Cult Cinema: Hotel Inferno

Here's a review of the gory, shoot 'em up horror fest, Hotel Inferno. 

"Too much garlic!!!!" 

If id Software produced low budget splatter films instead of first person shooter videogames like Doom or Wolfenstein 3d, the result might look something like Guilio De Santi’s Hotel Inferno.  Billed as the “First and Only splatter movie in ‘First Person View’”, the film is equal parts Sega CD 32X Corpse Killer with the orgiastic blood and guts porn of Toe Tag Pictures.  An adrenaline filled gorefest, Hotel Inferno concerns a hitman named Frank Zimosa (Rayner Bourton) hired by a sleazy multimillionaire to off two ritual killers, aided by Google glasses (or something close to it), with specific instructions to extract the brains and entrails of both after killing them.  Needless to say, it all goes awry. 

A mixed bag which tends to burn itself out midway in, Hotel Inferno is more or less pure, unadulterated gorehound trash.  Far less engaging than Gareth Evans’ Safe Haven from V/H/S 2 with some dreadful acting, student film CGI and ADR that sticks out like a sore thumb, Hotel Inferno is technically a bad movie you can have some intoxicated fun with.  Much like modern videogames, our avatar makes use of whatever weapons he can, whether it be hammers, knives or shotguns, and the weapon is visible in the lower front end of the frame as monsters charge the camera.  Obviously cheap looking with a gamut of digital blood, Hotel Inferno’s charm comes from the sheer balls-to-the-wall explosions of chum, brain and entrails the film so graciously rubs our faces in.  Some scenes are genuinely cringe inducing and sickening, as when our avatar’s hands are being broken with a hammer and his twisted fingers still move about. 

"Take that!!! Sucka!!!!"

Plot and story are secondary to the Playstation 4 marriage to Grindhouse cinema, and once we’ve accepted the gore bucket challenge, Hotel Inferno is off and running with no time to slow down.  The creatures, or whatever they are, do manage to unsettle and couldn’t help but remind me of the possessed marines in Doom, with the sounds of inhuman grunting letting you know where an adversary might be lurking.  

Much like the far better kid cousin [*REC], the film is an adrenaline ride with a surprise monster at the end.  It’s not a compelling piece of storytelling and there are far too many moments that feel dirt cheap, but as far as trashy nonstop ultraviolence goes with some genuinely disturbing gore effects, Hotel Inferno delivers the goods splatter fans expect and in that respect it doesn’t disappoint.  You’ll wanna bust out your most violent first-person shooter games as soon as it wraps and continue blasting away at monsters in a myriad of explosively bloody ways.

-Andrew Kotwicki