The summer blockbuster movie season continues this weekend with Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. But if the thought of all that big-budget glitz and glamour makes you want to scream, check out the low-budget guts and gore of this week's "Sleeper to See," which was intentionally designed to make you scream..in terror!
THE MOVIE: Aftershock
THE DIRECTOR: Acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Nicolás López (Promedio Rojo) makes his English-language debut with an assist from American co-producer and horror impresario Eli Roth (The Last Exorcism, Hostel).
THE CAST: Roth also co-stars as "Gringo" in a cast mostly comprised of unknown foreign actors. However, look out for Spring Breaker Selena Gomez, who continues her “party movie” tour with a quick cameo as a club-goer who rejects Roth’s advances.
THE STORY: When an earthquake erupts in Chile, a group of tourists barely survive being trapped in an underground nightclub. Little do they know, the real terror waits above ground, where criminals from a collapsed prison now roam free.
THE BUZZ: Aftershock was an audience favorite at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it screened as part of the "Midnight Madness" series. Critics, however, are a bit divided on the film. While Newsday calls it a "titillating exercise in horror," USA Today ponders, "Who would want to sit through this movie, given the sadistic mayhem the audience is subjected to?"
THE VERDICT: The answer to the last critical query is obvious: horror fans, who made big hits out of Eli Roth’s other Americans-in-foreign peril movies Hostel and Hostel: Part II. The deaths cross gender, nationality, race and the likability scale, in ways that involve bone-crunching injury and severed limbs--so if that kind of thing is your bag, Aftershock delivers enough fun and frightening moments to register high for solid genre entertainment.