Mary (Carmen Corchs) is a disillusioned journalist who's been looking for another big story since putting the Deadhunters away several years earlier. She finally thinks she's stumbled upon something worthwhile when she learns of a mysterious happening at the local school involving a missing kid and a dead janitor.
Elsewhere in the city, Vero (Ibai Sanchez) is a female student whose dad is the principal at her school. Vero has been stealing his keys to the school each night for the past week. The reason for this, we discover, is that her friend Miriam's (Aida Santos) brother has been missing since an incident at the school which left the janitor dead ... Vero and her friends, who also include big-titted blonde Vane (Lur Usabiaga) and Eli (Elena Cutierrez), believe they can solve the mystery by breaking into the school on a night to hold séances in the search for clues.
Meanwhile in another early plot strand, we meet Calamator (Jose Manuel Gomez) and Julian (Julian Lara), two Deadhunters freed from prison by a mysterious agency. The shifty agent Gallardo (Jesus Gallardo) offers freedom in return for fulfilling a top secret mission: sneak into the school at night armed with heavy artillery and find the killer believed to be hiding in there. Calamator is determined to then go straight for the sake of his daughter, making this his last ever job as a Deadhunter.
But who is this mysterious agency they are working for, and what are their motives for getting the Deadhunters locked into school one night?
In the midst of all these characters are flashbacks to Miriam's brother, a young student with an eye for Vero, who for the past month has been getting injected with drugs as part of a school professor's (Juanma Alvarez) experiments. He goes crazy after one particularly large dose of the drugs and promptly goes missing ...
Things turn awry when Vero and her mates decide to break into the school to conduct a séance on the same night that the Deadhunters are locked in the building to do their dirty work. In addition, horny boyfriend Johnny (Haze) turns up looking for sex and Mary arrives with cameraman Cesar (Juan Francisco Carvajal), hoping to uncover a new scoop.
When Johnny and Cesar wind up dead at the hands of a hideous pink monster, the survivors group together in a bid to make it through the night. A Bishop (Dan Liano) then bizarrely appears to clue the group in on what's happening: the agency is government-ran and commissioned the experimental drugs used on Miriam's brother in a bid to create the ultimate soldier. But the brother's interest in the occult means that something terrible has evolved ...
Cripes. Too bad that the agency now wants all trace of it's creation destroyed and has locked the school doors until everyone in it is dead.
KILLING TWICE is the 2007 sequel to Spanish genre-buster Julian Lara's 2003 film DEADHUNTER: SEVILLIAN ZOMBIES, which readers may recall was released on DVD in the UK by Cryptkeeper.
DEADHUNTER was a micro-budget shot-on-video affair that exhibited ambition and a genuine passion for the horror genre. However, that wasn't enough to prevent it from knocking up a rating of 1.4 on The Internet Movie Database.
While employing much of the same cast as it's predecessor and continuing the story of the unlawful Deadhunters, KILLING TWICE is a marked leap forward in terms of storytelling, style, pacing and - perhaps most significantly - good old grisliness.
This time around, albeit after an admittedly slow start, Lara serves up a prolonged throat-slashing, a couple of juicy disembowelments, and a woman who seems to spend half the film shackled naked with blood caked over her breasts. Kudos to Make Up Factory Sevilla for their enjoyably cheap FX work.
Less impressive are the film's monster (a man in a rubber suit) and the iffy CGI explosions of the latter half. Ah well, you can't have it all. At least they'll make you laugh.
The cast are enthusiastic throughout. While the likes of Liano may let the side down, performances are largely satisfactory too. They're certainly efficient enough to carry a low-budget gore film.
The shoestring budget is indeed evident throughout KILLLING TWICE, but Lara is experienced enough now as a filmmaker to make things such as the creepy empty school setting work to his advantage. The film is framed and lit well for a digital-shot effort and therefore looks better than it realistically could be expected to. But those who are alienated by miniscule production values, beware: this is a film that runs on dedication rather than polish.
Elsewhere, the score also deserves a mention. Boasting a mix of thumping rock songs from the likes of SFDK and Braindead Zero, and aggressive rap from Haze (who also appears in the film), it's rousing stuff that helps to keep the pace ticking over even when the script sometimes threatens to grind things to a halt.
KILLING TWICE is cheap, uneven, overly talky at times and becomes bogged down in religious mumbo-jumbo midway through. But on the plus side, its often amusing and incredibly sincere filmmaking. It's also gory and wants to be loved.
Blessed with ambition and a level of scope not witnessed in Lara's earlier films, KILLING TWICE has many limitations but also shows immense promise for the up-and-coming Spaniard. With a script that even makes reference to horror films such as THE ENTITY ("do poltergeists have big cocks?") and Lara's own ZOMBIE XTREME, it's difficult not to warm to KILLING TWICE.
The lengthy closing titles reveal that this is just as much Gallardo's film as Lara's (between them they practically did everything) and also include a Special Thanks list that includes Guillermo Del Toro, Alex De La Iglesia, Paco Plaza, Dark Horse Entertainment and Lions Gate among others (along with an enigmatic apology to Chuck Williams ...).
The film was provided on a screener disc that presented it uncut in non-enhanced 1.66:1. Images were relatively sharp and clean, boasting accurate colours but a slightly dark overall look.
The Spanish 2.0 audio was clear and consistent throughout.
Currently unavailable, you can learn more about KILLING TWICE and Julian Lara's other horror films by visiting www.julianlara.com.
Female nudity, gore, a cheesy monster ... KILLING TWICE is no-budget horror at it's most fun.
Review by Stu Willis
| Directed by Julian Lara |
| Not Rated |