Limbo - Children of the Night
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Limbo - Children of the Night |
| Original title | limbo |
| Country of production | Argentina |
| original language | Spanish |
| Publishing year | 2014 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Iván Noel |
| script | Iván Noel |
| production | Iván Noel |
| music | Iván Noel |
| camera | Iván Noel |
| cut | Guy Ducker |
| occupation | |
| |
Limbo - Children of the Night (Spanish original title: Limbo , " Vorhölle ") is a 2014 Argentinian film directed by Iván Noel .
action
Journalist Alicia receives an email from a certain Erda posing as matrona of Limbo , a secluded place that is said to care for children with a rare disease. Erda invites Alicia over so that she can get an idea of the place and maybe support her in a fight against the "forces of evil". Alicia, who is very concerned about the well-being of children after she was given up for adoption by her mother as a child because she suffers from haemophilia , joins in at once despite the resistance of a colleague and Gabriels, with whom she is having an affair the bus from Buenos Aires on the way.
With the coordinates given to her she arrives in a lonely area. When it is getting dark, she asks a man in black, who is waiting on the roadside, for directions, but he upsets her with the unexpected counter question about Gabriel's whereabouts and is of no help to her. A little later she meets a boy dressed in white who explains to her that he has been waiting for her for a long time and who finally leads her to Limbo, a large area in the middle of a forest. There she is warmly received by Erda, the superior; while the boy, Siegfried, is told to go to the others, Alicia is brought to her room.
In the next few days, Alicia tries to find out more about the children and their illness. All are dressed in white, with the exception of one boy known as “The Count” (El Conde) , are almost exclusively awake at night and often do not behave according to their age. Siegfried is particularly pushy towards her and attracts attention with suggestive remarks. Also, many of the children look familiar to Alicia. Erda's explanations, mostly of a religious nature, do not help her any further, and despite the very nice overall impression that Limbo makes on the journalist, she does not understand many of the events; individual children are regularly killed in mysterious ways.
One day Gabriel appears unannounced in Limbo and forces Alicia on again, which Siegfried in particular sees with displeasure. However, she behaves in a dismissive manner towards him and refuses to go back to Buenos Aires with him the next day. Gabriel leaves the place angrily. Soon after, Alicia realizes that she actually knows many of the children: They are children from all over the country who have disappeared without a trace. When she confronts Erda and again does not receive an adequate answer, she wants to flee through the forest to a nearby village in the middle of the night, but the count approaches her and makes her turn back again.
It is only with great difficulty that Alicia can get used to the statements that Erda is now making: A large proportion of the children who disappear every year around the world become victims of vampires and therefore withdraw into a limbo, of which there are 14 in Argentina alone. There they can be protected from the outside world and live among their own kind while preparing a future where the world belongs to the vampires. From the time they were bitten, the vampires no longer age, which is why the alleged children are usually much older. Now Siegfried's interest in Alicia is understandable: under the name Emanuel he was her childhood sweetheart and looked after her when she was near death due to her illness; however, her father was against it and almost killed the boy, whereupon he was taken in by the count's vampires. However, she is still uncomfortable with his sexual interest in her.
Furthermore, Alicia learns that the Count - apparently also the former lover of Erda, who, as a hemophiliacs, could not become a vampire herself - is none other than the grandson of Count Dracula , who, like his ancestors, is the protector of all threatened vampires worldwide. A group of vampire hunters under the command of Bram Stoker's son are his main opponents; again and again there are nightly incidents in which sometimes some of the vampires, sometimes some of Stoker's men are killed. Gabriel is also one of the vampire hunters, as Alicia learns with horror when she suddenly discovers him tied up in the basement; she frees him, but does not join him.
