Horrorvision (2001)

Directed by Danny Draven [Other horror films: Hell Asylum (2002), Cryptz (2002), Deathbed (2002), Dark Walker (2003), Urban Evil (2005), Tales from the Grave (2006, segment ‘Beyond Death’), I, Vampire (2006), Ghost Month (2009), Reel Evil (2012), The Dead Reborn (2013), Weedjies: Halloweed Night (2019)]

Horrorvision is perhaps one of the most dated films I’ve seen, and it wasn’t necessarily sensical at times, but it still has a bit of charm. It’s a Full Moon movie, and that certainly plays a part, but it’s also a somewhat interesting concept despite the rather poor execution.

I liked some portions of the plot, dealing with a website that, when seen, caused madness and mass murder. It featured early 2000’s technology – QuickTime was referenced, and someone boasted about hacking AOL and sending a virus through someone’s email – and it had that nostalgic charm.

To put a finer point on this, I was born in 1993, so I was pretty young in the early 2000’s, but I remember bits and pieces, especially post-9/11. Remember that site MadBlast? Or perhaps the game site PopCap, with games like PsychoBabble? Bonus.com, one of the best Flash game sites? The early 2000’s is my childhood, and a lot of movies from that time, despite not being good, do hold an appeal to me.

Horrorvision is a good example. It’s a poor film, and probably way too ambitious in it’s goals (it’s partially apocalyptic, which is seen primarily through news reports and via characters hearing about it), but seeing hideous technological monsters (which looked like cheap rejects from films like Hardware and Death Machine) pop out of technological devices (watches, beepers, that type of thing) and cause mayhem can be a decent amount of fun.

There’s also a sequence which features a creature/person called Wetwire that looked like some really bad Doctor Who antagonist. It looked ultra shitty, and I didn’t entirely get the point of this thing, but hey, it had heart. The special effects overall are quite poor, but if you find lower budget films from this time period charming, it might be worth it.

Len Cordova’s overacting at times was a bit much, but it was also funny at every turn, so I dug it. James Black (Zombie Cop) had a Morpheus from The Matrix thing going for him, and he was a fun character. Both Brinke Stevens (The Slumber Party Massacre, Nightmare Sisters, October Moon, and a hundred other movies) and Maggie Rose Fleck get a few good scenes in, especially Fleck, so they were reasonably enjoyable also.

[This is the paragraph where I would possibly compare this to Feardotcom, which has a similar idea, but I’ve not seen Feardotcom in over 15 years, so I’ll just leave this here to remind myself to watch it later on.]

Two more quick notes about Horrorvision: the runtime of this one is quite short, at around an hour and 12 minutes, and a good six minutes of that is traveling sequences (the one that takes place in a desert is the most unnecessary one), but it’s still a quick film, and also, the soundtrack of this was decent. It’s sort of a dark, electric rock type thing – “Strawberry Gashes” by Jack Off Jill played during the credits, which is a band I’ve not thought of in years, which was cool.

In many ways, Horrorvision is a bad movie, but I can’t say I didn’t occasionally feel a glimmer of enjoyment. It’s certainly below average, but I also think it’s somewhat certain I wouldn’t mind giving this another go in the future.

6/10