Overview
Hell knows no forgiveness.
Nathan and Daniel are caught in a road accident that kills them both. As they come to grips with their deaths, Nathan confronts his past and the consequences of his actions. Now trapped in the hellish void of Pandemonium, he encounters tortured souls like Jeanne, a disturbed child; Julia, a grief-stricken mother; and Norghul, the guide of the great void. Will he find a way to escape the torment that awaits him for eternity?
Review
Pandemonium is an eerie, beautifully shot movie that comes up short by delivering audiences a disjointed murky plot and disconnected storyline. The movie opens to an accident on a desolate mountainside landscape where two men are crossing over from the living to the afterlife. This first part is intriguing as you get pieces of both the lives of Daniel and Nathan. They struggle with accepting their lives have ended. But once the crossing over occurs, the movie really loses its grip. We briefly meet other lost souls with a snapshot of how they were damned. This serves more like a loosely-connected anthology of vignettes. It just doesn’t work really well as interest in lost. The latter parts seems to drag on for too long.
I really like what director Quarxx was trying to achieve with this film. However, I wish it was more connected to a single character. There is a lot of dark imagery horror fans will appreciate. Particularly as be begin to descend into Dante’s Inferno territory, but never quite reach any true depth to it.
Pandemonium feels more like a transgressive art film that sacrifices story for a vision. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t engage the audience enough as there is nothing connected in character or scope to really attract any real empathy or meaning to the characters or events. It comes off as a hollow dark fantasy in spots and never really follows through on its interesting premise and opening.
Rating: ★★ (out of 5)
