WFG RATING: A

Scatena and Rosner Films presents a Bulldog Brothers Entertainment/Tadross Media Group production. Written and directed by Michael Caissie. Produced by Michael Caissie and Bernard Salzmann. Story by Alexander Nistratov. Cinematography by Gevorg Gev Juguryan. Edited by Brady Hallongren. 

Stars Luke Baines, Gwen Van Dam, Tatjana Marjanovic, Audrey Neal, Gabriella Westwood, Jamil Khan, Jake Marlow, and Mark Wilson. 

This horror film inspired by the true crime of one of Russia’s most notorious serial killers has amazing performances from the two leads. 

In the winter of Alaska, the homeless population is rampant in a small area. Alex lives in one of the nearby apartments. He hacks goods to sell for minimal profit to some of the vagrants. However, he does have a really dark secret. When he invites two of the vagrants to his apartment, he brutally kills them. Complicating things is his mother, who not only enables the killings but helps him dismember them and to hide the corpses, cooks and eats them.

When a fellow vagrant appears to have suspicions about Alex, he warns a young woman not to go to his apartment for food and warmth. She ignores him and goes there, where Alex proceeds to torture and kill her. His mother also gets involved when she invites a young woman to the apartment earlier. However, things slowly start to unravel when two more young women looking for beer are greeted by Alex’s mother and are welcomed into the apartment. 

This film written and directed by Michael Caissie is quite a tale of murder, cannibalism, enabling, and something far worse all wrapped up in a package. The story itself is based on the life of Alexander Spesivtsev, who in the 1990s, was believed to be responsible the deaths of eighty people along with his mother, who enabled the murders thanks to a traumatic past. Spesivtsev’s mother was released after a 13-year prison sentence while the man known as the “Siberian Ripper” remains in a mental institution to this day. 

Luke Baines gives an amazing performance as Alex, based on Spesivtsev. He brings a bit of charm before amping up the Norman Bates vibes and unleashes a barrage of death. We hear him narrating his morbid tale from being bullied as a child to spending a few years at an asylum in his late teens where he endured something so insane that it has to be seen to believe. He’s a combination of Jack the Ripper and Jeffrey Dahmer where we even hear him talk about the human flesh and its uses in terms of food. 

In one of her final performances before her death in 2024, Gwen Van Dam is the other highlight of the film as Alex’s enabling mother. We get glimpses of her past as well as she too has endured abuse, becoming the trigger to protect Alex no matter what. After all, “a mother has to protect her son”. And she does just that, helping him dismember and cook the bodies in their borscht, a Russian stew. It’s pretty traumatizing at times to witness the mayhem, but gorehounds will surely enjoy the kills and dismemberment scenes, which are at times brutally graphic, especially after Alex does the unthinkable before dismembering them. 

No Tears in Hell is a top notch film based on an actual serial killer. While horror fans will be pleased with the violence, it is Luke Baines and Gwen Van Dam’s performances as the son and mother killers that are the real reason to see this film! 

The film hits VOD and Digital today (August 12)