Morituris

Director - Raffaele Picchio (The Blind King)
Starring - Andrea De Bruyn (Triple Trap), Valentina D'Andrea (War Box), and Desiree Giorgetti (German Angst)
Release Date - 2011
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Evil prevails"
Format - BluRay (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Synapse has been on a roll lately with their releases.  Long Weekend was a bit of a boring film but after that Synapse really impressed me with the following line up.  Samurai Avenger: Blind Wolf was fucking fantastic and their announcement for Morituris, Manos, and Mosquito really excited me.  Morituris is one I had never seen before and looked brutal as hell.  I reached out to Synapse and they were kind enough to send a copy my way.  I knew nothing of the film before hand except it was Italian.  Most of you know I have a soft spot for Italian horror flicks so when I was able to finally check this one out I tossed it into the ol' Xbox One.  

     The film follows three Italian men who pick up two Romanian women and offer to take them to a rave in the woods.  The girls feel safe with the men and agree to go with them.  They joke around, drink, and do drugs in the car on the way there.  They reach the woods and park their car and the men tell the women that the rave is just a little walk in the woods.  However, once they get deep in the woods the men turn off the charm and start beating the women before brutally raping them.  One of the girls is able to get away and runs further into the woods sending the men to on a game of cat and mouse but they are not alone.  There is a group of ancient gladiators that is unleashed in the woods and start killing everyone they find including the girls and the rapists.
   When I first received word that Synapse was releasing the film on blu I was wondering why I never heard of the film before.  The trailer made the film look fucking brutal and had some decent acting so I was surprised when I never heard of it before now.  However, after seeing the film I can see why this one was not readily available until now.  Personally, I found the film fun and fucking brilliant but I can see why a lot of people have a hard time checking it out.  The acting in this one is fucking spot on with the entire cast showing a tremendous amount of talent.  The men, all three male leads, have a dual role and they pull them both off flawlessly.  The three have to portray perfect gentleman in order to fool the young ladies.  They then, on command, go from Romeos to psychos and they ruthlessly beat and rape the women.  All three deliver in that aspect.  The film's leading ladies have very demanding roles and they put it all on the table for those roles.  The two switch perfectly between Italian and Romanian and play two very convincing party girls before they deliver some of the most cringe worthy rape scenes I have ever seen.  The story for this one flows like The Last House on the Left meets any slasher film set in the woods.  The film relies too much on the rape scenes to drive the fear home when it had the perfect set up to be one hell of an Italian slasher.  The slasher portion of the film is very underdeveloped and feels very clunky in comparison to the rape scenes making the film feel a little one sided.  I dug the gladiator killers because they were different  but the film just makes them feel out of place.  Also, the film has several on screen kills that will make the hardest of the horror fans gush with excitement.  We get several kills that always outdoes the one before it.  We also get some solid practical effects that make these kills even more enjoyable. Finally, this Synapse release looks fantastic.  While putting the review together I found clips of the film on DVD and was blown away by the improvement the blu has over the DVD release.  This release also has a reversible cover sheet and original trailer.  As for special features, this is one of the few Synapse releases that I have seen that was bare bones.  This was a bit of a let down considering how amazing this film was.  Overall, Morituris is one of the most brutal films I have seen out of the 2 decades I have been watching horror flicks.  The film was meant to leave the viewer feeling sick to their stomachs and it does the job.  This is the Italian horror film for the morally bankrupt.  Check this one out now!