THE NEON DEAD *** U.S.A. 2015 Dir: Torey Haas 80 mins
Torey Haas’s feature film directorial debut is one that will become a fan favourite. Unemployed grad student Allison Hillstead finds that her home has an unwelcome guest so hires two freelance paranormal investigators (Desmond and Jake) to come and rid her home of the paranormal entity. What they don’t know is that Allison’s past relatives were deep into the occult and formed an alliance with a great god known as the demon king Z’athax.
To get rid of all the creatures roaming her house and the surrounding grounds they must destroy Z’athax and free the world of this evil. One of the best films not to hit the cinemas in recent years is this film released by the fine people at Wild Eye Releasing. Lighting is the key to this films look and it is done to perfection and will have a few viewers thinking of SUSPIRIA amongst other films. The humour is very campy especially from the male lead Desmond played with pure cockiness by Greg Garrison. It is by heart a zombie movie but just like Umberto Lenzi won’t call his ‘infected’ in NIGHTMARE CITY zombies, the character of Jake in this film reminds us countless times ‘They’re not zombies! They’re Sons of Z’athax!‘. As I mentioned the creatures there is lots of them in this film which is surprising considering this is a low budget film but each creature gets plenty of screen time. Most are played by actors but there is also the demon king Z’athax that is done with stop motion animation, that will make Brett Piper happy. THE NEON DEAD is for fans of early NES games, Sam Raimi’s THE EVIL DEAD, the 1987 movie THE GATE and the PHANTASM films, or to put it another way a nostalgia ride for those who want more of the 80’s style VHS days.
Review by Peter ‘Witchfinder‘ Hopkins
