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| COVER GALLERY |
| Film vitals |
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· Year: 1975
· Also known as: Frissons, Orgy of the Blood Parasites, The Parasite Complex, The Parasite Murders, They Came from Within
· Director: David Cronenberg
· Writer: David Cronenberg
· Cast: Paul Hampton, Joe Silver
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Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
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| Synopsis |
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Spread by sexual intercourse, genetically modified parasites infest the population of an upper-class apartment building and turn their hosts into zombies.
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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68
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| COLD ANALYSIS |
| ATMOSPHERE |
| GORE |
| HUMOR |
| SCARES |
| TENSION |
Gore can be used as a comedic tool, as in Evil Dead II and the Re-Animator series, or as a tool to elicit disgust, a fact to which any number of slasher films exist to attest. But it takes a special talent to really get under your skin with grue. After all, the very presence of gore is a violation in and of itself, and a good director knows how to capitalize on that, instilling in the viewer a feeling of utter revulsion. In Shivers, David Cronenberg accomplishes just that. There's something in our psyche that recoils at the idea of another creature being inside us, and that's just about all Shivers is about. I could make some observations about the social metaphors contained in this story, about an apartment building filled with bourgeois white people who can't stop having sex with each other and spreading disease by doing so. I could do that. But I'm not sure how interested Shivers is in that; as a gross-out, it works exceptionally well, but unfortunately as a story, there's just not much here. The tension that should be omnipresent is, in a strange sort of way, somewhat lacking. Shivers essentially becomes a zombie movie, but it wasn't until nearly the very end that the feeling of danger started to affect me. But it still managed to make my skin crawl.
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