After being shelved for years due to problems with the various stages of film production, the horror short film Maggot Farmers (Belgium - 2021) finally emerges into the light distinguished by its engaging and leaden atmosphere.
Produced, written and directed by Belgian effects artist Wesley Remory, the director of Walging, Maggot Farmers is a bewitching short film of about 26 minutes, a love letter to Italian (but not only) horror cinema of the 1970s-80s.
With a story that brings together psychopaths, magic, cannibalism, death, and zombies, Wesley Remory pays homage to the cults of the past, quoting Lucio Fulci (Zombi 2) but also Amando De Ossorio (The Tombs of the Blind Resurrected) while managing to create a personal horror dimension.
Maggot Farmers is characterized by an escalation of horrors initiated by the ruthless initial murder, then moving on to a gruesome and dirty location used as a slaughterhouse where the practical effects of the victims' mangled bodies can be appreciated. The climax is reached with the appearance of the living dead who slowly emerge from the earth, becoming the protagonists of some gore moments and recalling, thanks to the neat make-up and their slowness, the zombies of cult movies of the past.
Deeply somber, Maggot Farmers is a remarkable old-style horror film that elegantly flows into the zombie movie, thrilling the most nostalgic but also horror lovers in general. Too bad it is only a short film.
Plot: random victims are hunted and slaughtered while pure hatred is used to end the long trail of bloodshed. Ancient rites fuel a carnage that will inevitably spare no living being and cause death to reign.
In the cast: Johan Antonissen, Flor Expeels, Katrien De Plancke and Heike De Nil.
