“AS long as there are kids who are pissed off and have no real way in venting out that anger, heavy metal will live on.”
Ozzy Osbourne was spot on about the longevity of the hard-hitting genre, with every flavour from death metal to speed metal and thrash metal now available to tickle teenagers’ fancy if they’re vexed enough, and vexed they usually are.
New to Shudder, Invoking Yell tells the story of three twenty-something metalheads who venture into the deep dark woods to shoot a demo tape for their black metal band.
Directed by Patricio Valladares, this Chilean found footage film is a love letter to this extreme sub-genre known for fusing elements of black metal and death metal. If bands like Darkthrone, Emperor and Mayhem float your boat, then Invoking Yell is right up your canal.
Coming off like a cross between Metal Lords and The Blair Witch Project, this tongue-in-cheek oddity pokes lots of fun at all the long-haired ‘too posh to mosh’ posturing of metal fans, while also building to nerve-wracking and ghastly moments of real horror.
By combining elements of occult rituals, supernatural phenomena and giddy violence, Invoking Yell creates a truly creepy and discombobulating atmosphere that kept me on edge as night drew in around Chile’s only all-female black metal band.
Set in the 1990s, the film follows Tania (Macarena Carrere), Andrea (María Jesús Marcone), and Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich), who head into the woods to record a demo for their black metal band, Invoking Yell.
The girls use psychophonies, known as electronic voice phenomena (EVP), a process that records spirits on various devices, to perfectly portray agony and suffering in their music.
As the three women delve deeper into the dark arts, they lose themselves in a nightmarish realm of bloodshed and devils. The film’s ending, while unhinged and cacophonous, definitely leaves an indelible mark.
(4/5)
