By Jonathan Weichsel, MoreHorror.com
Wonderland is a stylish, hallucinatory science fiction/fantasy horror film from Brandon Slagle and Devanny Pinn, the team that brought you last year’s The Black Dahlia Haunting. With images that range from gritty to glossy, a look inspired by cyber punk, and a script full of Goth poetry, this is a film that is sure to leave an impact.
Brandon Slagle plays The Man of Sin, a serial killer who suffers from a bad case of ennui. The Man of Sin just doesn’t get off on killing anymore. The sensation isn’t enough for him, so he seeks out a new high in a drug called wonderland, which allows him to go inside other people’s consciousness and live in their dreams, where he eventually kills them so he can experience what it feels like when they die.
But even this isn’t enough for The Man of Sin, so he begs his dealer to let him execute a double kill of the two most depressed people she can find, so that he can not only experience their deaths, but experience their emotional pain as well. His two chosen victims are Rosa, a cocaine addict played with surprising vulnerability by Devanny Pinn, and Ethan, a suicidal office worker.
What follows is an intense thrill ride as The Man of Sin chases these two depressed, lost souls through a surreal, emotionally charged dreamscape version of a future Los Angeles, a dangerous land as mutable and ever changing as the world created by Lewis Carol that gives the film its name, and as menacing and frightening as any nightmare.
Slagle’s performance as The Man of Sin is creepy in a way that gets under your skin, and you can tell that The Man of Sin gets a perverse thrill from hunting his victims. Normally he comes across as a junky chasing a high, but when he hunts Rosa his predatory instincts become almost sexual in nature.
Wonderland is a stylish, exciting film full of action, thrills, cool fights, and surreal, dreamlike imagery. It is an experimental film, but one that resonates on an emotional level. It is dark and brooding, but at times bursts with nightmarish colors and features some of the most imaginative production design I’ve seen in an indie film. It’s also a deep film, one that doesn’t provide easy answers and allows for multiple interpretations. This is one that you are not going to want to miss.
Visit the IMDB page here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1735233/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3