Road 2 Revenge

The third chapter, and fourth film in the Larvae Girl franchise, Road 2 Revenge rips your heart out with a tight emotional core and a shocking final act twist.
Larvae Girl returns for another somewhat convincing adventure in the helmet, and you can feel the joy of the filmmakers in the nipple torture sequence.
Tightly cut montages serve the pace beautifully; new locations every 20 seconds, plus medium bending animated segments.
This movie is as relentless as Larvae Girl herself.

This film STINKS!...in the best way possible.
I always love the kinetic energy of these films, especially in the camera moves and in the edit, leaving no wasted space on the timeline. Despite it looking very chaotic on the surface, if you look a little deeper you can see so many great intentional creative choices being made. I've been doing 48 hours for a long time now and I feel like this style of fast-paced filmmaking has gone way underappreciated for too long.

The constant drive to make a real event out of seeing them at the heats is always a highlight of the 48 hours in Christchurch. Please keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible every year!

Heartbreaking! Both that I missed the live heat and the ending!
I am inconsolable!!!!

Herms Heroes never disappoint! This year Live Heat with "Smell-O-Vison" The scents were delicious! The 48Hrs crowd loves ya, and it was the best thunder of applause and appreciation!
You guys are a real poster child for why it is so much better watching live with a bunch of film fans, rather than staying home! How do you do those cool comic book effects!??
I am sorry for Lavae-Girl, nearly had her happy ending. Oh, but will she be back somehow? we must wait....

I love Hermes Heroes dedication to the cinematic experience! Making the medium of the competition itself as much part of the creativity as actually making the film. The smell-o-vision was absolutely inspired!!

I misspelled your team name in my review, terribly sorry 💔

Looks like Herm’s Heroes were able to secure a big marquee name for this film — the Labour candidate for Ilam. I’m a sensible Kiwi who wants to a) get NZ back on track b) get a “back pocket boost” of $20 a week sorry I mean a fortnight and c) make available a “digital nomad visa” to encourage innovation and grow the pie, so far that reason I will be voting for another film. Didn’t understand the plot of this but I am 40+.

BACK AT IT AGAIN. How cool to see this universe carry on. Can we just continue this series every year till the comp finishes or these guys get funded for a feature?

Their previous offerings were a highlight of the comp IMO and carrying on the story is appreciated. Campy films don't always land but this team lean so far into the Gonzo they not only hit the target - they take the target, turn it into a character, make the character an essential part of their story before taking it and propelling it into the sun to make the sun explode in a crescendo of ridiculousness. GIVE ME MORE!!!!

What I liked:
The usual crazy madness from Herms Heroes, and my favourite, Larvae Girl, is back, executing bloody revenge for the murder of her recently wed groom. How do you always manage to pull the perfect genre? Although I don’t think it would matter one iota! Superb lighting, editing and camerawork. So much coverage to work with, great costuming and OTT performances make this enjoyable from start to finish. Appreciated the early gift of the “scratch-n-sniff” card (you’re always so inventive) but must admit I’ve left it untouched – might be worth something one day!

Take it or leave it:
I was so happy to see Larvae Girl die! I imagine though, you have plans for her to return as a ghost or fight God or something in the future. There’s, of course, not a lot of deep storytelling in this, but it doesn’t need it – it’s the road to revenge, and you need plenty of killing that works its way up classically to the big boss, also classically named Judgy McJudgeFace. I’m not going to tell you to do anything different.

Final hot air:
Buddy, you really are such a good guy and I really, really do love your 48hr craziness despite my occasional bitterness. It’s classic envy, man. I also think this is your 100% best Larvae Girl film in the series. Great job, and I hope you get plenty of love at the finals – which I expect you to make!

Reading through these reviews, I'm reminded of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional legend who rebelled against his creator, for he could not be bound by the chains of death. Just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried for eight long years to hold his creation within the grave, but ultimately failed, one can't help but wonder if the legendary Larvae Girl is destined for resurrection by the baying of her loyal 48Hours fans.

It's impressive how much Herms Heroes (from the creators of Hindsight Productions) can cram into a five-minute film. So much action. So much drama. So much spectacle. So much colour. So much ethereal aura. So many characters and locations. So much cringing at gore and broken bones. Too much purity. Just enough haunting opera. And almost enough pretty hand-drawn animations that embody Larvae Girl's true superpower: retro analogue vibes.

My favourite line of the competition this year is "Revenge me!" because of course Tony Chestnut isn't educated enough to swap out the noun for the verb, and of course I'm enough of a snob to mock him for his dying words. But what a delight it was to see our beloved Tony on the big screen, and what a shock to see him shot so soon!

48Hours is getting so meta and I love it. So many in-jokes. I'm 200% behind you Larvae Girl. It isn't self-indulgent to serve your community!

