Kazakh filmmaker Serik Beyeu, an editor turned director, demonstrates one clear talent in his latest film. He’s very good at persuading actresses and extras to take their shirts off.

“Succubus,” a supernatural thriller re-titled “The Demoness” for video distribution, is a show reel of nudity and horror sex, of looped, disembodied voices reading lines from a “doesn’t really understand English” translation of a screenplay that was already bad at plot, suspense, action, character and dialogue.

“Find your partner. Only together you’ll be able to get out.”

It’s all rather apalling, with or without shirts.

There’s this island with a fir tree plantation and an exclusive “retreat” where monied couples go to face their truth and heal their relationships.

Well, they call it a “retreat.” It’s run by a staff of martinets in robes and masks, with a disembodied voice/leader and note cards handed out to the couples in “exercises” designed to make them deal with each other and their “truths.”

Characters helicopter in and after encounter group “truth” sessions find themselves in a forest labyrinth hallucinating scenarios — usually sexual — in a mirror that reveals their “true” passions.

Monstrous forest creatures with arms like limbs of trees grasp them as they switch partners, cheat and refuse to acknowledge the peril they’re obviously in because they’re too busy stripping and getting busy, visiting topless dancer clubs and the like.

“Take me to the MANAGER!”

An ethnographer (Angelina Pahomova, although who knows who dubbed her lines) is there to hunt for a missing sister, and perhaps “discover” the source of this island’s demon myths.

The demoness (Nino Ninidze) reveals herself in a ritual sacrifice scene where her incantations sound scripted by Eastern European AI.

“Kissy, killy, cull-eee ah kay!”

Only “Babylon’s Water of Death” can save them. Because stripping off their tops and having sex isn’t doing the job.

Rating: violence, sex, nudity

Cast: Angelina Pahomova, Polina Davydova, Pierre Bourel, Polina Vorobyova, Artur Beschastnyy, Anton Rival, Victor Mikhailov and Nino Ninidze

Credits: Directed by
Serik Beyseu, scripted by Oleg Kurochkin and Dmitriy Zhigalov. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:36