Most Horrible Things (2022)

Valentine's Day giallo-style horror ensues in Hiroshi Katagiri's MOST HORRIBLE THINGS, which is getting a digital release courtesy of Reel2Reel.

In Los Angeles, six Attractive Young Things are invited to a dinner party with the promise of being paid $10 000 if they can make it through the evening to 'their own personal revelation'. As their mysterious host asks more probing questions and tensions rise, it's still late in the game when they begin to realise they may not make it out alive.

Released in the USA under the title LOVE HURTS, Katagiri's film feels very much like a modern-day version of the dafter giallos that filled Italian cinemas fifty years ago, and anyone who enjoyed those movies will find a lot to love in this. The fragmented narrative style, in which we flip from the evening itself to the police procedural investigating the deaths, actually has a point to it, and the pieces of the puzzle all fit nicely (if crazily) together by the end. 

Performances are all as you'd expect for this kind of film, with Sean Patrick Flanery (SAW 3D), Natalie Burn (KILLER MERMAID) and Simon Phillips (lots of British junk including STRIPPERS VS WEREWOLVES) being the most familiar faces to connoisseurs of modern trash cinema. 

The direction keeps everything tight and intriguing during the dinner party sequences while making everything neon-drenched and giallo-stylish during the body count climax. I'd certainly watch another film from Hiroshi Katagiri and while we're waiting, MOST HORRIBLE THINGS is a lot of trashy fun. Let's have a trailer:

Hiroshi Katagiri's MOST HORRIBLE THINGS is out on digital from Reel2Reel on Monday 14th November 2022