Nick Narcisco's 8 Butterflies (2010) is one of those horror movies that makes me a little sick--in a good way. The thrumming tone of the soundtrack makes my gut clench a little. The black and white imagery, coupled with the "blotches and scratches" common to film stock, intimate that I'm watching something forbidden. The nightmarish atmosphere renders everything (and everyone) in the frame hazy, unclear, and utterly disorienting. This film has so many things that I love:
1. Lots of creepy hallways. I can never get enough of them.
2. A guy with an eye-patch.
3. Very little dialogue. Dialogue is so overrated.
4. A Polaroid camera.
5. Superimpositions. Rockin' old school effects.
6. Piles of Dirty Snow. Narcisco did not shoot the movie in Los Angeles!
7. A Scary Hotel that looks like a haunted cell-block. Awesome tracking shots enhance this effect.
8. Glitchy surveillance camera footage.
9. A random goat.
10. Some religious blasphemy w/goat
11. Interspersed color. Something's always wrong when a B&W world turns colorful. Think Dorian Gray.
11. Birth from abject muck/cocoon
12. Left with WTF?! My kind of ending.
This film is as if David Lynch and Martin Arnold had a love child. The number eight has never seemed this ominous before. Warning to those sensitive to strobe effects: opening and closing titles for the film are a little flashy. Check out the video here or here. Enjoy!
