October Horror Movie Challenge: Astaroth (2017)

This one came up as a suggested movie on Tubi so I had to check it out.   I have long been fascinated by the Goddess Astarte and her literal demonization to the male demon Astaroth. This movie covers some of that and adds some neat little tidbits as well. 

Astaroth (2017)

The movie is Brazilian and completely in Portuguese.  Thankfully the captions are in English.  Not that it would matter much, it's not a difficult one to follow.

Our stars are three college students living together whose primary interests seem to be tattoos and metal.  There is tattoo artist Dri (Ju Calaf),  guitarist Lia (played by former top Brazilian porn star Monica Mattos), and martial artist Mai.  Dri and Lia meet up with tattoo artist Gregório (Janderson Tucunduva) who has been communing with the demon Astaroth (also played by Mattos).

Gregório has been tattooing sigils on to people so Astaroth can claim them.  Once she has enough she can come into the mortal world.

All in all not a bad premise.  The movie feels like an American horror movie circa 1995, only a lot less sex and nudity if you can believe that.  The movie doesn't really get going until the half-way mark. 

Eventually, Lia gets possessed by Astaroth kills Dri, but not before Mai can find out.  Mai figures out what Astaroth is and kills Gregório and the possessed Lia to send Astaroth to hell.

The movie is quite obsessed with metal with the bands getting top billing right after the actresses. Not a bad thing really; demons, metal, horror, it all fits together.  The trouble is sometimes it comes across as an 80s training video.  If it had been made in the 80s there would have been a larger body count and at least one song by Dokken.

It wasn't a bad flick really, it just had the feel of some people doing this on a budget and they got all their friends over to do it. 

October 2021
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