Touches You

Simply Perfect

Excellent but underrated film

As Good As It Gets

I wasn't really sure about Andreas Pape's Hunting Creatures before I went into it, it wasn't one of those movies where I was really melting with anxiety to see it, I discovered it on a review site along with some screen shots and thought I'd check it out. I sure didn't expect to like it as much as I did.Once it picked up, the action and gore was awesome, featuring a lot of very bloody shootings, some dismemberment and some nice gut-munching. The characters are bad**s and it was a pleasure watching them go around hunting and slaughtering creatures. So they're barely developed, who cares?The plot was also cool and wasn't any more complicated than it needed to be, which is all I can ask for in a plot in a movie like this.Bottom Line: Hunting Creatures is a cool, gory, well-paced horror-action flick that definitely delivers. Running at only 70 minutes, the movie's not any longer than it needed to be. Definitely a big surprise for me.

I tend to shy away from most of the German "ultra-gore" films after watching such ridiculous trash as DAS KOMABRUTALE DUELL, the VIOLENT SH!T films (or anything that I've seen so far from Andreas Schnaas...), etc... - but I hadn't had a gore-fix in a while and decided to give HUNTING CREATURES a shot. I have to say, that even though my copy is in German only, and I don't speak German - this particular film seemed quite a bit better than the typical 3-dollar, shot-in-the-basement-of-mom's-house Euro-splatter films that I've seen.A group of thugs set up a rave whose guests are turned into zombies when it just so happens that the building that the rave is being held in doubles as an experimental lab. Leaky pipes cause a gas to be expelled upon the partiers, and the thugs join forces with the scientists to try to quarantine the zombie plague...I'm really surprised that I got anything at all from HUNTING CREATURES. I don't typically like Euro-gore films, and I'm not a big fan of most zombie films either - but there were some solid aspects to this one. It didn't have the "silly" tone that a lot of these zero-budget German gore films have - instead playing it pretty straight-forward and taking itself a little more seriously. I found this refreshing for this sort of film. It seems a little more "care" was put into the production, acting, set-pieces, etc...and I found this to be unique as well. As for the gore - it's relatively run of the mill until towards the end where it lets loose a bit, and the FX are pretty decent for an obviously low-budget film. I would say that HUNTING CREATURES would be of interest to fans of low-budget gory horror and zombie films primarily, but it holds up well enough that the "average" horror fan may find something redeeming in it as well. I give it a relatively high rating because it's one of the best of the bunch amongst other films in it's "peer-group"...7/10

"Hunting Creatures" is one of several projects by a loose collection of German amateur filmmakers, the most prolific of which is Timo Rose. Here, the directing credits are shared by Andreas Pape and Oliver Kellisch, who all seem loosely associated with one of the most horrible "professional" horror directors around, Olaf Ittenbach. The nicest thing I can say about "Hunting Creatures" is that it's not the worst effort from the group, even though it's still completely worthless.It is actually difficult to give this film a fair rating. Judging from the technical quality alone, it is puzzling how these "movies" find their way into actual video stores. The problem is just that the filmmakers don't know anything about film-making. The films are shot on (digital?) video without any attempt to set up suitable lighting conditions, so that the camera is blinded every time it is turned towards a window or doorframe. To be fair, the camera angles chosen are often quite nice, but there's just more to camera-work than just pointing the camera in the right direction. No set pieces or props are used; the movies are simply shot in the actors' private homes (or better, their parents' homes) -- and it shows that the zombies are stomping through their own old romper rooms. The acting is abysmal throughout. Obviously, most of the work goes into the splatter and gore effects (which are sometimes, but not this time, provided by Ittenbach).The overall effect could have been unintentionally funny, but is actually strongly annoying. Don't get me wrong: I sometimes have a lot of fun with amateur productions because I like to see people use their creativity. What keeps annoying me about these present productions is that they are so uncreative. Every image, every storyline, every bit of dialog is lifted from other films just as it is, without the slightest attempt at originality. It's as if these guys think about a scene, decide that "that's how they do it in the real movies", and then miserably fail at attempting the same.Be warned: There's more like this out there, and worse. You may also want to avoid "Space Wolf", "Kettensägen-Zombies" and the repulsive "Rigor Mortis".