I want to watch Verotika so bad it hurts.
It was supposed to drop Halloween of 2019 before having its release date cruelly pushed back to this year. Through this excruciating wait (which I’m sure we’re all feeling), inch by inch we’re dragging closer to what by all accounts ought to be an experience akin to seeing Troll 2 for the first time. Now we have our first taste of Glenn Danzig’s bloody mess of a film via a trailer that unfortunately doesn’t give us all that much to gnaw on.
Equally divided between quotes from critics and actual snippets of the anthology film, we’re left wanting. There are certainly hallmarks of bad filmmaking on display–flat lighting, bad acting, sketchy makeup, cheesy angles–but nothing that would put it above your average VOD horror. I wanted something that would make my jaw come loose, and it’s not here yet.
Sure, you have a sort of dungeon nun walking through a hall of naked corpses. You have a Goth queen sucking blood off her fingers. You even see a bit of a monster–but none of it shrieks with a need to be seen. Even the selection from Danzig’s soundtrack is nothing but guitar hits that do little to get us pumped.
In just over a month’s time we’ll all see if Verotika can stand up to the anti-hype and become a regular staple of everyone’s bad movie night when it splats to VOD on February 25, 2020 before hitting shelves as a three-disc Blu-ray/DVD/CD soundtrack set on March 3.
Until then, we continue to wait.
