Review of August Underground (2001) by Patrick-Thomas G — 13 Oct 2009

This movie is truly sick and twisted and after watching it I felt dirty for about a week. The fact that the movie is done on a grainy very messed up camera does little to keep one from wanting to vomit from the get go with this film. As I watched this I had to tell myself a couple of times that this movie is not real. The suspension of disbelief that one usually has when watching a film goes out the damn window with this one because if it didn?t then you would truly think that you were watching a snuff film.

This film is very hard to synopsize because in essence it is just a set of disturbing vignettes of murder, torture, mayhem, and etc. connected by the fact that is all one movie and nothing else. There is a girl that the unnamed killer keeps in his basement and does some truly sick shit to including but not limited to watching her boyfriend get murdered and dismembered and eating her own shit. Oh by the way the killer in this movie is played by the director himself Fred Vogel. This is one of the few films that I have watched where I had to stifle my own vomit, oh and by the way the sequels are much worse.

Anyways back to the synopsis, the killer then beats some poor girl to death, then goes to a ?concert? and delvers some beat downs, then he tortures the girl in the basement more. Then we get to follow him on some road trips? great. On the road trip we see the killer beat an old lady to death (played by the directors own Grandma) and steal her car. And so on, add more random beatings and torture. Then we get to the finale of the ?movie? which involves two prostitutes, a hammer, murder, and some good old-fashioned sodomy.

End of movie, thankfully, just watching this movie to review it was an endurance test that many normal people just couldn?t handle (not that I am normal but I like to think that I am at least semi-normal). This movie exists because of independent horror directors that are sick of the same old Hollywood trite and want to create something truly terrifying. Applause to Fred Vogel the director, you have truly bucked and mentally ass fucked the system and horror community into submission.