Hotel of the Damned (2016) Reviews

• This isn't right

  nogodnomasters2017-08-29

  Nicky (Louis Mandylor) gets out of Romanian prison (5 years?) and wants to reunite with his honor student daughter Eliza (Roxana Luca) who is now a junkie and steals from her own mother (Manuela Harabor). Nicky and his best friend Jimmy (Peter Dobson) catch up with her and her junkie boyfriend (Bogdan Marhodin) and sort of absconds with them into the night. After a vehicle mishap they arrive at the title location and have to fend off mutant Nazi cannibals with no explanation of where they came from. They just hollered and whooped. The film opens with a scantily clad woman running and screaming through the woods in the dark because we have never seen a horror film start this way before. In fact most of the production was filmed at night and might as well have been in black and white. Once we established relationships and character the film was mostly 4 injured people hobbling along inside the hotel, much more agile than I would have been with broken ribs. This got old after a bit, and they tried to interrupt the extensive hide 'n' seek scene with flashbacks, which worked until they ran out of flashback material. Guide: F-word. Attempted rape. No nudity

• Decent actors, mah plot, great background movie

  gary-erwin2019-04-11

  I needed something to watch that I didn't have to watch. It fits the bill, but I hate the screaming in the beginning, good lawd shut up!

• Recommended!

  parry_na2018-05-10

  A group of people are involved in a car crash and, injured, have little choice but to spend the night in an isolated hotel that has grim secrets of its own. Imagine if this group of people comprised of your usual catwalk, characterless model/actors posing and posturing as they go through the motions of the story in the hope it will lead to something more glamorous career-wise. How forgettable would it be, how uninspired, and how much we, the audience, would be willing their graphic deaths? What makes the difference between 'that' kind of bland production, and 'Hotel of the Damned' is that these four characters are far more interesting. Bad lad Nicky (Louis Mandylor), recently released from prison, his loyal friend Jimmy (Peter Dobson), Nicky's resentful daughter Eliza (Roxana Luca) and her junkie boyfriend Bogdan (Bogdan Marhodin) are a mixed bunch and have a good brutal chemistry (that occasionally produces a few good laughs). The howling cannibals they encounter aren't quite so well defined, nor do they need to be. A kind of cross between the antagonists you would meet in 'The Descent (2005)' and 'Wrong Turn (2003)', they are a convincingly feral, inhuman bunch. However, what lets them down a little is that scenes are sometimes too dark to make out what is going on, and Director Bobby Barbacioru's camera flourishes (and flashbacks) sometimes make us question what we are seeing and, more importantly, what the characters are seeing. But these are only fleeting problems, and not enough to blight a very solid and enjoyable horror. Recommended.