August Underground

Director - Fred Vogel (The Redsin Tower, The Final Interview)

Starring - Fred Vogel, Kyle Dealman, and Casey Eganey

Release Date - 2001

Genre - Horror

Format - Bluray (Personal Collection)

Rating (out of 5):

     I've been collecting horror films for around 20 years now.  I was invited to join the forums at Upcoming Horror Movies when I was entering high school and it was here that I learned about a lot of indie horror films that would typically go unnoticed.  This was when I was first introduced to Fred Vogel's August Underground trilogy.  I collected the films on DVD soon after but after watching the trailer I decided to hold off on watching them.  They just didn't look like movies I would enjoy so I put them on the shelf and left them there.  When I started attending Cinema Wasteland I met Fred and his lovely wife Shelby and we talked about the movies he had for sale at his table.  Over the year's I've bought a good bit of their shirts and other merch.  The Vogel's are super nice and I will support them any way I can which is why I bought the blu release one Wasteland.  I still never had the urge to watch them but decided to break out the blu this October horror binge.  It was finally time to see what the extreme horror fans have been screaming about.

     The film follows two men, one with a camera, who go around kills, raping, and butching those unfortunate enough to cross paths with them.  

     Most people assume that I hate extreme horror and this is the furthest thing from being true.  I love all horror as long as the story works.  There is nothing wrong is a good, depreved piece of cinema full of gore if the movie has a story.  If it's lacking a story then it's boring for me.  I need a story to pull me in before showing me in blood and guts.  Sadly, August Underground was lacking this.  After just a few minutes into this one I found myself bored to tears.  The acting in this one is pretty rough.  As I stated earlier, I had met and spoke with Fred several times at Cinema Wasteland.  He's one of the nicest guys I've ever met at a con but his character and acting here is really hard for me to like.  His character was so annoying and his performance was very forced.  He was trying so hard to be a bad guy but it was just coming across as obnoxious and cringy.  The story for this one is not enough to cover a feature length film.  Someone recording their friend killing people has some power behind it especially for a found footage film attempting to capture that snuff style film.  However, watching a maniac on camera as his degrades and tortures people for the entire duration of the film becomes painfully dull after 10 or 15 minutes.  I'm sure it was a powerful and unnerving film when it was released almost 20 years ago but I find to see what makes it so appealing now.  I've seen far more depraving films with stories that hold up the entire length of the film.  Finally, this is one hell of a bloody film.  The practical effects are damn near impossible to beat and some of the most impressive I've seen in a no-budget release.  Vogel was a student of Savini I believe so it completely makes sense that these effects are amazing.  Overall, August Underground is 50 minutes too long if you want my honest opinion.  The faux snuff films will always bore me because they lack story and this one is no exception.  The gore is fantastic but watching a man yell, scream, and abuse people for an hour and some odd minutes is a dull watch for me.  Skip it.