This film (or a prototype) could have benefited from a bit of what we in the survey industry call cognitive testing. In other industries it's called user experience testing. And in the film industry it's called a test audience. Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to with all this wankery is… I'm not very observant and so I didn't scratch my sniff card when I was meant to. When Tony Chestnut was wafting doughnuts and colas under his nose, I was thinking "Hmm, this would be a good time to have the audience scratch their sniff cards, but I can't see any numbers on the screen so I'm going to stubbornly keep watching the action." Minutes later, when I finally saw a number at the bottom-left of the screen, I thought "Hmm, unusual choice not to start the counting at 1." Towards the end, when 2 appeared for what I thought was the first time, I thought "These numbers are all over the place!" And when the film ended, I thought "Weird, I never got to scratch number 1." So for dolts in the audience like me, the number needed to be bigger, flashier, animated, in the middle of the screen, or accompanied by a narrator yelling out the number with the hyper-masculine hyper-American energy of a WWE commentator.

I leave it with you, oh mighty Herms Heroes, to decide whether to heed Conan Doyle's advice: "my literary energies should not be directed too much into one channel" and "If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one."

Long may flashy camp crowd-pleasing 48Hours films continue!

First off - banger of a team intro. I’d love a tutorial on how you got those amazing CRT graphics sometime.

Secondly, I was beside myself that I couldn’t attend the Wednesday heat to smell this film. Therefore, my review will be covering merely two of the three senses offered by this cinematic delight.

Opening up with a glorious haze of halation I can’t help but imagine a chip commercial on Days of our Lives. It’s a dreamy world we’re in and surely nothing could destroy the tranquility of this moment for the audience. Larvae Girl has found her one and only and that’s all I need.

But this moment of bliss is soon interrupted by one of the most lo-fi gunshot sounds still on the internet (was it recorded in an elevator shaft?) and delivered at a level Nolan himself would be proud of. Tony is dead and the film begins in earnest. Larvae Girl pleads to an omnipotent presence (a canny foreshadowing perhaps?), questioning “why does this keep happening to me?” - a hilarious line and pitch-perfect performance from Rata.

What follows is an absolutely beautiful cut montage (guided by a man inexplicably from Boston?) that serves as a kind of retrospective trailer, catching us up on what we may have missed in previous films. It serves this film particularly well to give an emotional heartbeat to an otherwise absolutely ridiculous story. The montage ends with another murder and day-glo blood splatter. The film begins in earnest.

I absolutely love how balls-to-the-wall is in everything that follows. It’s the most maximalist approach to film making I’ve seen in this competition. Never too many crash zooms. The fact that you made a stuffed mannequin body to dump off the fine arts’ air bridge, only to show it for *checks notes* 1 second is so unbelievably commendable.

More crash zooms! Blood spatter on the lens - either achieved digitally or with some perspex held in front - is just another fleeting example of the wonderful attention to detail here.

The action is interrupted by a memory sequence of Tony offering up a delicious muffin. This is clearly less about driving the plot forward and more of a nod to the audience, that had Tony not died from a gunshot, cholesterol would have gotten him eventually. Larvae Girl smiles and we know all is well. Side note - these scenes really remind me of the Chubbs dream sequences in Happy Gilmore.

As Larvae Girl removes the antagonist’s eye, we return once more to Tony who exclaims he “loves a popped corn” - In my humble opinion this was a missed opportunity to say “popped cornea" - but too late now.

“My booooones, you’re breaking my boons” will almost certainly win best line delivery.

Tony likes cheese. Good lord, what did Larvae Girl ever see in this feeble glutton?

Herms Heroes, like so many teams this year decide to preempt their rumour with “I’ve heard a rumour” just incase the audience need some handholding. I’ll allow it. It’s followed by a spectacular whip pan/match cut which is my favourite moment in an already spectacular edit (one that will surely take out the editing award).

Larvae Girl confronts Judgey McJudge Face, who is also of some unspecified North American descent, and has me questioning where in fact this world is set. Has there been a plague of US criminals upon Christchurch? Or has she been in The States all this time? It’s a delicious mystery. Tony would relish its deliciousness.

One final fight, some inspired scratch animation, and Larvae Girl is dead. Never a team to be overly sentimental, we learn this is fact by an on-screen caption. She’s gone to heaven, meeting the very omnipotent presence she pleaded with earlier. Much like Tony’s doughnut, Larva’s girl’s story has come full circle.

I have nothing more to add. It’s a masterwork. Can’t wait to see, and finally smell, this on the big screen.

Just as Larvae Girl is ready to move onto a new phase of her life, a tragic, unforeseen murder pulls her back into her old vigilante ways.

You wild humans! I have no notes, y’all have DONE IT AGAIN! Pushing the envelope further on what viewing a film ought to be! I heard rumours of smellovision, but never believed it could be done, until now!

In all seriousness, y’all have your niche and boy howdy do you all hit it on point every time! Any kind of feedback I could give here would be redundant, all I can say is you do you do boo with the utmost respect for your craft. Also, was epic seeing renowned king of Ōtautahi Tony Chestnut making his Larvae Girl saga debut (and sudden untimely demise).
Although I must admit, with four films under her belt, and Larvae Girl’s seeming death marking the end of her saga, I am quite intrigued to see what’s next for Herms Heroes! Does this finale invite a new saga of wild, literal explosive driven action that only Herms Heroes can provide? We wait with baited anticipation, some popcorn, and a lil yaas finger clicking in the corner!