FrightFest 2011 Part Two

Alright, Pat, take a deep breath and get on with the second half of this report -- although it's actually rather more than half, since there are still thirteen films left to plough through:

Compendia:  There have always been worthwhile examples of multi-part horror movies going back to the superb 1945 "Dead of Night" and including a number of scary horror compilations from the 1970s.  However the conceit of asking a variety of directors to contribute shortish sections to a single movie too often results in a severe case of the Parson's Nose -- the non-horror film called "Aria" (1987) being a good example.  FrightFest scheduled two of these films this year, both in late, late night slots, and neither worth the effort to stay awake: "The Theatre Bizarre" and "Chillerama".  The former was the brainchild of seven (!) directors including Richard Stanley, Buddy G, and F/X maestro Tom Savini, all held together by a weird framing narrative featuring the iconic Udo Kier as a human puppet.  It was something of a mishmash and only the eerie story of a tourist being seduced by a lusty witch in provincial France could be described as 'not too embarrassing', while the final tale of death by gross overeating verged on the nauseating.  The other film 'boasted' only four directors and was potentially the more imaginative example of bad taste. However after the idiotic story of a giant spermatazoa terrorizing the neighbourhood and a silly beach-party musical featuring gay lust, I gave up in the middle of the black and white, holocaust-set, 'Diary of Anne Frankenstein'.  Sometimes enough is too much -- especially at 2 a.m.

Jokey horror:  For some bizarre reason this sub-genre of gross-out splatter tickles my funnybone. "Deadheads" was amusing, but the least appealing of the three examples; we follow the cross-country roadtrip of a 'zombie' who is able to talk and reason, together with his new also-rational zombie bestfriend, and their strong-armed mute zombie muscle, as they go to find the sweetheart that he left behind.  A second American entry in this category was the very clever and extremely chuckleful "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil".  This film took the premise that all country bumpkins must be homicidal, redneck murderers and turned it on its head. Two relatively bright hicks, who only want to enjoy their new fixer-upper vacation cabin in the boonies, have to contend with a bunch of smartass college kids who fear the worse from these tame hillbillies and who largely end up as dead meat through their own stupidity. The third movie was the British "Inbred", which was not actually meant as a comedy; however the story is so far over the top in its gross-out effects that it squarely belongs in this grouping.   Four teenaged offenders and their two care workers head out to the countryside for a community service weekend in a remote hamlet.  So remote that most of the denizens appear to be their own grandpas and are largely inbred mutants, deriving their local entertainment from mutilating passers-by in gorily inventive ways.  They congregate at the local pub called The Dirty Hole (the sign reads 'NOT meals served here') and one can foresee the dire consequences likely to follow.  We're led to believe that there will be the usual survivors, but...

Miscellaneous American nasties: "Rogue River" was an effective bit of Grand Guignol as our heroine who only wants to spread her late father's ashes at a scenic beauty spot is waylaid by an apparently helpful local who offers a lift after she find that her car has been towed away.  Since this kind samaritan is played by The Devil's Rejects' Bill Moseley we just know that she is in for some torture porn. She goes home with him and meets his equally 'normal' wife but soon discovers the various half-dead earlier victims kept in trunks in the basement.  Still I prefered that film to "The Divide", a post-apocalypse tale of a group of miscellaneous survivors holed up in the basement apartment of their building's caretaker.  It rapidly descends into an adult version of "The Lord of the Flies" as their quest for survival takes less humane turns.  A lot of viewers rated director Ti West's "The Innkeepers" as one of the best of the fest. It tells of the last weekend before closing forever at a historic and possibly haunted New England inn.  For my money it was such a slow-burner that the anticipated scares, when they finally did arrive, came solely as an anticlimax. The best of this lot was Lucky McKee's "The Woman", from the fiendish mind of author Jack Ketchum whose "The Girl Next Door" (2007) remains one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen at FrightFest.  It is the story of a seemingly upright family man (but actually a tyrant to his submissive wife and kids) who comes across a feral female while out hunting, captures her, takes her home, and chains her up for his own fiendish ends. Scottish-born actress Pollyanna McIntosh gives a remarkable performance as this 'uncivilised' creature who can only communicate in her own language of meaningful grunts but who retains all of her animal cunning in dealing with her abusers.

