Grida Dalla Palude aka Screams From The Swamp. (2022) – Lorenzo Lepori.

Italian indie horror director Lorenzo Lepori graphically presents an indie shocker about a grieving widow Angela (Simona Vanneli), whose desperate attempts to find the truth over the suggested medical malpractice that caused the deaths of her husband and son leads her into a blackened vortex of deranged medical practitioners, perverse thrill-killings, and mind-warping occulted retribution. The visceral opening gambit of a nude & feathered woman, stalked and brutally slain by shotgun skells exults in a thrillingly retrograde/Video nasty scalping, which is entirely apropos, considering Lepori's film is distributed by controversial splatter DVD/VHS trailblazers VIPCO!!!! I've had a yen for gruesome Italian horror since the 80s, and it's certainly edifying to see a young film-maker successfully keeping the lurid legacy of hard-gore Italian horror alive with the bloody, hysteria-laden, supernatural sleaze-fest Grida Dalla Palude.

The film's pacing, robust acting performances, and sound design prove more authentic than the distractingly too-crisp HD video aesthetic, although, the smoke-diffused sequences proved atmospheric. The revenging matriarch motif is a popular trope in art house/ Grindhouse splatter, and Grida Dalla Palude is another mostly credible, albeit, conspicuously low budget addition. The sordidly misogynistic milieu of the hatefully hedonistic hunters proves nastily convincing, culminating in a truly eye-poppingly goofy-gruesome climax. In conclusion, fans of bloody Euro-schlock should be all over this like crooked smiles on a Halloween Pumpkin, and I certainly dug it way more than I expected to, with TV Crimes's driving synth-doom score being a highlight.