Reviewing the Nightmares Unveiled in Matti Soikkeli’s Bloodstained Canvas of Short Films from TerrorVisions!
Our first experience with Matti Soikkeli recently happened whilst reviewing Dark Mix Tape (see review of Dark Mix Tape here) and we promised to check his short film compilation, available via Rob Ceus’s Terrorvisions Productions label. Matti creates, with minimal colour, nasty snapshots of a reality many seldom witness. His specialty is crime plus brutal murder, however now and then something different will slip in. He was also part of the Nekrology anthology I reviewed back in 2022 (see review of Nekrology here).
All the Debts, filmed in 2019 opens this compilation and it’s a mellow short (compared to what is coming) shot in black and white, as a hard looking lad snorts off a Jackie Brown DVD case. He’s pure thug life, on the phone organising stuff. He waits a minute or so and is picked up by a fellow debt collector who is new to the career. My Partner in Gore, Willow, and I noted the cool dark synth like tunes on the soundtrack.
It’s a ‘do’s and don’ts’ of collection as the new guy is talked through various methods. They mainly collect from junkies, but this can be a dangerous profession, as we see…
All the Debts has minimum violence, but it happens slickly. Matti (who plays a drug addict) has scripted this well enough; everyone acts naturally and there’s a heavy atmosphere.
Next up we have a colour short, Get Out Sam, and this changes things. An urban explorer, Sam, wanders through a huge, abandoned building. Weird things occur early on, beginning with an almost subliminal flash of a baby photo. The further he goes, the creepier things get.
“I fucking love that!” applauded Willow afterwards. This is our thing, we both urban explore, in fact, each of our short films feature a derelict building or some kind. This is like Matti’s quick blast version of Grave Encounters (my favourite found footage movie ever – I’m not kidding!)
“You’re so fucking beautiful!” reads the subtitles as a bloke in a skin mask stares into a mirror. Then he abuses himself for a while as slow doom metal plays, and slow-motion moments of a skull assaults the screen. Welcome to Melody of Madness, the title written in old school Death Metal style spider letters. Finland is such a bleak harrowing country if you use these films as a guide.
A hitchhiker is picked up along a wooded road. The traveller is then stripped nude and murdered with his cock on show. There’s a Henry Lee Lucas paperback nearby on a table. The killer drills into his victim’s cranium then buggers him in the back garden. What follows is more gleefully executed mutilations. This is a six-minute beautiful mind fuck.
Blood for Blood is like a longer remake of All the Debts. They were both created the same year, so I have no idea what order they emerged. It has added racist slang and a father dealing drugs to support his child until he’s robbed by Nazis. There are many regulars in this. Matti returns as well. Blood for Blood isn’t great. It drags its knuckles until the inevitable gory climax. It switches from colour to black and white multiple times which annoyed me. There is a very cool Jim Van Bebber, My Sweet Satan style head stomping tribute though.
Footage of Bundy and Dalmer arrives along with a neat quotation. Matti and his crew deliver an artsy piece showing kids drawings of murder, a scary doll, plus a voiceover of a killer. One of the Nazis from the previous segment is tied up, being suffocated by a masked fiend wearing a Deadbeat at Dawn t-shirt. Hey, I guess the head stomping was a tribute.
There’s a nude woman in the bathroom. A bloody inverted cross is on the wall. The killer totally mutilates her cadaver. What does it mean? Who fucking cares? Last Confession is an all-out brutal assault on the senses. It’s different, extreme, and out of control!
If you think you’ve seen it all, think again! It’s hard to describe stuff in written form without a visual aid, but please trust us, what comes next is truly intense and deep. A masked guy stabs pictures of porno models whilst flashes of nude women hit the viewer. We cut to a girl using a skull to help her masturbate (Willow fell in love with the Burzum t-shirt she wore so she ordered one immediately). There’s a lot of classic old school Black Metal haunting Matti’s catalogue of craziness.
I recognised the same leg tattoo that the dead girl had in the last short. Just about everyone who appears pulls more duties in other segments throughout. Fucking hell, this is a nuclear holocaust of rage, guilt, and nasty shit!
I’ll skip the short Death Tape which appeared in Dark Mix Tape as I spoke about it there — all its abuse, torture, and violations, then there’s a handful more shorts in the collection before the crowning finale, You Die! We both figured that it’s a retelling of Mayhem’s original vocalist, Dead’s final moments but as a female. Dunno, may be incorrect on this yet it all fell into place.
As a whole this is a maelstrom of unthinkable violence with Black Metal influences. Rough and rugged, filled with gore, drugs, guns, eyeball abuse, action, suicides, metal, Hitler, and much more. There are nihilistic dark visions of suffering from start to finish.
TerrorVisions put the DVD out really basic with no extras and not really a menu other than click pics of the shorts to enter them. It’s a DVD-R yet well worth the money. Matti and his gang honestly are a talented bunch of merry murderers.
Here’s a link to Rob Ceus and a way to buy this whilst his website is getting built: facebook.com/rob.ceus.56, instagram.com/robceus
Directed by: Matti Soikkeli, Jani Laakso
Written by: Matti Soikkeli, Jani Laakso
Produced by: Matti Soikkeli, Ekka Beijar
Edited by: Matti Soikkeli
Special Effects by: Matti Soikkeli
Music by: Samuel Laukkanen
Cast: Matti Soikkeli, Ville Rajakangas, Ekka Beijar, Sonja Hadjiiski, Juuso Ranta, Mikko Latvala, Romeo Soikkeli, Jemina Maenpaa,
Year: 2019-2021
Language: Finnish (English Subtitles)
Colour: Colour, Black & White
Runtime: 46min
Distribution: Terrorvisions Productions