On the day after the traditional baptism, when Erda baptizes younger vampires who have reached maturity with blood, because from this point on they are allowed to drink human instead of animal blood, the vampire hunters attack Limbo. Erda is tied up and has to watch helplessly as the men cruelly kill several of the vampires. While Alicia tries to help them, it comes - apparently at the instigation of the Count - to a complete solar eclipse ; at the same time, a swarm of bats called by the count as reinforcement arrives , which turns out to be another group of child vampires. A bloody fight ensues, in which the vampires attack the men and leave nothing of them. Stoker is blinded by the count as a punishment , but then let go. In the course of the fight Erda, who had been in poor health for a long time, died. While the Count mourns for her, the other vampires give Alicia to understand that they will be under her leadership in the future.
Alicia will succeed Erda's successor, as she had planned from the start. The count says goodbye because he knows this limbo is safe and now has to rush to the aid of vampires in Patagonia . Together with Siegfried, whom she has now gotten closer to, Alicia stages a found footage film in which she is attacked and apparently killed by the vampire. During the credits a newscaster can be seen announcing Alicia's death based on the found footage.
Production and publication
Limbo is Noel's fifth film and after Vuelve - Come back! the second of his Argentine creative phase. With (privately financed) production costs of around US $ 120,000 , this film had a significantly higher budget than the previous films. From the beginning, Noel planned to open up the US market for the first time with this film. The shooting took place between December and March 2012 in various locations in the province of Córdoba . As an actor, Noel cast children (sometimes directly on the street) from Jesús María , where he lived, and from the neighboring town of Colonia Caroya ; the only actress with film experience was Ana María Giunta . Some of the vampire hunters were selected spontaneously. As with all of his films, Noel was concerned with childhood: Here he wanted to look at the concept of vampires aging in the body, which remains forever young. At the beginning of April the final fight between vampires and hunters was filmed. To this end, Noel had launched a general appeal to children in the area to meet at the Instituto Nuestra Señora del Rosario del Milagro , the location where the film was set. However, the hope of about 2,000 children was not fulfilled.
After the film has already been offered in the meantime to Noel's website for sale, he appeared in October 2015 under the title Children of the Night ( "Children of the Night" - a quote from Dracula ) on DVD at Artsploitation film (US and Canada) and Matchbox Films (United Kingdom). The German DVD version of the film was released on February 26, 2016 by cmv-Laservision as the original with German subtitles, like all of Noel's other films before.
reception
The film received mixed reviews.
Hope Madden from ScreenRelish.com found some content elements “downright stupid”, but praised the “artistic eye” of the director (and cameraman) who created a “poetic vision”. She attested to the leading actress Ramos as a "sincere acting performance". Overall, the film plays with “subversive horror” but relies too much on “Gothic melodrama ” to really work.
For Blair Hoyle of CinemaSlasher.com , the film turned out to be "surprisingly ... sweet and sometimes even lighthearted", with lots of "loving, pseudo-romantic moments"; this “bizarre formula” makes the film “fascinating”. He also praised the soundtrack, which gave the more brutal scenes a "grotesque playfulness".
Web links
- Limbo - Children of the Night in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Movie description on NoelFilms.com
supporting documents
- ↑ Release certificate for Limbo - Children of the Night . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF).
- ↑ a b c Claudio José Minoldo: Con niños actores locales se viene filmando “Limbo”: una película sobre vampiros. In: Semanario Primer Día. March 17, 2013, accessed March 7, 2016 (Spanish).
- ↑ Limbo press kit. (PDF) Noel Films, p. 2 , accessed on November 2, 2015 (English).
- ^ A b Claudio José Minoldo: Terminaron de filmar Limbo, la película de vampiros. In: Semanario Primer Día. April 28, 2012, Retrieved March 7, 2016 (Spanish).
- ^ Children of the Night. Artsploitation Films, accessed March 7, 2016 .
- ↑ horror. Matchbox Films, accessed March 7, 2016 .
- ^ Limbo - Children of the Night. cmv laser vision , accessed March 7, 2016 .
- ↑ Hope Madden: CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT Review. In: ScreenRelish.com. September 29, 2015, accessed March 7, 2016 .
- ↑ Blair Hoyle: "Children of the Night" Review. (No longer available online.) In: Cinema Slasher. October 7, 2015, archived from the original on March 9, 2016 ; accessed on March 7, 2016 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
