There’s really no way to properly introduce August Underground’s Mordum, except to say that that this is an amazing, and amazingly fucked up, piece of film. Unique in many respects, it still holds itself to the essential themes of the psycho/horror genre and provides as much or more pure video sickness as many a viewer will want to see.
A shaky handheld camera walks up to a low-rent home and enters. The grainy viewfinder moves through the cluttered shack to peek through a broken door and watch a man screwing a girl doggy-style. This turns out to be the girl’s brother, and soon a violent argument breaks out between the cameraman and the girl, culminating in her cutting her belly with a razor blade as he watches in excitement. The couple leaves together, arriving at another slum-like location where the girl takes over the camera to videotape her friend entering the home and beating a junkie acquaintance to death with a hammer. She moves upstairs to find a decaying OD victim on the floor, then returns to set the camera down next to a plate of maggot-ridden food. As her accomplice begins cutting away the murder victim’s clothing in preparation for dismembering the body the girl accuses him of being a faggot, and another fight breaks out between them.
When taping begins again the setting has changed, and the camera zooms in on the girl cutting her arm with a kitchen knife. A naked bloodied fat girl, a plastic mask duct-taped to her face, is removed from a coffin-like crate, and with much teasing and torment the self-mutilator again takes over the camera as the captive is humiliated and raped. A second crate is opened to reveal the rape victim’s boyfriend, who is made to cut his own penis off with a pair of nail scissors as his girlfriend screams for her life. The cameraman’s girl tastes the severed organ, then shoves it into the fat girl.
And that’s the first twenty minutes or so of a 76-minute odyssey into complete insanity. Two young men (Michael T. Schneider and Fred Vogel), both apparent drug casualties, and their younger damaged punk rock girlfriend (Cristie Whiles), capture and torture to death a number of other pieces of street trash, degrading them sexually, mutilating them, and eventually murdering them. (One example; a pair of captive girls is vomited upon, and made to vomit, repeatedly before one of them is disemboweled alive and literally gut-fucked.) The gang even meets up with a kindred spirit (played by Killjoy from Necrophagia) who takes them into his studio/abattoir where numerous rotting corpses and dismembered body parts have been arranged. Of course with the disturbed personalities of the killers, and their penchant for turning every interaction into a violent and potentially fatal confrontation, it’s a given that the story will come to no good end; it’s only a matter of when and how.
Throughout it all the group reacts with complete hysteria, laughing, screaming, and screaming with laughter at every move, often erupting in random and inappropriate outbursts of petty rage. And it is this behavior that’s every bit as disturbing as the horrific acts the group is constantly committing. This is not a careful, methodical, organized gang of killers, but rather a fragile mess whose only reaction to the world is a violently inappropriate one. And it’s this chaotic instability that makes the psycho-terrorist collective such a frightening one; there is literally no method to their madness, and you the viewer have no idea what they will inflict upon you next. The incessant mad giggling and screeching creates a dangerous aura of instability, making the film a decidedly unnerving viewing experience.
Although the use of drugs isn’t showcased in Mordum (at least on the part of the killers), the impression given is definitely one of prolonged drug psychosis, spiraling ever-downward into an ugly place somewhere beyond evil or madness. The film is similar here to Van Bebber’s My Sweet Satan in its lysergic fury, but instead of that short film’s brief explosion of violence Mordum locks you into a protracted and inescapable bad trip horrorshow. The entire film is an extended psychotic episode, one not teetering on the brink of insanity but one having slipped over the edge long ago and hit every jagged precipice on the way down.
Adding to this violently emotional gauntlet is the visual impact of the dizzying handheld camerawork. Combined with the nauseating subject matter this is sure to inspire a more severe visceral reaction than did The Blair Witch Project’s over hyped cinematography. The gritty videotape roves through the action wildly, closing in on all gruesome details with rabid attention, and scene cuts are often as swift and random as the acts themselves. The props and gore effects are disturbingly convincing, and the plethora of maggots and repeated scenes of necrophilia are sure to provoke some degree of gut-level response. (It should be noted that while genitalia and sex acts are caught on camera, there is no explicit penetration in a hardcore XXX sense.) And it has to be said that the bonus post-credits footage sums the entire feature up quite admirably in a single short scene.
Although there is no continuous score to speak of, aside from the non-stop screaming, cackling, and swearing on the part of the performers, the soundtrack appropriately includes contributions by Impercept, Gorelord, Superkollider, Necrophagia, Wurdulak, Bippy, NCO, Porcelain Maggot, and Slave Pig. Certain viewers may find adding a death metal soundtrack of their own to the background a fitting accompaniment (even the killers attend a local death metal show at one point).
Not an enjoyable film by any means, Mordum is still a most impressive endurance test that will leave a lingering shadow on the mind’s eye of every viewer. The as-yet-unreleased August Underground, and Toe Tag Pictures’ upcoming Penance, promise to be every bit as riveting.
Note: This screener version was in VHS format, so DVD extras were unavailable for review.
-Crites
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
