Saturday, July 25, 2009

Gen (2006)

It's not often you get to see a quite new turkish genre movie, but now I've finally seen Gen, a giallo-style slasher with enough turns and twists to entertain for ninety minutes. I guess those who expect something very trashy and sleazy will be disappointed, because it's a well made lowbudget-thriller with good acting and even some blood.

I like movies that are set on a small location, and I guess this is a good way to keep the budget down to. Here we have a cool and spooky psychiatric clinic far out in the countryside. Long corridors, flickering lights and strange nurses. Scary enough. In some parts it's a very old fashioned movie with long shadows, creaky doors and rain and storm, but the director suddenly bursts out in rapid cutting and weird angles. Both good and bad actually, but it's never boring. We follow a young new female doctor who's gonna start working at the clinic. But soon a suicide brings some polices there and not long after that a brutal murder! The killer cuts the genitals of the vicitims and mutilates them so the blod spurts all over the scenery! Lovely!

It won't take long until there's more victims... and the question is, who is the killer?

Gen is a smarter movie than I thought from the beginning. It seems shallow, but afterwards you realise there's more details and more thoughts behind the story than it first seems. I could guess quite fast who the killer was, but I wonder if that might have been the purpose to? Because there's more twists than how the killer is, and even if I've seen it before, I didn't expect it at all. It's quite a shocking and cynic ending, which I liked very much.

So, how's the gore? No, there's not much gore, but a lot of blood. So nothing graphic, but a lot of blood flying on the walls. The actors are great and they do exactly what they should do. Nothing new, but it fits perfectly in this turkish mystery-puzzle. For us swedish bastards there's a funny detail: Jay-Jay Johansson is credited in the pre-credits for a couple of songs! Didn't know this, so it was fun. The music where good to.

Great little shocker that starts weak, but ends with a bang! Recommended!

And yeah, I bought my copy from Onar Films - and so should you!

3 comments:

Jack J said...

It may not have a lot of gore but it certainly has one of the most nasty rape scenes (if not thee most nasty) that I've seen. It quite surprised me since this is after all a Turkish film.

Unknown said...

twist of turkish horror 'gen' is copy of martin scorsese picture's 'shutter island'. and also shutter island is an adaptation of Denis Lahane's novel.this novel was best seller in turkey.

Ninja Dixon said...

I think they have very clear differences - the thing is that Gen is a much, much better movie than that Scorsese-crap :)