Nekrotronic (2019) - Movie Review

From the makers of Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead, which remains one of the most fun movies I’ve covered on this blog, Nekrotronic is another showing of genre pastiche, basically taking everything the Roache-Turner brothers watched and loved growing up and putting their own spin on it. I can’t exactly say what I was expecting out of this, since Wyrmwood is such a weirdly unique film in its vigour and delivery, but I’m happy to report that not only have they stuck to what they know best, they’ve built on their toolkit to bring the same level of fun at a slightly higher polish.

The range of influences here rest comfortably in ‘80s and ‘90s blockbuster sci-fi, showing bits of The Matrix (complete with the casting of Monica Bellucci, being as dangerously alluring as ever), Ghostbusters, possibly some Hellboy or Buffy The Vampire Slayer in how it mixes the occult with advanced technology, and basically every ‘90s flick that was about what people thought the Internet was like back then. And much like with Wyrmwood, while the influences themselves may be rather obvious, that becomes a non-issue with how well they’re blended into each other, along with the Roache-Turners’ kitchen sink creativity.

So, essentially, the film is about demons that found their way into the Internet and are able to possess people through their smartphones. Our main cast hunt them down by trapping their souls in Hellraiser-esque boxes, plugging them into a giant 3D printer, and then blast the printed demon with a heavy-duty plasma weapon. The lead character, Howard, is the descendant of the most powerful line of Nekromancers, and his best friend Rangi is a ghost who fights alongside him.

It is quite mesmerising how much of this feels like an assembled relic from the retro understanding of technology, only the abject silliness of films like The Lawnmower Man and Johnny Mnemonic is offset by how the story takes actual use of technology into account. I mean, the idea of demons being able to possess people through the Internet isn’t even that much of a stretch, since prolonged exposure to social media tends to turn people into monsters anyway.

I kid but, more than anything, it’s the visuals that sell this whole thing. Relying mostly on practical effects to show off the film’s reality, with added CGI for texture like when showing ‘inside the Internet’ or the smoke effects on the Wraiths, and it all looks quite nice. The gore effects are solid, the detail work on the weaponry and equipment holds up, and even though the demon-possessed populace mostly end up aping the meth-head zombies from Wyrmwood, the make-up work still has the right effect of warped humanity. It also helps that the action scenes are pretty badass as well, especially when Tess Haubrich’s Torquel really gets to cut loose.

The end result may be a little slight, considering how insanely memorable Wyrmwood has turned out to be, but as far as B-movie entertainment, it’s a damn good offering. It manages the same trick that filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright have built their careers on, managing to take familiar elements and turn them into something more than the sum of its parts (Bonus points, BTW, for the remarkably subtle references to both Tarantino and Wright in the film proper). It’s a film that isn’t meant to be thought about super-hard, just enjoyed in the moment, and credit to the Roache-Turners for landing a second hit with that intent.