Mario Sorrenti

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) All right, all together now: if you think you’ve found a way to bring people back from the dead… just don’t. Say no. Walk away. Forget about it. If more than a hundred years’ worth of accumulated evidence (in the form of horror movies) is to be believed, only terrible things will start happening if you try bringing back loved ones. Those fools in Discarnate were only the latest not to listen to reason and, well, a horror movie largely copied from Flatliners ensues. Director Mario Sorrenti has higher visual ambitions than many other working horror directors, but he clearly still has much to learn in terms of telling a story. The blocks of text thrown on-screen a few minutes into the film are bad enough, but the way Discarnate misses the mark with familiar elements is much worse. A good creature design really isn’t enough to make us forget about the silliness of the herbal tea premise or the slap-dash way the film moves forward, almost as if it was bored with itself. The result may get a few points from minor intriguing ideas that could have been developed more thoroughly (such as an overseer from the money people) but just falls flat as yet another undistinguishable low-budget horror film.