Directors: Yoav Paz & Doron Paz
Cast: Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin, Danielle Jadelyn, Tom Graziani
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 90 minutes
There are three gates to Hell. One in the Desert… One in the Ocean… and one in Jerusalem. It is this third gate that takes centre stage for new found-footage horror JeruZalem.
A couple of carefree American girls Sarah (Jadelyn) and Rachel (Grobglas) are on their way to Tel-Aviv when they meet fellow American, and Indiana Jones wannabe, Kevin (Turmarkin), on the plane and decide to join him on a jaunt to Jerusalem during Yom Kippur. This is just the first in a long line of bad choices that are made during the ninety minute run time. As each decision becomes more idiotic the audience are wrenched ever further from caring about the characters on screen.
Found-footage horror films are ten a penny in this day and age and sadly JeruZalem doesn’t really do much for the sub-genre. The camera of choice, ‘smart-glass’, a fictional version of Google glass means that we lose the usual jerky camera work and is a real blessing. The necessity to be recording absolutely everything however, is not. It’s the same with all found-footage I know, but it’s more than a little contrived that Sarah leaves the glasses filming whenever she takes them off, for no other reason than to give the audience a glimpse of our heroine.
What really hinders the movie is that it takes far too long for the sky to literally start falling. Our cast of characters are all taken from the usual stock and we really don’t need to spend half of the run time watching them party.
On the plus side, JeruZalem offers an interesting take on the reanimated corpse, granting the deceased bat-like demonic wings, and is very old testament in imagery. It’s a move that’s to be expected given the film in set in Jerusalem during a religious holiday, but in today’s over-saturated zombie market it’s a great way to make itself stand-out from the crowd.
A film that had promising potential but sadly falls into all the usual predictable horror conventions and cliches.
JeruZalem is out on digital platforms now, and arrives on DVD and Blu-ray from Monday 4th April.
Kat Hughes is a UK born film critic and interviewer who has a passion for horror films. An editor for THN, Kat is also a Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critic. She has bylines with Ghouls Magazine, Arrow Video, Film Stories, Certified Forgotten and FILMHOUNDS and has had essays published in home entertainment releases by Vinegar Syndrome and Second Sight. When not writing about horror, Kat hosts micro podcast Movies with Mummy along with her five-year-old daughter.
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