The Art of Dying (19??)

Okay, I thought I had seen weird. Really, I had seen enough Horma films to not be surprised anymore. Or so I thought...

Hey, kids! Do you want to see an instructional video made by a madman? You don't? Well, too bad! This is The Art of Dying.

Unlike the others, this is made in a mockumentary format. I think they were trying to imitate films like Cannibal Holocaust, which I guess makes this Horma's version of an exploitation film. It's...very, very weird.

Okay, first the main character. Unlike the other Horma films I've seen, the main protagonist is explicitly a bad guy. A very, very bad guy. His calls himself Grey, but others in the movie have called him "Judas," "Hart," "Tinker," "Chameleon," "the liar," and "evil motherfucker."

He's basically a serial killer. Only he has super serial killer powers, like the power to jump bodies. That's right: he jumps into other people's bodies. The only problem here is that it looks like he's sort of perpetually sick and whenever he switches bodies, his new body also becomes sick. Each body becomes sickly and pale as time goes on. But he never switches off the camera as he gruesomely murders whole families.

That's sort of the whole movie: him killing people, switching bodies, and killing more people.

And then, at the very end, he finally, finally gets his comeuppance. One of the relatives of his victims traps him in an isolated farmhouse, mortally wounds him, and then kills himself so he doesn't have a body to jump to (I know, very Fallen-esque, right?). In any case, just as we're expecting him to die, Grey picks up the camera and says, "One more trick up my sleeve. Let's hope my deal with Woody goes as planned. See you soon."

And then he dies. The end.

This one just sort of disgusted me. With the other films, they at least had some form of point, some artistic merit. This one just felt like torture porn to me. Even though it wasn't very explicit, it didn't feel like any of it meant anything. Grey killed people and...then died. Even his last words didn't make any sense.

Fuck, I'm tired. I don't know why I'm so tired these days. I took out the DVD from the player and my arms just felt so heavy. I'm going to bed. I don't know if I'm going to do another Horma marathon. This movie kind of killed any enthusiasm I had for them.