Seventh Moon - 3.5/5

'He called them moon demons' -Yul

It would seem that other reviewers weren't as accepting of "Seventh Moon" as I was. Which is somewhat of a sad thought, considering that I thought it was a pretty solid film. It really focuses on the subtle and the 'in the moment' style of filming, which is what most others tended to dislike about the film, but I thought it brought a nice sense of tension to the film which many horror films lack these days.

"Seventh Moon" is about a couple whom takes their honeymoon to China only to find out that they came on the wrong fucking day, considering its the full moon of the seventh lunar month and a shit ton of 'moon demons' decide they are going to be their next sacrifice.

So what we have here is Eduardo Sanchez taking a pretty simplistic horror story line and deciding that they only way to make it work would be to throw the viewer straight into the terror by giving the film a very disorienting documentary look. Grainy film, odd focus shifts, almost no lighting, and extreme close-ups make this film feel like a roller coaster ride of horror proportions as we follow our couple through the worst honeymoon in history. At first, as with other reviewers, I wanted to punch the movie and tell it to 'quit fucking shaking all the time!' as this hand held camera style tends to frustrate the hell out of me. Not to mention he is a modern horror director and thinks that in intense situations that he has to have quick edits about a thousand times in the span of a minute. It's a flaw most horror directors fall into. Luckily though, despite its frustrations, all of his style (the grain, the light) make this film feel pretty damn real and it really holds this chaotic tension through the film. Solid performances from Smart and Chiou (although I'll be damned if they had more then 3 seconds at a time to actually act) add to the nice tension and make they baby tick like a time bomb.

Storywise, I had a few issues with it. Firstly, it started off killer so as one is trying to figure out what the hell is actually going on with these white skinned things and the abandonment of the country side. It tends to go down hill at the end though (SPOILER ALERT: why the fuck did they have sex towards the end? Was it something in the tea/water? I'm not sure for the reasoning of that. SPOILER END) and the somewhat lackluster ending was a bit of a disappointment. Had the ending really tied things together this would have been a 4 stars film for me, but its somewhat rushed feeling irked me a bit. Won't lie, it was damn nice to see the sun at the end and full spectrum of color again. It was a nice touch.

For my first film from the second releases from Ghost House Underground, I was definitely surprised with how well this bad boy balanced tension. All though, I would never personally direct a film this way, I appreciated that Sanchez was able to use it to his advantage. This was a surprise for me. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider