Maggot Farmers (2021)

Maggot Farmers (2021) - Belgium
Directed by: Wesley Remory

ABOUT THE FILM:
Midsplatternight Pictures began back in 2003 as a local horror film festival in Belgium, and was the brainchild of one Wesley Remory. Wesley and others initially aimed to promote independent filmmakers and their work within Belgium, but many years later, Wesley and crew decided to try their hand at making a horror film of their own. But Wesley didn't want to make just any by-the-numbers horror film. In fact, he turned hellbent on making a love-letter to the weird and gory shot-on-video movies of the 80's, as well as paying tribute to the late, great Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci. And ultimately, Wesley decided to do so with a project called Maggot Farmers. The story of Maggot Farmers is very simple, but is also very effectively told across its runtime. There is an old woman in a cloak performing a sinister ritual as she casts spells and then buries five voodoo dolls into a pot of soil and then cuts her hand, spilling her blood into the soil. Meanwhile, a group of men are kidnapping and butchering women for their meals, and using their organs to feed the maggots. But little do they know that the dead are being resurrected and that the men are merely fodder for these undead beasts...

The original Maggot Farmers poster.

THE HISTORY OF MAGGOT FARMERS:

The original version of Maggot Farmers was written and began to materialize as early as 2009, with Wesley writing the script and setting up effects, but as it turns out, the production and culmination of Maggot Farmers as a whole was cursed from the very beginning. With the cast and crew's availability constantly changing, on top of bad weather, very little filmmaking experience and very little footage, the production of the original Maggot Farmers was cancelled in 2011. But Midsplatternight's foray into film didn't end there. Over the next decade, they stirred up a considerable buzz in the underground horror scene with atmospheric short works such as Prognosticum, Verbintenis, and their second most-recent work, the infamous Walging. Despite the success that the shorts of Midsplatternight Pictures saw, Wesley could not forget about Maggot Farmers. It just kept haunting him; he had to tell this story, he had to realize his true visions.

In 2019, Maggot Farmers was re-written, and with more experience under their belt, the Midsplatternight crew went back into production on the film. But just like its original incarnation, this production was plagued from the very beginning. Aside from audio recordings being lost or ruined, issues with crew vehicles, shooting delays and special effects malfunctioning, the biggest curse of the production was the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Because of the scare, once more, the production of Maggot Farmers was delayed indefinitely. But, through patience, stubbornness and perseverance, Wesley and crew pulled through and finished Maggot Farmers in late 2021, and now this twisted vision of ritualistic, undead mayhem can be unleashed onto the populace. But can they swallow it?

REVIEW:

Maggot Farmers wears its influence on its sleeve but it also stands head and shoulders above other homages to old-school horror. Whereas many different homages and tributes to 80's horror often fail to recapture what made old horror so special by overusing genre tropes, Maggot Farmers is much more reserved and well-structured. The story, while simple and very short, is told well and with very little dialogue. There's maybe two scenes in the entire short that have any dialogue, and it boils down to simple exchanges. But Maggot Farmers doesn't need much dialogue to tell its story, and the filmmakers prove this by working wonders with visual storytelling. The camera work and the lighting both play a huge role in setting the tone for the film. The entire time, the camera work is extremely smooth and fluid, and is only ever jerky to accentuate shifts in tone. For example, when a character is being approached by a zombie, we suddenly switch to a shaky POV to demonstrate a shift in tone. The lighting isn't overly dull or overly colorful. There's heavy use of soft yellow and orange tints, and when the zombies are onscreen, they are aided by soft blue glows that effectively build an uneasy atmosphere. The ambient droning music only further lulls in the viewer, as well as a few 80's horror-inspired synth tunes that are well composed. Additionally, the film is aided with sound design that will both chill the viewer, and disgust the viewer during the grisly scenes of cannibalism and dismemberment.

The actors do a pretty good job, considering the rather simple characters they have to work with. There's an especially impressive effects sequence where a character is lit on fire and writhes around in agony, à la Olaf Ittenbach's The Burning Moon. My hat goes off to the person brave enough to actually let themselves be set ablaze, especially on a production with such a low budget. But despite the low budget, the film is well made overall, including its special effects. While not a total gorefest, Maggot Farmers has some especially impressive gore and zombie makeup. The zombies look creepy as hell and are truly reminiscent of Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2. All things considered, the only complaints I have are minor sound mix issues that are only noticeable if the viewer is wearing headphones. But those are so trivial they may as well not be mentioned at all. Overall, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect going into Maggot Farmers, considering I've never seen anything from Midsplatternight Pictures before. I do, however, remember when Walging was first released and it was receiving a lot of praise from indie horror fans. I was intrigued, but at the time I was a broke 17 year-old kid with no money, and alas, I never had a chance to see anything from this studio. But now that I've seen Maggot Farmers, I'm curious to see what else they have, because this was a very well done short! At the time of writing this review, Maggot Farmers has not been released physically or digitally, but I suggest jumping at it once it's released. This is an 80's horror throwback worth watching and revisiting.

On a side note, one thing I love is that during the end credits, we also get to see what survives of the original 2011 Maggot Farmers, along with its respective credits. It's interesting to see how the film has evolved over the decade it took to complete, and it's even better to see that despite all of the hardships, Wesley Remory never gave up on his vision. Why should anyone else give up on theirs?

RELEASES:
-Maggot Farmers will be seeing a DVD release in the near future, either at the end of 2021 or in early 2022, and is purported to have all of Midsplatternight Pictures' previous short films as bonus features. To keep updated, I'd recommend checking out their Facebook page here.