Review: Nekrotronic

On paper, Nekrotronic should not work at all. Take a lower budget film and add a Y2K-era internet plot, some hokey 90’s action film tropes, and a healthy amount of special effects, now you have a recipe for disaster. However, the end result is a bit beyond the sum of its parts and turns out to be a fun, if forgettable, horror-comedy romp.

The movie kicks off with a blunt, expository opening that I found to actually be refreshingly honest (just tell us what we need to know for this kind of movie). In this world, ancient man inadvertently brought demons into our realm through sacrificial rituals. As the demons ran rampant, special individuals known as necromancers rose up to wage war with these otherworldly beings, and for thousands of years, they have been fighting. Yet, lately the tide has shifted. Demons are now using the internet, namely a Pokémon Go-esque mobile game, in order to acquire human souls and defeat necromancers. Now our story begins, with Howard (Ben O’Toole). He is a down-on-his-luck former foster youth, working with his buddy Rangi (Epine ‘Bob’ Savea) for his foster-family’s septic cleaning business. During a road trip to a job site, Rangi unknowingly downloads and begins to play the demonic mobile game. This activates Howard’s long dormant necromancer powers and puts him on the radar of the head demon herself (Monica Bellucci). She in turn sends a feral possessed person his way to take care of the situation. However, a necromancer named Luther (David Wenhem) and his two daughters, Molly (Caroline Ford) and Torquel (Tess Haubrich), are alerted to Howard’s existence. They steal him and Rangi away and inform him about the new world he is a part of and that there is more to him than he ever imagined.

There is one thing I must make painfully clear. This movie is not reinventing the wheel at all. If you are in any way a viewer of B-movie, over-the-top genre fair, this is old hat. It is definitely a movie made for and by genre fans. Although, it definitely comes across as an enjoyable ride of horror-comedy’s greatest hits rather than a boring slog of ideas and concepts we have seen before.

What sets this apart from other, lesser retreads is the energy inherent within the film. Everything moves quickly and is visually interesting. The scenes and the camera itself flow from one point of interest to another, and the dialogue is quick and brisk. This is not without its downsides. The movie falls victim to a plot that moves far too fast in the back half of the film, and some of the dialogue gets a chuckle but other times it induces a groan. The foundation of the film must be attributed, in part, to 1990’s post-Tarantino filmmaking. After he exploded onto the scene, there were droves of imitators. This movie comes across as one of those imitators, albeit a bit late. It does get enough of this style to work in order to overcome this mild annoyance though.

There is something about Australia and B-movies that usually just works. Not that they are without duds. Everyone has those. But there is a similar energy and intensity to the ones that work for some reason. Nekrotronic is clearly influenced by them; movies like Mad Max, Body Melt, and countless others. There is a snappiness to their style and a ridiculousness in their plots. It is worth noting that the documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! covers these movies in much greater depth than can be gotten into here.

Our protagonist, Howard, has all the staples of a horror movie lead. Tragic backstory? Check. Down on his luck? Check. Smart-ass temperament? Check. He also has a very every-man quality that was a nice change of pace. I am not sure the movie is aware of this, as they devote a scene in order to gratuitously show off his physique like a Marvel superhero. But, the rest of the movie treats him like just some guy caught in the middle of a supernatural predicament. I liked that element of his character and the fact that they allowed him to be properly freaked out by what was happening, which contrasted nicely with Rangi who accepted everything at face value. Howard serves the movie on the movie’s level. Which is to say, the movie is a rather shallow bit of fun. There is not much under the surface and the plot is pretty bare bones; an excuse to have action sequences one might say. So, in that regard he works, but giving your character a sad story cannot be the first and last stop on the character creation train. It has to be the building blocks for what makes him or her unique. But, unfortunately Nekrotronic is not really interested in depth.

This is more prevalent in other characters. They attempt to give Molly more than badass demon hunter traits, but this ultimately serves to fuel a love story at the end of the day. Her sister, Torquel, is the most one note of everyone. Her entire character could be encapsulated by the phrase, “Fuck yeah I can bitches! Boom!” or some other equally god-awful, juvenile variant. Rangi is a fun comic foil who is as sincere as he is stupid. But, this works most times and the movie could have used more of him. Monica Bellucci’s demonic CEO was obviously just the movie’s evil villain. But, she was having a lot of fun hamming up the part, even when she was delivering lines that sounded strange and far too referential for her. Nonetheless, every time she was on screen it was enjoyable and genuinely cool to see her as a character like this.

The plot itself is almost not worth mentioning. It’s demons in the internet. Or network. Or mainframe. Or something. It’s like horror Hackers with wardrobe stylings via Swordfish. At points, it becomes so laughably outdated that it nearly circles around to being funnily tongue in cheek. But, nothing is really intentionally done with this concept, so we will just stick with paper-thin, nonsensical plot as a descriptor.

The places where this movie works have more to do with the actions of the characters and neat things within the scenes. The tech design is well executed and all of the different gadgets are rather interesting. There are some competent fight scenes and shootouts; I did like the first demon attack scene the best and it stands on its own as a genuinely good scene. It is all rather surface level. Usually, there is a cool shot, a good piece of makeup work or monster design, or an interesting idea for fictional tech that caught my eye. The story itself is more of a backdrop to hang cooler stuff on. However, the characters were not overtly annoying and there were enough interesting things to keep me invested throughout the film, even if I will likely forget most of it in the near future.

If you are looking to invest a bit of your VOD funds in a decent horror-comedy, you could do much worse than 99 minutes in the world of Nekrotronic. It has some neat set pieces, decent monster design, and a splash of good old fashioned gore. You will just have to endure some copy and pasted characters and a plot that feels like a spec script circa 1998.