“Antrum” was a fairly no-budget movie made in 1979 about two children who, as children often do, dig a hole to Hell out in the woods behind their house. It was submitted to seven film festivals and was rejected from all of them, because Satan made it and he’s been completely blackballed from the industry, an industry that just don’t understand his genius, man! Then the movie was screened in Hungary or Czech Republic or some other Central-to-Eastern European country, because it’s more mysterious than Western Europe. “Scary Paris” if you will. They screened it in Scary Paris, a city run by bald men in leather overcoats who rent out captured backpackers to be tortured and killed by rich perverts (it’s a government job, great benefits and you can torture all the American backpackers you’d like), but then the theater burned down and everyone died.
Then, not to be outdone, a bunch of other people who screened it for the festivals also died. Then, thenthen, in the 90’s some California douchebags showed the movie to a room full of people tripping balls on Rasta Popcorn, which is a real thing I didn’t just make up, and a pregnant lady was stomped to death by Louie C.K., which is also true.
Now Mido and I are watching it. It starts with a legal notice, saying by watching this movie we agree that it’s our fault if we die and aren’t allowed to sue the theater. Pfft, like THAT will stand up in court. The “Hot Potato No Backsies” defense. Whatever. If we die, Mido and I are totally suing the closest movie theater.
For starters, all the credits are to people with all the backwards and upside-down letters in their names… like it could be Russian or Slavic or someplace we’ll call “Spooky London,” because it’s known that people with names written like this are likely up to something. Anyway, movie made in Spooky London but all the actors speak in English, as is all the written material in this thing? I’m starting to this this may be a phony. I thought it might have been just dubbed but Mido assured me their lips read English words too. This was alarming, very alarming, because Mido is a cat. Everyone knows cats can’t read lips. I have no Rasta Popcorn in the house anymore (a condition of my early release), so I’m not hallucinating her lip-reading ability.
So these two seventies kids from Spooky London, named Ormlee and Dooper, have a dog named Flumbo. Flumbo died and went to Hell because he was bad. So Ormvles and Dippy go out into the forest to start digging… anywhere will do, all roads lead to Hell if you dig far enough, to bring back Flibble’s soul. Easy enough, they should be done by lunch.
Fun fact, they weren’t. Nope, they had to stay a few nights, see and hear scary stuff, bumped into their neighbors, The Reindeer Fuckers (who do in fact speak SpookyLondonish), and Flumpkin screamed and yelled a lot, especially at times when you probably would be better off not calling attention to yourselves, Flumpkus! Amirite? “Blaaaah! It’s Cerberus! Yeeeee! Cerburus!” Yeah dude, we saw it too, so shut up about it already and go to bed!
It’s gimmicky but fun. One of those “Cursed Found Film Movie Within a Movie Really Kids This is True Be Afraid Because If You Watch It You Will Die” type movies, like Blair Witch, in which the filmmakers thought “Hey you know what would be fun? Let’s fuck with middle-America and see if we can fool them into believing this shit is real, they’re all stupid and stuff” and of course, FaceTokTubeO’Gram proves them right. Even Mido was too scared to watch. She’s a cat, thought it was real, didn’t want the devil to set her on fire. The rest of you, do you even watch horror movies? I’d rate this 2.75 out of 5 chopping axes, but I’m not sure I’m going to involve a rating scale to this website so I’ll just rate it as “Good enough to sit through without looking at your watch, clever enough to fool your cat.”
