DIS

Mandragora is supposed to be a creature having life engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person put to death for murder.

Levinus Lemnius (1505 – 1568)
An Herbal for the Bible

DIS is writer/director Adrian Corona’s take on the  mythos of the Mandrake plant.

Of Man and Drake, in other words, Dragon.

Man for the shape of its forked roots and Drake for the magical properties Mandragora is said to have.

Mandrake mythology states the plant grows under  executed criminals feeding off the corpses bodily fluids.

Dis as far as I could guess is taken from the Roman mythos pertaining to the realm of the dead. Similar to the Grecian Hades.

DIS is the journey of Ariel (Bill Oberst Jr. Coyote, Circus of the Dead….then some…), ex military man and criminal. Having made an escape to the forest he subsists by hunting rabbit and anything else he finds.

Wandering through the forest one day he comes upon a desolate building. Searching he discovers a half naked, masked woman. Before he can approach her she leaps to her death.

Other forms of death reveal themselves along the journey until he falls victim to a masked entity. Knocked out he is taken captive to be chained to the floor and juiced for the fiend’s Mandrake…

Adrian Corona creates a very visually pleasing movie experience. From the forest to the filthy, decay of the fiend’s lair. Symbolism is used aplenty within the scenes of graffiti and death.

Of the woman prisoner at the beginning. Chains bolted to her skull, infested with maggots. Her bodily fluids; urine, sex and blood is collected. From squatting over a bowl, masturbated, and blood taken with a huge steel syringe.

Ariel’s imprisonment is capped off with the graffiti of Dis that is on the wall behind him. Soon the same treatment befalls him. New feed for the plant!

His toughness sees a promise of breaking the chains and escape. Fighting the fiend and making a run for it. But the it is short lived as Ariel finds himself on a medieval torture device.

Read somewhere Bill Oberst Jr. stated it really was torture as the device was made for a much taller individual so he had to suffer for his art…my words…

Our fiend for me is a witch. In a flash back Ariel has a witch try and save his dying wife. So I felt a connection there. Thus my title of witch for this fiend. Fiend is hulking, masked, armed with an ax and maybe more than human. Unmasked at one point it’s face is not human…or seriously disfigured.

DIS is a film that has an original promise with it’s mythos based around the Mandrake and it’s legend. Of Adrian Corona’s vision both as a writer and director. Filming and effects creativity was well played and creates an experience when may find wandering a forest to being held captive to be farmed for your bodily fluids. Adrian expresses the surroundings long enough to create an experience while not being filler, DIS is an hour long and feels like it covers much in its short time span. Naturally we get another solid performance from Bill Oberst Jr. My first experience of his that comes to mind is Coyote (2013) and with each of his performances I have seen he has never disappointed!

DIS will be getting a U.S. release through Unearthed Films www.unearthedfilms.com

We were once men, no we are changed to plants

Inferno, Canto XII

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