SPOOKFIELD (2015)
SPOOKFIELD (2015)
Director: Alexis Gonzalez
Reviewed by Mario Dominick
For a good many months, I had been hearing a lot about a project called SPOOKFIELD from filmmaker Alexis Gonzalez. Alexis had been promoting it in many Facebook groups dedicated to low budget horror cinema. Having been finally given the opportunity to view the film, I’ve now gotten a taste of what style of film Alexis is making in today’s do-it-yourself filmmaking scene.
A horror anthology comprised of four vignettes, SPOOKFIELD begins with a story in which we see a young man sitting on a couch reading a book. He hears the voice of an angry father yelling at his son. Whether or not this is a voice he’s hearing in his head or something going on next door is anyone’s guess at this point. As days go by, he hears the father resorting to abusive means to punish his son. Soon he hears the voice of an abusive mother subjecting her son to similar vicious punishments. It appears the mother’s voice he hears is a flashback he’s having to his troubled childhood and the father he hears is a next door neighbor. Driven insane by the memories of his childhood traumas and the ongoing abuse he overhears from his neighbor’s residence, he resorts to extreme measures to teach abusive parents a lesson.
The second story delves into supernatural horror in which an ex-archaeologist has an important historical artifact of his stolen. Voodoo practices are among his specialties. The piece ends up in the hands of a junkie. When he goes out looking to steal cash to pay for drugs, he crosses paths with the archaeologist and things get messy.
The third segment shows what happens when zombified prostitutes seek vengeance on their vicious pimp and his fellow goons.
The fourth segment involves a woman trying to find her sister who went missing and became a prostitute. Desperate to find leads, she uses her sister’s diary as a guide to understand what happened. Thinking the police are going to help out, things go south very fast and supernatural forces come into play wreaking bloody havoc and vengeance.
SPOOKFIELD is a thoughtful and ambitious micro budget horror effort. It’s a unique anthology in that each segment seems connected by certain factors, like the third and fourth segment being connected by the prostitutes and the voodoo element from the second one sharing a connection with the fourth one. The main character in each story is out for some kind of retribution and they don’t care what means they must resort to in order to get back at their enemies.
The film has its share of gory violence and really goes for it in the third segment (the castration is especially nasty). The effects for its budget are well done.
The first segment is perhaps the most realistic and probably the roughest for some viewers with its approach to the subject of child abuse and the long lasting effects it has on a person psychologically. The following three segments go in a different direction with the supernatural elements, but they all stick to the same vengeance theme and end with their own unique resolutions.
Overall, SPOOKFIELD is an entertaining low budget gore romp with revenge, zombies, voodoo, and more. Definitely worthy of your consideration if you’re a seasoned viewer of do-it-yourself horror cinema.
