Giving the job of assassinating a couple in their hotel room, contract killer Frank Zimosa finds himself fighting for his life in a maze-like building filled with demons. Yeah, it's kind of like a first-person shooter, except that it's an Italian movie literally overloaded with gristle, gore and all manner of gross-out violence. Welcome to Hotel Inferno.

Director and writer Giulio De Santi has made three sequels to this movie with three more n the way. He's also the founder and president of Necrostorm, a multimedia company that produces and distributes movies, games, cartoons, comics, music and merch, often serving as each production's writer, director, art director, lead animator, digital effects director, producer and editor.

It soon turns out that everyone in the building is a killer and they're all here to be offered as a sacrifice, as has been done for hundreds of years. Except that Frank thinks that he can beat the devil.

This came out three years before Hardcore Harry tried the same trick and has about a hundredth of that movie's budget (and voice acting ability). That said, the scene where the occultist covered in flies writes the spells on a wall approaches near murderdrone levels in its movie drug intensity. This is definitely a movie that you should at least watch for a few minutes, as it's a pretty insane way to make a movie.

This 2013 movie titled "Hotel Inferno" definitely was something else. It was unique, to say the least.

I hadn't heard about it prior to now in 2021, as I had the opportunity to sit down and watch it. So I wasn't sure what to expect from the movie, though I can't really claim that I was overly thrilled about reading that the movie was filmed in first person point of view.

But still, it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, so of course I sat down to watch it. Especially since I am a big fan of horror movies, and I must admit that the movie's cover was actually sort of interesting.

While the 2013 movie from writer and director Giulio De Santi was watchable and something else in comparison to many other movies, then I just had a hard time really getting into the movie. Why? Well, I suppose it was the first person point of view, mixed with a fairly bland storyline and rather dubious special effects.

Sure, the movie had the heart and spirit in the right place, but the execution - pardon the pun - of the movie's transition from script to screen just didn't really manage to impress me.

There is a good amount of blood and gore in "Hotel Inferno", but sadly the special effects were not overly impressive, and definitely hadn't the feel or look to it for a movie made in 2013. Nay, it felt more like a low budget movie from the early 1990s.

For a horror movie then "Hotel Inferno" was just somewhat of a bland experience. This is not really a movie that I would put on top of the to-watch-list, as there are far better movies out there that would provide you with an abundance more enjoyment and entertainment.

My rating of "Hotel Inferno" lands on a bland five out out ten stars. The movie was watchable, and definitely had some interesting aspects to it, but ultimately writer and director Giulio De Santi just didn't deliver something outstanding here.

Undertaking a mission for a client, a hitman starts to become worried about the logistics of what's going on and starts to back out, forcing his employer to spring a trap on him where he soon is encountered by a string of merciless beings and enemies out to kill him any way they can.

This was a fairly enjoyable and creative effort. The fact that this one is shot in a point-of-view manner is the best asset for this one, making for a much different and unique experience than expected. Utterly forced on principle to be up-close and personal to the proceedings as the filmmaking tactics demand the actor be a central figure to what's happening around him and it results in a chilling setup to play out. As the confrontations and various situations presented here offer a near video-game experience with the way they focus on interacting here, it develops an immediacy to the action that becomes quite immersive as time goes on. That becomes evident in the film's hallmark where it's all about the gore and brutality as it goes along. The fact that the gore is a fine mix of over-the-top practical splatter and CGI enhancements creates a fine atmosphere of extreme and graphic bloodshed, ranging from having skulls ripped open, limbs being blasted off, decapitations, stabbings, impalements and getting their fingers smashed with a massive hammer among much more barbaric sequences. The constant nature of this bloodshed manages to offer up the kind of blood-drenched atmosphere that's immensely appealing, which goes alongside all the fine make-up on the creatures to give the film a lot to like. There are some big issues with this one. The main issue is the over-the-top nature of the shooting style wearing thin quite easily. The jumpiness of the transitions here imitates a video game on autopilot where it focuses on intense action for a brief moment only to have someone off-screen explain what's going on or make vague threats about what's to come. The need to constantly turn around and look at everything going on merely to showcase what's happening in unnatural moments is a comical overstatement and readily makes for a cheesy time here. Given the fact that it's all the way through the film, this can be a little much and brings it down somewhat.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence and Extreme Graphic Language.