This review may contain spoilers.

An offering I picked up not *too* long ago from 'Bleeding Skull', 'The Soultangler' is an SOV horror film that has a strong and vocal cult following, and given 'Bleeding Skulls' reputation for releasing some of the strangest and bizarre cinema from the world of SOV. I figured it was my moral duty to see what this was all about. After reading up a bit about the film, I decided to watch the 'Directors cut' for my first time viewing. In part because, its what the director has decided is 'their' vision for the film. But also because apparently 99% of the cuts made to shrink the film down to a brief 62 minutes are just extended walking and driving sequences, with a handful of dialogue scenes truncated to help keep the pace…Sounds like my kind of party.

The plot follows Dr Anton Lupesky, a genius in his field who has begun to explore the supernaturalistic world of 'Soultangling' a process wherein, by injecting ones self with a drug he's developed called Anphorium, a person is able to transfer their soul into a dead body, essentially reviving the corpse and allowing the drug taker to live on through the corpses body.

Naturally; when he tries to publish his findings, he's labelled 'insane' and laughed out of his workplace, promptly fired and struck from the register. Leading him to relocate to the backwoods of a small rural community to continue his work on the serum and on transference.

Its here that we meet Kim Castle a reporter for a local paper who's learned of Lupesky's works, has discovered his staying in the local area, and is doing everything in her power to get an interview with the scientist. Which she does…albeit a brief interview that is VERY passive aggressive and ends with her leaving his lab with barely a word exchanged. But the conversation doesnt put Kim off, and slowly but surely she begins to piece together that the isolated doctor may be working on something quite sinister, using his henchmen to secure unwilling victims for his 'experiments'…

From here Kim enters a hallucinogenic rabbit hole of blood, guts, gore and some half decent special effects for SOV. As the dark past of Dr. Anton is revealed, and Kim finds, she may be next on the block for the doctors experiments.

Quite honestly; I dont have a lot to say about this one, I wish I did, because all the reviews I read about this film before I purchased it, REALLY sold it to me as something not to be missed…but the reality is, I found it kind of slow paced and flat…even at only 62 minutes.

For a starters, this thing has 'Reanimator' printed all over it. The misunderstood glasses wearing illusive genius mad scientist working on a serum that allows him to resurrect the dead is here given a small twist by introducing henchmen and a 'mad laboratory' set to work from…But thats about it.

I think when people rave about this film, they're really raving for about 5 minutes collectively of surreal trippy scenes dusted across the runtime…and the final 10 minutes, which genuinely are pretty amazing for SOV and showcase a real talent for special effects…Otherwise. This things SO slow. Slow to the point that I cant even BEGIN to imagine how slow the 90 minute cut must be.

The plots glacial for about 45 of the 62 minute runtime. Most of that time is either the doctor monologuing about how misunderstood he is, the henchmen kidnapping people or Kim wandering around town and talking to people. very VERY little actually happens for most of that time, barring the occasional psychedelic freakout sequence where Kim will rip the skin off her own arm or get chased by zombies. those moments are fleeting, but fun. The rest…is SO slow.

The 3 act structure is super loose and doesnt transition between the acts particularly well. The characters are all just either kind of boring, or are heavily cribbed. the dialogue is a bit bland and stale…not helped either by the fact the soundtracks louder than the audio track at times making it near enough impossible to hear whats ACTUALLY being said…made all the worse by the fact that Bleeding Skull didnt include a subtitle track on this release…So I had to guess at what was happening on some of the more critical parts of this film.

To be blunt. it all feels a bit thrown together, less like a coherent, carefully thought out plotted story, and more like they got the key scenes down, which came to about 18 minutes. and then they fleshed the rest of the story out with extra sequences from there.

The direction is pretty much lifeless outside of the surreal trippy sequences. the cine is ultra basic too with compositions that are FAR from inspirational. However, I will say that the final 10 minutes in which a HUGE freakout featuring puppets, body doubles, prosthetics and full on severed head gory action is actually pretty incredible (and is what makes up the bulk of the stars i've given for this overall rating) Had the film NOT had this kind of quality up its sleeve throughout this production. I'd have probably said this was one of the dullest SOV's i'd ever seen…mercifully when this film DOES rev up, it becomes a creative powerhouse which just about pulls it back.

The performances arnt great, strange deliveries of lines…but not fun strange…just awkward strange, are present throughout. The cast dont really emote physically all that much creating a somewhat bland set of performances, and because cast placement wasnt really factored into the direction, quite often cast members will have their full backs to the camera, be off shot, be randomly plonked down within the scene…its a mess.

I will say though that I absolutely LOVED the soundtrack for this one, an artistic, synthy rocky score that gives this film an unmistakeable presence and energy that I loved…with the only issue really being that, as mentioned, the music drowns out the dialogue. Making it hard to follow along.

All in all? I went into 'The Soultangler' hoping for a crazy over the top gore fest of horror and surreal comedy. And what I got was 45 minutes of slowboil 'lore' dropping, married up to 15 minutes of some of the best directed and produced gory psychedelia i've seen in a LONG time…unfortunately though, thats not enough for this one to coast on far enough for me to give it the pass.

Soultangler is worth checking out for that 15 minutes or so of good stuff…IF you know what your getting into up front. Otherwise? There are WAY better SOV flicks out there that would more urgently need your time. 'Boardinghouse', 'Things', 'Sledgehammer', 'Ozone' and 'Video Diary of a Lost Girl' are all WAY better explorations of the subgenre and FAR more worthy of your time. This one? is one you can mop up after catching most of the greats.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-soultangler/