splatterfest (if that’s your thing) that has more gore and a lot more going for it. Any of the early Peter Jackson movies come quickly to mind. So yeah, consider this one a pass.
