Idila (English title: Killbillies). 2016. Directed & Written by Tomaz Gorkic.
Starring Nina Ivanisin, Lotos Sparovec, Nika Rozman, Sebastian Cavazza, Jurij Drevensek, Manca Ogorevc, Damjana Cerne, Matic Bobnar, & Damir Leventic.
666 Production/Blade Production/NuFrame.
Rated R. 83 minutes.
Horror/Thriller

★★★★
Artsploitation Films have been generous enough over the past few months, sending me Blu ray and DVD screeners for a bunch of films. I’m an honest critic in my writing, and some of what they’ve sent me I haven’t been keen on come review time. That being said, some of it is great, too.
When I first saw the trailer for Killbillies, I rolled my eyes. Thought: here we go again. When the movie started rolling the only thing I expected to love was the atmosphere, the cinematography and the music made for an impressive feel. But as the film kept going, the writing from director-writer Tomaz Gorkic subverted my expectations. Because when you go in for backwoods horror, specifically the kind involving inbred-looking cannibals or any similarly styled characters, there’s usually an idea of what you’ll get in the end.
Killbillies is fun, creepy. There’s also a few real great effects done practically that make this horror much better than films of its kind which instead use tired CGI. Don’t get me wrong; it isn’t perfect. Some of the dialogue was weak, not every performance is as good as others. Overall, this is one hell of a backwoods horror. It puts many American movies of the same sub-genre to shame. Not only that, Gorkic’s film is the first horror totally shot and produced out of Slovenia. Instead of sludging through the same old American South we’ve seen a million times, the beautiful landscape of places like Jezersko, Predel, Fort Hermann and other Slovenian locations provide a backdrop for all the hillbilly gruesomeness to come.
Best of all? These aren’t the same cannibal hillbillies you’re used to, no: these guys will make liquor out of your brains!
Right off the bat there’s grim atmosphere. A terribly low, guttural organ chord rings deep in the background. Starts things out dark just on sound alone. The score is a recurring piece of atmosphere that makes things feel proper ominous. Not just score, either. The sound design is terrific. One moment I love is the first time we come across the old woman hillbilly and her accordion playing sidekick. The sound design sort of builds with this chilling sound like the swarm of a thousand flies, you almost can’t tell if it’s strings or what it is, but regardless of whether it’s ambient noise building up or multiple stringed instruments merging into one ball of noise, the result works and gives this moment an eerie weight. There are several scenes where the score is used to its maximum potential. Often, string music works us up to a couple false moments, expecting a jump scare, and then after a couple director Gorkic drops the hammer on his viewer with a brutal kill; not a big jump, a solid creep. Composer Davor Herceg has a few pieces that sound very typical to any ordinary horror. However, there are enough spectacular musical moments to overcome that, such as when the first hillbilly meets his end and the accompanying piano is a dark sound to match the darkness happening in front of our eyes.
In terms of the makeup and other effects, the hillbillies all look fairly nasty and just seeing them is scary enough. One of the main guys, his face is all puffed out, full of pus, his skin is reddened and bumpy. Some great prosthetic work. Once the killing starts, boy, do the effects get real fun! The first hillbilly death is disturbingly preceded by a near rape, and you feel like Gorkic is going the same route as every other American movie of its ilk. It’s a pivot, as what follows is the death of a villain, an awfully grisly one at that. Some good genre murder going on.
What’s better than all that is how the hillbillies are introduced, which is what feels to have separated Killbillies from many of its American counterparts. These guys are downright terrifying. Yet instead of a big rush-in scene, they talk to the victims; something else that doesn’t always happen. When the time is right after their initial confrontation, the hillbillies act, and it’s scarier this way. Gorkic seems to do this often, to great effect – he lulls you into feeling things are going to be totally different, and for the most part they are, until that inevitable shocking murder breaks out. You know it’s coming, but how Gorkic allows us to get there is what’s enjoyable.
The actresses are one of the best elements. Not only the kick ass Zina (Nina Ivanisin) who becomes our breakout protagonist, there’s also Mia (Nika Rozman). This lady is perhaps the greatest performance, even above Ivanisin as Zina. Simply because of her reactions. As horror lovers, we’re jaded, some of us. Many like to say they wouldn’t react in a certain way if they were in a slasher or backwoods situation. What Rozman does is throw herself into the role, even if she isn’t the very lead like Ivanisin. After Mia and Zina are left in a cellar, having seen their friend get his head smashed open savagely, Mia absolutely breaks down. And it’s some of the better acting you can find in any backwoods horror movie, even the best. She trembles, she hyperventilates. You can genuinely imagine her, caught there in that cellar. It’s shockingly heavy, and if you’re an appreciator of solid acting like me you’ll take note.
SPOILER AHEAD: I love the ending, not only because it follows along with how grim the film is already, but there’s a great point about monsters and horror movies. When Zina is tossed into the woods by the men from the club she visited at the film’s start, this is a statement about how we view monsters, in that Gorkic proves it isn’t just the inbred freaks out in the backwoods who are monsters. Seemingly normal men can be as monstrous as any so-called freak. It’s always the women that are in trouble.
Honestly, I didn’t expect to find anything out of the ordinary here. Killbillies is a worthy 4-star horror, and it’s one of the better backwoods flicks of the past few years by far. The acting, the makeup effects, alongside beautifully captured exteriors in the Slovenian wilderness juxtaposed against the depressingly dark interiors (that cellar set is fantastic) – all of these pieces add up to a well-made and threatening whole. I’m also glad they didn’t go for full-on sexual violence. There’s a threat of it, and in the cellar scene we get terribly close to seeing more than just slight touching. In opposition to many American backwoods movies, this one never crosses that line, and is better for it. Gorkic hovers very, very close, though only suggests the depravity without requiring such ugliness visually.
It’s not all outright blood and gore, as Wrong Turn too often fell into over the course of the series, and director-writer Gorkic does a nice job working on the atmosphere to add a significant amount of dread. As I mentioned, not all the dialogue was great. Especially early on before the hillbillies strike, Gorkic could’ve tightened things up in a much better way. The story is so god damn good and the slight twist on the cannibal hillbilly characters is refreshing, as well as kind of funny in its own ways.
Despite its flaws, Killbillies was a surprise and a favourite horror of mine for 2016. Artsploitation Films has started picking up some awesome titles. I hope they’ll keep it up. Likewise, I’m hoping Tomaz Gorkic keeps up the genre work. The few mistakes made were minor, nothing that takes away from the creepiness or effective tension building in most sequences. Check this out when you can because I feel like some horror fans will share my enjoyment. You can’t please everyone. When a movie comes along that tries to be a bit different while working in the confines of familiar tropes, it’s at least worth watching once.