Cehennem 3D (2010)

After watching Biray Dalkiran's Araf recently I felt the urge to watch more modern Turkish horror, which I find pretty interesting because of several things that's common between them all: creativity on a low budget, very, cold, very stylish and the imitating of Japanese genre cinema. Turkish horror is a rare thing, especially during the golden years when Turkey mostly produced action and adventure movies, except the highly entertaining carbon copy of The Exorcist, Seytan. Cehennem 3D is the first, according the filmmakers, 3D movie from Turkey and from a technical viewpoint it's a polished affair with good 3D and slick cinematography. What might bring it down a notch or two is the very generic storyline - it works fine, but we've seen it a hundred times before and we will see it again.

Ogün Kaptanoglu plays a photographer who looks for a breakthrough in his work. When he finally gets a good job he decides to take the photos in the abandoned candle factory nearby and together with his wife and a (hunky!) male model he goes there. But something goes wrong and soon they have a spirit, filled with revenge, after them! It's after him and his family and he needs to solve the mystery and stop the ghost from hurting and killing more people!

It won't help that most of the actors is really bad, stiff and mechanic. The leading man, Ogün Kaptanoglu is good and carries more or less the whole movie himself. It's a pity because I think this film could have been a damn fine little unoriginal horror movie if it wasn't for the acting. Now it's just a decent scary flick. Like most Turkish horror films I've seen so far they seem obsessed by something taking over a person - a demon or a ghost for example. There's more than a few scenes with peoples faces changes to something demonic or black liquid starts pouring from the eyes. Very Japanese. Throw in the classic ghost child and you have a Turkish version of Ringu, The Grudge and Dark Water.

Cehennem 3D looks good and the effects is slightly better than the usual in the same style of low budget horror, but the visuals gets almost too clean, too sterile - like the movie is missing some dirt, some grittiness - something it really would need to make a bigger impact. Especially when you think about the backstory and twist, which is quite gruesome and not bad at all. The film has a dark theme, but keeps a distance from us by just looking too good. But I like the idea of the ghost using fire and heat to kill and hurt its victims, sadistic and graphic - the way I like it.

If you can stand low budget efforts like Araf you will enjoy this one, but the less than original storyline and the stiff acting might scare away most of you.