No Tears in Hell: Chilling cruelty of the north
No Tears in Hell is where cruelty is sharpened to a blade. This film that does not merely depict monstrosity, but invites you to sit at the monster’s table. Come taste the rancid decay of familial devotion, and flesh devoured in the frozen void.
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From the outset, No Tears in Hell positions itself as a horror true-crime hybrid, forged from fact and fiction. The film, directed and co-written by Michael Caissie. Inspired by the crimes of Russian serial killer Alexander Spesivtsev, the “Siberian Ripper”. But this cold and dreaded hell is the frozen Alaskan terrain, where isolation warps reality. The killer’s filial devotion mutates into carnivorous compulsion.
The narrative centers on Alex (Luke Baines) and his mother (Gwen Van Dam). Together they transform their residence into a drawing board of nightmares. Putting food on their table by luring victims from homeless camps. The fresh kills are then cooked for a grotesque communion. Their twisted pact is disrupted when Alex kidnaps two college students. His rebellion pushes his boundaries of cruelty.
Performance is uneven, but there are moments of electricity. Luke Baines embodies Alex with a hollow charisma, a man whose voice is quieter than his horrors. He becomes more terrifying when silent. Gwen Van Dam’s mother is less a fleshed character than an extension of Alex’s appetite—her maternal love turned grotesque. Tatjana Marjanovic, as one of the kidnapped students, brings emotional weight in the few scenes she is allowed to survive.
Yet as Miller always understood, horror is a mirror. No Tears in Hell forces you to gaze at yourself asking: how close are we to monsters, how thin the membrane? The film flirts with obsession, complicity, and the ritual of destruction disguised as necessity. It refuses comforting distance. It wants you in its belly, tasting the rot.
Nevertheless, No Tears in Hell stands as a fierce, unforgiving beast in the horror landscape. It won’t appeal to the squeamish, the casual viewer, or those who demand redemption. But for those willing to descend, it offers a brutal confrontation with the human underbelly. The hell where love becomes hunger, and silence is cruelty.
Also showing ‘The Vampire Journals’
