Review: Porno

 

Director: Keola Racela

Screenplay: Matt Black and Laurence Vannicelli

Year: 2020

Shudder has got us used to a constant flow of horror movies that are at least entertaining. A rotten apple that doesn’t have this characteristic of being at least entertaining mix with the rest every now and then. “Porno” is the most recent rotten apple that gets into Shudder’s collection, and that blatantly fails to give a good impression. 

The plot of “Porno” occurs in a movie theater, where the owner and some of the employees are devoted Christians. One night, after closing the theater, five young employees discover a hidden basement, where there were some remnants of the past administration, who ran a pornographic theater. Their curiosity leads them to watch one of the films that were hidden inside the basement, but without realizing it, they release a sexual demon.

The premise of “Porno” might seem attractive after reading it, but there is a big difference between theory and execution. As it falls from the description, this movie is a horror-comedy, but it fails in both genres. The comedy is filled with non-funny jokes that look to feed on stereotypes about Christians and straightedges, as well as juvenile sex jokes.

In the horror aspect, the director Keola Racela, along with the writers Matt Black and Laurence Vannicelli, do a better job than with the comedy. An aspect to highlight is the well done practical effects that make some scenes feel extremely painful. In particular, one stands out where we see in detail a mutilated (you guessed it) penis that will make even the strongest curl in this seat. However, the practical effects are contrasted with horrible low-quality CGI.

This movie’s main issue is that its story is dumb, and the comedy doesn’t make it a good kind of dumb. On top of that, the characters are dull and uninteresting, and one cannot say that the cast does a good acting job, although this could be an effect of the poor material they had to work with. What should have been a movie to have a good time ends up being boring nonsense. 

“Porno” is offered as a horror-comedy, but it fails in both genres and is one of Shudder’s biggest misses. The story is boring and dumb, the comedy doesn’t land right, and the horror is conspicuous by its absence. The number of sex jokes generates the same interest as the flaccid penises that are continuously being shown, and only the practical effects are useful to give it some quality and save it from being a disaster.