DIRECTED BY: Ronny Carlsson
REVIEWED BY: Mario Dominick
After the release of his last picture Regissoren (the final entry in the “Video” series after Video Geisteskrank and My Monster), Swedish horror reviewer and filmmaker Ronny Carlsson of Film Bizarro Productions has gone back to the artistic style of his short film Recompence with Dust Box, a semi-follow up. The “Video” series is like the early works of David Lynch blended with the extreme torture horrors of the August Underground-style pseudo snuff subgenre while Recompence has more in common with such arthouse splatter fare like Begotten, Pig, and Buttgereit’s Der Todesking. In making Dust Box, Ronny cites the works of Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars Von Trier, and Andrzej Zulawski as the biggest influences.
Dust Box is the story of Alma (Mariah Kanninen), a woman trying to have a baby but continually failing. Alma begins to use her imagination to create the child she can’t have in the waking world. In her mind, she frequently walks through the woods and into a field where she comes into contact with a mysterious box. What is the meaning of the box? As the fantasies continue, she starts finding fragments of a gruesome puzzle, while her grip on reality slowly begins to slip.
Ronny is a filmmaker with a love for surrealism and dream-like imagery. With Dust Box, he stays true to the style of his previous films and makes the best use of disturbing and bizarre images. Lars Von Trier’s movies are definitely the most recognizable influence in Dust Box with the movie being separated into chapters (like Antichrist). The bloody special effects props created by 100 Tears and Fell director Marcus Koch are very effective and the musical score (by Porcelain Maggot and others) is very beautiful and maintains a consistent dramatic mood to the picture. Mariah Kanninen also gives a wonderful performance in the lead role.
Overall, Dust Box is another welcome addition to the art horror catalog of Carlsson and Film Bizarro. He is always trying something new and different with each film and is on his way to being one of this generation’s finest subversive artists in the arena of underground filmmaking.
Distributors interested in picking up Dust Box should contact Ronny @ groronodorized@gmail.com
Visit Film Bizarro online at www.filmbizarro.com
