Kolobos (1999)

March 13, 2021 5:50 PM

Five young individuals agree to live in an isolated lodge together and have their daily activities filmed.

But all is not what it seems. Soon the house is locked down, and they are trapped in the murderous clutches of a faceless serial killer who may not be working alone.

posted by miss-lapin (3 comments total)

Long before the revival of found footage films, Kolobos exploited the concept of "Big Brother" and the "Real World" as a horror movie premise. The movie precedes The Collector by a decade. While much lower budget, it's definitely worth watching.

Currently streaming on Arrow.
posted by miss-lapin at 5:55 PM on March 13, 2021

I feel like a better title would have been Do You Like Argento?, because man -- these guys sure do! From the opening score that's a Suspiria soundalike to the opening scenes of a black-gloved killer messing with lightbulbs a la Deep Red, Tenebrae, etc., there isn't a lot of question who the directors are trying to emulate with Kolobos. And I think this would work a lot better as an Italian movie we know has been dubbed and possibly recut for American audiences: we would be better able to overlook logic problems (like, huge logic problems), shaky acting, terrible dialogue (Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon, you have a lot to answer for), and all of the rest if we suspected that what we were seeing was a film where details were lost in translation, but the good stuff...oh, there's no denying the good stuff.

By the end of the movie, I'm not sure that...most of the movie even happened? I see no intelligent way that could be true, unless it was all a story Kyra authored. Perhaps a graphic novel? But I'm not sure it's fair to point to where the movie falls down...I don't think the filmmakers are terribly preoccupied with telling a story that makes sense. In a way, the dream logic of Kolobos may make it more effective. Certainly I think it's why it stands out now, among other horror films of its (not very fertile, I admit) era.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:10 AM on March 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

The way I justify the end of the movie is it's Kyra's perspective so it's obviously warped. We don't know what did or didn't happen and in a way I find that far more frightening.
posted by miss-lapin at 2:00 PM on March 14, 2021 [1 favorite]