Every so often, a movie comes along that makes you question your life choices, your faith in humanity, and whether bleach can in fact be poured directly into your brain. August Underground’s Mordum is that movie. It’s not just bad—it’s a catastrophic middle finger to storytelling, filmmaking, and basic hygiene. Marketed as a faux-snuff film designed to shock, it instead plays like an extended VHS tape found in the world’s worst frat house—if the frat brothers were serial-killing meth goblins with a camcorder from RadioShack.
So grab a bucket, some Tums, and maybe a priest. Let’s wade into this swamp of despair.
“Plot” Is Too Generous a Word
Calling this thing a plot is like calling a clogged toilet a water feature. The setup is essentially: Peter (Fred Vogel), his girlfriend Crusty (Cristie Whiles), and her brother Maggot (Michael Todd Schneider) wander around, killing people, having grotesque sex, and arguing like Jerry Springer rejects who fell into a pit of raw sewage.
The film kicks off with Peter walking in on Crusty and Maggot doing things that Freud wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. This somehow leads to Crusty smashing herself with glass until she bleeds, which Peter finds sexy, because apparently that’s their version of foreplay. From there, we’re dragged through a series of disconnected atrocities: hammer murders, rape, vomit-as-lube, genital mutilation, necrophilia, incest, and at least three screaming matches that feel like they were improvised by people who couldn’t make the cut for Jerry Maguire.
It’s less of a narrative and more of a checklist: “Did we film someone vomiting into a corpse yet? Check. Did we get the shot of Maggot shaving himself in the bathroom while whispering ‘beautiful’? Check. Okay, now let’s drag this bloated corpse of a movie another twenty minutes.”
Amateur Hour with a Side of Hepatitis
I get that the movie is supposed to look amateur, to give it that “snuff film” authenticity. But here’s the thing: bad cinematography doesn’t make your horror movie scary—it just makes it look like a failed student project shot in someone’s moldy basement. Every frame is a grainy, shaky mess. The sound design is so atrocious you half expect the boom mic operator to give up and start screaming, “Can you PLEASE speak into the mic while you commit sexualized murder?”
Instead of creating tension, the “raw” camerawork feels like watching your cousin’s vacation tape, if your cousin was vacationing in Hell’s septic tank.
The Cast: Theater of the Unhinged
Let’s talk performances. “Performances” being used loosely here, because everyone onscreen is either:
-
Screaming obscenities like a rejected WWE promo,
-
Giggling like they just huffed paint, or
-
Throwing up on each other.
Fred Vogel (also the director) as Peter radiates all the charisma of a drunk guy explaining crypto at a dive bar. Cristie Whiles as Crusty—her name alone is an OSHA violation—spends the film cutting herself, vomiting, or cheering on rape like she’s emceeing a demolition derby. And Michael Todd Schneider as Maggot… well, he’s essentially the spiritual mascot of this movie: sweaty, incoherent, and about as appealing as an open wound in August.
The dynamic between the three is less “terrifying murder cult” and more “three roommates in a Craigslist ad that forgot to mention they’re cannibal incest fetishists.”
Gore, Vomit, and More Vomit
If you’re into gore, you might think this film has something to offer—until you realize most of it is just smeared ketchup, rubber parts, and gallons of puke. So much puke. Crusty vomits on victims. Maggot vomits during sex. I vomited trying to get through the movie. It’s less horror, more endurance test.
The infamous vomit torture scene, where Crusty repeatedly pukes on two bound women while everyone else masturbates in the corner, is not shocking, not terrifying—it’s just sad. Like watching someone’s fetish tape accidentally submitted to Netflix. The effect isn’t “realism” but “food poisoning.”
The Special Effects (aka Dollar Store Carnage)
The gore effects look like they were purchased from the clearance bin of a Halloween store five minutes before closing. The penectomy scene (yes, they force a man to cut off his penis with cuticle scissors—subtle, right?) is filmed with such clumsy editing it’s more laughable than horrifying. It’s like the director thought: “We don’t need realism. We’ve got screaming and bad lighting!”
Honestly, if you want more convincing gore, just watch a toddler spill spaghetti on the carpet.
Pacing: Six Hours of Misery in Ninety Minutes
Somehow, despite being only 77 minutes, Mordum feels like it lasts longer than the Cold War. Scenes drag on forever—ten straight minutes of people wandering around, yelling at each other, or shoving the camera into a rotting corpse’s face. If the intent was to make the viewer feel trapped, congratulations: I’ve never wanted to claw my way out of a movie faster.
The “Message” (Spoiler: There Isn’t One)
Some apologists argue that Mordum is “commentary” on voyeurism, violence, and desensitization. Please. That’s like saying eating Tide Pods is a commentary on consumer culture. The film has no message. It has no subtext. It barely has text. It’s a sloppy collage of shock-for-shock’s-sake, masquerading as art when it’s really just a dare: “How long can you watch before you hit eject?”
The only statement Mordum makes is that Toetag Pictures had access to a camera, a few buckets of fake blood, and zero adult supervision.
The Ending (Mercifully)
Eventually, after endless scenes of degradation, the trio fights among themselves, and Maggot apparently slits his own throat. Crusty screams, Peter looks confused, and the film limps to an ending with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Then, just to really rub salt in your already bleeding eyeballs, the post-credit scene is a cat eating a mouse. Get it? Because subtle symbolism is for cowards.
Final Verdict
August Underground’s Mordum is not a horror film—it’s a hazing ritual. It’s what you’d get if you let a group of maladjusted teenagers film their worst impulses after watching Faces of Death on repeat. It’s vile, yes—but not in a way that challenges or unsettles. It’s vile in the way of spoiled milk: gross, pointless, and guaranteed to ruin your night.
If you’re looking for scares, tension, or even coherence, look elsewhere. If you’re looking to impress your friends by showing them “the most messed-up movie ever,” sure—this will do. But know this: the only thing more disturbing than watching Mordum is realizing that someone made it and thought, “Yes, this is cinema.”
