KOLOBOS

Produced by Nne Ebong Directed by Daniel Liayowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk Written by Nne Ebong, Daniel Liayowitsch, and David Todd Ocvirk Edited by Brian Olson Director of Photography - Yoram Astrakhan Kyra - Amy Weber Tom - Donny Terranova Erica - Nichole Pelerine Gary - John Fairlie Tina - Promise LaMarco

One of the greatest cinema pleasures is to be blind-sided by a movie and have it hand you your ass on a plate. I wasn't expecting much from KOLOBOS, which made the experience all the more satisfying.

I had seen this movie sitting on rental shelves before, but was turned off by the box art and description. It wasn't until the director contacted me out of the blue a few months back that I decided to give the movie a shot. At Hollywood Video my choices were easy, rental or PVT. I opted for the PVT, now I wish I had opted for the DVD.

This isn't the type of film I would usually review. Most B-Movie reviewers have their niche, mine is the micro-budget, SOV realm. But this movie was just so terrifyingly intense that I had to share my thoughts. Perhaps for no other reason than to just talk myself down.

The gorgeous Amy Weber is Kyra, a troubled young artist trying to keep her last grip on sanity. Recovering from a car accident, Kyra is selected to participate in a filmed experiment similar to TV's "Big Brother." Five people are locked in a house and forced to interact while having their every move taped. Kyra's doctor's think it might be a good "healing experience" for her.

Those selected to participate are straight from the John Hughes manual on character development: the nutcase, the brain, the actress, the party girl, and the stand-up comic. Three-dimensional they aren't, but they are certainly fun to watch. Their dialogue is sharp and witty, but never ventures into Kevin Smith pretentiousness; it has a street vernacular that never tries to be more clever than the audience.

The filmmakers don't waste time, once the doors are locked all hell breaks loose and kids are dropping like flies in a house fitted with bobby traps, lasers, and flying buzzsaws. Suspecion points to Kyra, after all she's fresh from the loony bin and can't find her meds. But if she really is the killer, then who is the guy whose disfigured mug keeps popping up on all the television screens? Hell, for that matter, why the heck is he taking a straight razor and slicing off his face?

As anyone who reads my reviews will tell you, the films that receive the most accolades are the ones that bend time and reality. They are films the use the medium to toy with the audience and manipulate them mercilessly. KOLOBOS sits right up there with masterpieces like RADIO FREE STEVE and Steven Soderberg's OUT OF SIGHT, films that are willing to present timelines and structures in a fashion that the audience never knows what's going on until the end.

Questions. Answers. Twists. Turns. Red herrings. More questions. KOLOBOS is a puzzel disguised as a movie. It's like a bad acid trip where the viewer can't distinguish between reality and hallucination. Time and reality are treated more as abstract concepts rather than narrative constants. For the first time I can recall, the slasher film has been elevated to art film.

KOLOBOS is perhaps the smartest horror film I've seen in a long time. It's not afraid to grab the audience by the hair and kick them in the ass. KOLOBOS is a movie that drags the audience along kicking and screaming and damn it, I want more!