U.S. DVD Release
How many of you have ever watched a painful or horribly boring horror film and thought, “Christ! I’m never gonna watch anything from this guy again!”? I’ve done it many times and in many cases I just put myself through more agonizing garbage as the directors never get better. Fortunately for me they do sometimes get better. It’s rare but I’ve come across some young/new horror directors that grow by leaps and bounds with each film they make and each time I find myself more and more impressed.
Case in point, Daniel De La Vega, this guy made a movie (Chronicle of the Raven) that was so bad it made my ass cheeks clench and my toes curl. I can remember tapping my fingers on the couch and wondering why I was subjecting myself to such a bad film when I didn’t plan to review it. Being the incredible horror geek I was though I continued watching and wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised to discover the entire film sucked major dirty donkey dong. Hell, some of you probably wouldn’t be at all shocked to know it was a Lionsgate film considering the incredible decline in quality we’ve seen from them over the last few years. Believe it or not, I may even still have the screener for this sitting around! I should send it to my worst enemy and ask them to pass it along to their mothers! Now that’s payback bitches!
Anyhow, De La Vega is back with a new film entitled Death Knows Your Name and despite my negative experience with his last film I found myself growing more and more anxious to see his new one. The premise was interesting enough and I can sometimes be won over by style alone even if the acting is off or the occasional plot hole opens up. You just can’t expect miracles from indie horror filmmakers.
Death Knows Your Name is about psychologist Bruce Taylor, a man dealing with some rather pressing issues at home with his wife as well as coping with dreams he’s been having involving a patient named Richard, a disturbed gentleman that speaks to the ground outside the mental health facility. Bruce’s interest in Richard’s behavior begins to grow and curiosity leads Bruce to the hospital archives in order to find out more on Richard. Instead of learning more, he discovers a concealed passageway that leads him deep into tunnels that run beneath the old abandoned wing of the hospital. There in the dark tunnels he discovers a makeshift grave and a skull!
Desperate to find out who the skull may have belonged to Bruce confronts his father, a medical professor, and asks for help reconstructing the face and a possible cause of death. Reluctantly his father agrees despite having reservations about dealing with a possible murder victim and Bruce’s declining mental state.
Finding the skull has had a negative impact on those connected to Bruce though and patient Richard attempts suicide. What connection does the skull and Richard have and why is Bruce being drawn into all this strangeness?
Events continue to spiral out of control when the facial reconstruction specialist is stunned to find Bruce an exact match…for the face on the skull! How can that be? Bruce is now determined more than ever to find out who the skull belonged to and how he died in order to answer the question of how he’s connected to all of this craziness. It’s a race against time to find a man who, by all accounts, should be dead before the entire hospital is infected with a decades old yellow fever plague brought on by a mysterious “messenger” inhabiting suicidal Richard.
Death Knows Your Name is without a doubt a step up for De La Vega and an interesting little film but it does have its issues. My biggest problem, and the best part of the film, was the story. Go figure. It was original and interesting and, in my opinion, in serious need of some pre-production refinements. To say this was a tad dense would be an understatement. All of the complex jibber jabber and rookie writer overkill you’d expect to find in a first-timers first draft screenplay appears to have been left in the film and it all just serves to bog the viewers down with unresolved sub-plots and unnecessary exposition.
I will give it to De La Vega though; the production values and atmosphere in this film are all top-notch and can easily be compared to films like Boo! and, to a lesser degree, Session 9. The patients in Death Knows Your Name reminded me of the elderly featured in Francisco Plaza’s excellent 15-minute short film, Abuelitos. Fans of Takashi Miike may also want to give this film a gander as it effectively trumps the “full grown man from an itty bitty hole” set-piece featured in the mondo freaky Gozu! I mean it was just fuckin’ disgusting and the creature that pops out is impressive to say the least! I’d say it was a few notches down from Bob Keen’s “Skinless Frank” from Hellraiser.
The casting was decent, acting reasonable, but I do have to question De La Vega’s decision to film this in English instead of his native Castilian. The dialogue was stiff and there were times it just didn’t flow well at all. Wonky dialogue translations, amateur acting and occasional instances of poorly timed melodrama had my eyebrow raised once or twice but you just have to cut some indie filmmakers slack.
Despite the muddled concept, I liked Death Knows Your Name. I don’t see it making giant waves but I do see it signaling the growth of a filmmaker that may one day make the genre proud. I can definitely recommend this film though I’d suggest renting before purchasing just in case you find my tastes a bit too snooty to your liking.
