PopHorror Let's Get Scared
How far would you go to save your child? Most parents would be willing to go to the ends of the earth, although arguably not as far as Leo, the protagonist of Luke Ramer’s indie horror film, The Taxidermist.
Synopsis:
Leo is a struggling artist, who falls upon hard times. In an attempt to save his daughter, he agrees to take job doing human taxidermy. However, things aren’t as they seem and Leo soon finds himself descending into a nightmarish world.
The Taxidermist is the latest film from writer/director Luke Ramer (Under The Rainbow 2015, The White Faced Man 2014) and West 2nd Productions. The film stars Brian DiBonaventure (Under the Rainbow 2015), Ruby Larocca (Sociopathia 2015), Chris Ligrest, Wendy Ramer, and Reagan Ray Renee.
The plot follows father and husband Leo who happens to be the best taxidermist in town. Leo’s world is shaken up when his daughter is diagnosed with cancer and he can’t afford her treatments. Help arrives in the form of a man who offers him cash for a morbid request: mounting and stuffing his wife. Soon, Leo is thrust into the world of human taxidermy, a ghastly and nightmarish place where nothing is as it seems.
Everyone can relate to hard times, getting behind on bills, and encountering medical issues that they can’t afford. In The Taxidermist, Leo and his wife are already struggling with bills, especially after a recent move that has robbed him of the majority of his taxidermy clientele. The couple start to drift apart… and then things take a turn for the worst. Their daughter is diagnosed with cancer. Help arrives in the form of a man who offers Leo a massive chunk of money in exchange for stuffing and mounting his wife. Leo struggles with this but eventually gives in, all for the sake of his daughter. He is a man whose heart is very much in the right place. He wants to do right by his family. His relationship with his wife may be a lost cause, but he’ll be damned if he loses his daughter, too. Once he agrees to do the job, things take a turn for the weird and nefarious.
Brian DiBonaventure does a wonderful job portraying Leo’s various sides: Loving father, neglectful husband, and the way he changes as the movie goes on. I wasn’t expecting Ruby Larocca to have much to do considering she is basically playing a corpse, but she gets to be involved in some genuinely unsettling moments as Leo’s sanity starts to fracture.
The Taxidermist is a dark and fucked up movie. Human taxidermy on its own is already a pretty messed up subject (helped greatly by truly nauseating and unsettling effects), but when you add in the fact that the bodies are arriving still warm, it takes things to a whole new level. Where are these bodies coming from? How are they picked? Is it voluntary? What is their ultimate purpose? Most of this won’t be answered before the film’s over, but that doesn’t matter. This is Leo’s journey. It’s about him coming to terms with the things he does and the darkness it brings out in him that has been hiding under the surface all along. Trust me, by the end of the movie, the once sympathetic Leo is a real bastard. The final scene is one of the most fucked up endings I have seen in indie horror, right of there with Billy Pon’s Circus of the Dead (read our review here).
Final Thoughts
The Taxidermist is a dark and gory indie horror film that will fuck up your state of mind with its utterly bleak final scene. This is the type of film that, once viewed, is impossible to shake. Highly recommended.
