August Underground backdrop
August Underground poster

AUGUST UNDERGROUND

2001 • US HMDB
January 1, 2001

Imagine walking down the street and finding an unmarked VHS tape. Curiosity piqued, you take it home and pop it in. What starts off as two men screwing around with a video camera quickly transforms into an ultra-realistic torture sequence where the unidentified psychopaths tape their exploits as they torment and violate a woman tied to a chair. The devastation of your morals continues throughout the entirety of the footage, while subtly revealing the killer's shattered pasts via the interaction with their victims and each other. The most shockingly realistic portrait of a serial killer's existence is, Fred Vogel's AUGUST UNDERGROUND.

Cast

Fred Vogel, Kyle Dealman, Allen Peters, Casey Eganey, Dan Friedman, AnnMarie Reveruzzi, Alexa Iris, Victoria Jones, Aaron LaBonte, Ben LaBonte
Horror

REVIEWS (1)

GF

Gianluca Fedele

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Two seemingly normal guys spend their days roaming the city trying to beat boredom by starting fights and committing acts of vandalism, but their greatest fun lies in their basement where unfortunate victims, tied up and gagged, are tortured daily in the most atrocious and unimaginable ways. In the distant 2001, the "unknown" Fred Vogel contacts friends and relatives and with a video camera records on mini-DV a fake snuff movie (of which he is also producer and lead actor) that depicts the exploits of two psychopathic friends whose only goal is to roam the city to kidnap, torture, and kill people. The film has become a symbol of extreme cinema and was subsequently released on DVD by Toe Tag Pictures, which later financed its two sequels. But is "August Underground" really that crude and "mean"? Is it really that unbearable to watch? The answer to the second question is surely yes because "August Underground" is of an unsustainable boredom and uselessness. It is clear from the beginning that the film's only intention is to shock, to turn the stomach, and to make everything (thanks to the mockumentary-style filming and the damaged mini-DV tape) realistic and concrete, but after the first 10 minutes in which we are presented with the "chamber of horror" (Vogel's basement) and the tortured victims who "rot" inside, the film's pace is clear. The actors are not real actors and the budget is missing, so nothing is shown despite the attempt to make as much as possible visible, which makes the film fall into ridicule at some points. The torture scenes or Vogel's "attacks" are mostly censored, and when they are not, we see people fainting from a slap, a blow to the head (with a rubber bat), or blows that clearly miss the target. The torture scenes are then interspersed with very long, useless, and unbearable scenes in which the two roam the city, get a tattoo, go to an amusement park, observe a butcher shop... all this is shown to us without any purpose because the film decides not to follow a precise narrative line (which would have certainly helped the work's rhythm) but is a collage of "daily life" scenes completely independent of each other that aim to show us how the two spend their days without realizing that the viewer couldn't be less bored. However, something unsettling is there; the basement is a real torture chamber and the final scene has its effect, but all this is not enough to make "August Underground" the "most extreme film" ever made, rather we are much closer to a useless film than to an extreme one. In essence, who is "August Underground" recommended to? The answer is absolutely to no one because the only consumers of this film could be lovers of the most realistic and extreme gore and splatter, pity that the strongest and most disturbing scenes are those where prostitutes dance and show their breasts because their appearance is certainly not the most sensual. Avoid it!