Streaming Releases: Fresh Hell (2021) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Deskpop Entertainment

The debut film of part time actor/writer/director Ryan Imhoff and co-director/actor Matt Neal, Fresh Hell, is another one of those post-pandemic webcam horror films about a friendly college theater class reunion that turns into a nightmare when a deranged stranger inexplicably infiltrates the chatroom.  The difference here is that right away it leaps head over heels into transgressive shock cinema ala Megan is Missing only minutes in, giving audiences ample warning to leave or shut the damn thing off rather than be tricked into sitting through it. 

 
Divided by a three-act structure replete with chapter intertitles ala Lars Von Trier, the film is largely creepy webcam stuff ala Unfriended or Host before making an abrupt leap into conventional narrative filmmaking in the finale.  Is it scary?  Not really but it’s got plenty of nihilistic “social commentary” on the present sociopolitical landscape ala Andrew Dominik’s hamfisted Killing Them Softly with its constant buzzwords and talking points brought up in conversation or character traits.  Oh and there’s a lot of BDSM ‘pup play’ in this too, including on the poster image, if you’re into that sort of thing.
 
Grace (Lanise Antoine Shelley) starts a Zoom call reuniting several friends from college theater and it consists of your usual stock trade group of characters from the right-wing internet personality, the stoner, the woke student and some kids who had to move back in with their parents after losing their livelihoods to the pandemic.  For awhile it plays like the beginning of most webcam flicks with everyone talking to each other, giving the film time to flesh out everyone’s personalities.  Then the stranger shows up (played by Imhoff himself in absurdly over the top form) and after graphically castrating himself on camera he presents the group’s friend bound up, bloodied and tortured by sadistic pups.

 
Over the course of the movie, one by one the stranger and his pups show up in people’s apartments and webcams, disappearing in and out of the camera like a supernatural ghost before seeming to murder each character in their own homes.  Grace grows more concerned people aren’t taking her calls to the police seriously as more people continue to drop dead, meanwhile her peers seem to think (for the sake of the movie) that she might simply be crazy due to her own PTSD involving her sister’s death years prior.  All the while as director Imhoff continues to chew up the scenery, the film shifts gears from a webcam flick into a standard widescreen thriller, dumping the cinema verite technique completely in favor of a regular movie.  It’s jarring and Imhoff nearly deep sixes the film in its final scenes all by himself with his Bond villain overacting.
 
Visually this is, for the most part, pixelated and buffering like a poor internet connection until it turns slick and glossy in the finale scenes ala 28 Days Later and it’s jump from grimy digital video to crystal clear 35mm film.  The score and soundtrack by Will Mobley is effective with much of the film’s effectiveness coming from the creepy internet videos the stranger keeps sending the group.  Let it be said the ensemble cast is generally good and Imhoff shows a clear command of his actors, if only he himself had as much self-control.  The visual effects and gore are decent enough with a most grisly introduction to the stranger that was maybe more than audiences needed to see. 

 
On the one hand Fresh Hell is 75% a halfway decent webcam thriller that dabbles in some kinks and gross vulgarities with the remaining 25% devoted to a dreadful mixture of Joker high pitched laughter and social commentary, replete with many of the news talking points of the post-pandemic era playing on the soundtrack to ensure audiences ‘get it’.  As such, this Horrorhound Best Feature Film winner will make you a little uncomfortable initially but near the end threatens to derail whatever points the film was trying to make about society in general presently.  Imhoff’s debut shows promise as a potentially successful horror filmmaker but for what it’s worth Fresh Hell wants to be both a scare fest and be ‘about something’ which is where it loses steam.  Those pups were creepy though.

--Andrew Kotwicki

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