Reviewed by Mike Belfance

I think it's probably safe to say that one of (if not THE) most difficult genres to translate into 3dmm would have to be horror. In order for horror to work, the viewer has to be completely immersed in the movie, and (while they're watching it anyway) buy everything that's going on in the film as if it were actually happening in front of them. It's something that's hard to pull off even for a Hollywood director- so it's easy to imagine how immensely difficult it would be to do in a program like 3dmm. Here we have 30 "actors" everyone knows, who constantly have the same facial expression painted on their face in a program with a framerate that's slow and jittery at best. Not exactly the right ingredients for immersive viewing. Yet somehow, Mike Storch has managed to pull it off exceptionally well- and in a movie about freaking evil gnomes!

Right from the get-go, the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The opening credits play out as the camera pans across a dark forest- eerily quiet except for the music playing in the background. It's so simple, but it works amazingly well. The long panning camera shots seen in the opening are used to great effect in many other parts of the film as well. They never get old, and always fulfill their purpose of being very unnerving. That said, even when the camera is sitting perfectly still, it's used expertly. This is just a very well directed movie, there's no better way to say it, and frankly, considering the source material, it HAS to be. Mind you, every movie should be well directed, but in this movie especially, good use of the camera is everything. Obviously a movie about killer gnomes is going to tread a very fine line between creepy, and corny. Mike Storch keeps it safely secured on the "creepy" side by throwing every directing technique you can imagine into it. Three great horror movie directing techniques are used heavily:

1. The atmosphere is always very dark- it's rarely daytime in this movie.
2. The camera is almost always at an odd angle, or panning towards something your suppose to be afraid of, or doing SOMETHING cool. You'd be hard pressed to find a single boring horizontal shot in this movie.
3. The creature(s) is rarely if ever shown (I consider this the most important, especially in 3dmm)

The storyline is good, but nothing entirely out of the ordinary. I won't give much of it away, because it's such a short movie, but let's just say it comes down to a family who moved into the wrong house at the wrong time getting into alot of gnome-related trouble. Horror movies about people moving into houses built in an area holding a dark secret aren't exactly a new idea, but the plot manages to be interesting enough. It's not perfect, there are a few subplots that end up not meaning much at all, but it manages to keep it from feeling like a mindless slasher flick.

The sound is excellent, probably the strongest point of the movie below how well directed it is. The music plays a loud beat whenever something extremely creepy shows up on screen, which almost got a jump out of me, but not quite. The voice acting is very good overall. It's probably a testament to my friend and VGN2 co-director Justin Wawrzonik as a voice actor that I didn't know he played the old man until the end credits. Damn it, stop hogging all the talent and teach me how to do voices ya' stingy bastard! Yeah, good job all around. If there was a weak voice part in the movie, I'd say it would be the little girl. Her voice acting wasn't bad, just very monotone. It seemed like every one of her lines was said in the exact same way. I don't know...as far as faults in this movie go, I'm grasping at straws here.

Overall, this was an extremely well directed, very well acted, and genuinely creepy horror movie. And as I said before, IT'S ABOUT GNOMES! Whodathunkit?! I give it a 92% out of 100% and recommend you all download it, watch it, and agree with me.

92%