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Codex Atanicus
Codex Atanicus is a three story anthology by Spanish director Carlos Atanes. Before watching the movie I never heard of the guy, but the introduction video on the DVD by one of his regular actresses Arantxa Peņa made me realize that I'm in for a hell of a ride. Experimental, bizarre, sick, strange - these are some of the words that describe the stories contained in Codex Atanicus. The anthology is opened by a 20 minute short from 1995 called Metaminds & Metabodies. I am really not into this kind of experimental videos, but I will try to summarize. It opens with a girl singing in the club. Everything looks ultra underground and the girl is connected with some wires to the walls. Strange people are watching her...
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Movie Review: Voodoo Moon

Story
Twenty years ago there was a demonic massacre in a small Southern town and the only survivors were two young siblings named Cole and Heather. Cole has since then been fighting evil with all means necessary, combining different religions and using them as weapons. He has a psychic connection with a group of other people, including one mysterious healer, an outlaw biker and a traumatized cop. Tonight they're all brought together under the Voodoo Moon to take place in the final battle between good and evil.

Comments
With an excellent cast consisting of Eric Mabius (Resident Evil), Charisma Carpenter (Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Dee Wallace (Cujo and recently in the indie flick Headspace), not to mention Jeffrey Combs (from Re-Animator fame), Voodoo Moon sure seemed like a thrilling ride. And while it was, it also had a few things that were not so great, most of those things being the use of CGI, something that I personally, 90 percent of the time, really don't think much of. But Voodoo Moon also had a lot of things going for it like some pretty fine acting, especially by some new-comer named Rik Young who played the devil. And other than that you get zombies, magic, some mild gore, some nice decapitations and last but not least, a decent story which managed to do an all right job and proved to be fairly interesting.

Since their parent were slaughtered 20 years ago, Cole has been fighting evil with everything he's worth. He has this psychic thing going and can see what goes on even though he's not where things are going down. His sister Heather lives a normal life and is not out chasing after evil like her older brother, she also have the ability to predict things that are about to happen through her drawings. Now, evil is closing in and as Cole can feel his friend starts dying, he must travel to a place and meet up with a group of people that he's has a psychic connection with, and at that place, the final battle between good and evil will go down.

Voodoo Moon Voodoo Moon

Voodoo Moon had some nice imagery and a fine atmosphere to offer at times, with the highlight being when Cole and Heather visited a graveyard early on in the movie. It looked stunning and had a great but quite eerie feel to it. That was awesome and I wish things could've stayed that way. The make-up itself, when used, looked great but there were way too many scenes that had way too much CGI in them. Personally I think that the less CGI the better, since CGI does never look real, no matter how good it is. When seeing computer generated effects on screen, I think it takes away focus from the actual movie and makes you concentrate too much on the effects, and that's not a good thing. I guess some sci-fi fans will go wild watching this, but for me personally it did the exact opposite. I'm not gonna say that it's a little thing since this movie uses plenty of it, but if you're into that I guess you'll be more than fine, but if you're not, it's not the end of the world because this movie has much more to offer.

Casting Jeffrey Combs was a great idea, and even though he didn't get a lot of screen time, at least his character delivered some well needed humour. The rest of the cast all delivered and some extra credit has to go to Johnny Amos who's over 60 years old(!) and played an outlaw-biker named Dutch who was a great character as well. Another guy who did a great job and that I've never seen before was Rik Young who played the devil and delivered a really solid performance. The movie had some nice scenes, one that revolves around a corn-field and that looked really cool, and some other scenes that had a lot of action to offer. The pacing of the movie was basically pretty good, except for things slowing down for a short while somewhere in the middle. But this was no major thing though and Voodoo Moon had a pretty nice flow to it companied by a score that was right on the spot for this type of film.

Final Comments
The rating had to go down due to the frequent use of CGI, something I really can't stand, but Voodoo Moon was overall quite an entertaining film that had some to offer. My biggest fear when it comes to horror movies is usually if the cast will be able to do the job, because if they don't, everything will suffer. Luckily, Voodoo Moon had a really solid cast and the film looked good as well. In the end, even though they used way too much CGI, it provided 90 minutes of somewhat good entertainment so at least it won't bore you to death.

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Voodoo Moon

ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Kevin VanHook
WRITING CREDITS: Kevin VanHook
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Eric Mabius, Charisma Carpenter, Dee Wallace
COUNTRY: USA, Canada
RUNTIME: 90 min

RATING: 5/10

Voodoo Moon Website/IMDB Click here
Voodoo Moon Trailer Click here

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