The British contingent:  Quite naturally the fest's organisers feel obliged to showcase new British productions, but traditionally these have been something of a mixed bag.  We often choose to watch one of the 'Discovery' offerings rather than another amateurish version of zombies taking over the countryside.  The four we did view were by and large intended to be the most commercial and professional offerings, but I just can't bring myself to enthuse over any of them. "The Glass Man" starred Andy Nyman as a man who has lost his job, but who can't let his wife into that secret, and who pretends that everything is normal despite his increasing financial concerns. One night hard man James Cosmo appears at his door threatening all sorts of dire violence if he does not come out and help him with his nefarious plans for the evening.  Fine up to that point, but then it becomes just a wee bit too far-fetched and too draggy to really care what is actually going on in Nyman's increasingly unhinged mind.  "The Wicker Tree", only the fourth movie from legendary writer-director Robin Hardy who gave us 1973's classic "Wicker Man" was a complete disappointment.  Even reuniting him with that film's classic villain Christopher Lee (in all of a 90-second cameo) didn't make this new story of the 'old religion' in rural Scotland a patch on his first film.  What next for him?  The Wicker Shrub?  The Wicker Bedding-plant?  Then there was the most over-hyped movie of the fest "Kill List", which has just opened here and which has been garnering rave reviews as a 'new British cult classic'.  Balderdash, says PPP; this muddled story of two buddies, supposedly ordinary suburban layabouts who are actually vicious hitmen, rapidly descends into a totally unbelievable satanic denouement.  Apart from anything else, the film is unlikely to make ten cents in the States unless it comes with subtitles.  I've lived here for most of my life and couldn't make head nor tail of the thick Yorkshire accents. Which brings me to the closing movie this year "A Lonely Place to Die", starring Melissa George, and I'm sorry to report another overdone and generally unbelievable thriller.  It starts with her and her buddies climbing in the Scottish Highlands and discovering a foreign little girl trapped in an underground chamber.  We later learn that she has been kidnapped for ransom and that two vicious killers are on the trail of George and her friends, gradually picking them off.  Also in pursuit is a negotiator and his tough bodyguards employed by the girl's probably criminal tycoon of a father.  It descends into a major bloodbath, but the screenplay's leaps of logic hardly kept this viewer on the edge of her seat.  Then again, we all know that I'm something of a fusspot.

So, that's all folks, for another year -- although at this stage I am seriously considering giving the next marathon a miss.  However a lot can happen in twelve months...  

FrightFest Part Two

Now that I've lumbered myself with completing my FrightFest overview, I'd better get cracking:

Monsters (2010): The preview of this British movie was being hyped by Alan Jones as the best of the fest, as it were. Sorry, Alan, I don't agree. The scenario involves alien organisms evolving over a large area of Central America and Mexico after the crash of a NASA probe, resulting in huge quarantined tracts. In what is largely a two-hander, an ambitious journalist finds himself blackmailed into escorting his boss's spoiled and engaged daughter back to the U.S. Naturally nearly everything goes wrong for them on their journey and naturally they fall in love. The film was mainly a largely engaging love story with beautiful scenic tableaux and interesting special effects when the mutant aliens were seen. However, it was slow, slow, slow and I had trouble staying awake for the 97 minutes that felt so much longer.

The Pack (2010): I must confess I was quite taken with this French film, but that was more because of its casting than its OTT premise. It seems that the Belgian-born actress Yolande Moreau has become a fixture in so many films that I've seen recently -- most notably the delightful "Micmacs" -- that I find myself saying 'Oh, it's her again' whenever she appears. In this movie she is the tough and coarse proprietress of a run-down truckstop in rural France where our heroine has been lured by the handsome hitchhiker she picked up. Little does she realise that his Mummy Moreau requires a continuous supply of fresh blood to nourish her older dead zombie sons and their fellow miners who sleep under the black soil. Leads Emilie Dequenne and the dishy Benjamin Biolay are joined by French horror favourite Philippe Nahon to create an interesting flick.

Outcast (2010): This Anglo-Irish effort was meant to delve into Celtic legend, but was too firmly rooted in the seedy realities of dingy government housing, as warring brothers seek to find the magical secrets of their tribe. Or something like that... I lost the plot early on and never managed to get back into the swing.

We Are What We Are (2010): This Mexican film was undoubtedly the worst of the main screen's offerings (and there were some pretty feeble inclusions this year). A family of modern-day cannibals find themselves adrift when the father dies and the mother and three grown children are left to fend for themselves. The eldest is technically in charge of finding food, but when he brings back someone he has picked up in a gay club, his brother says that he is not going to eat a faggot! Meanwhile a not very hot-shot cop is on their trail after a nail-polished and beringed whole finger is found during their dead dad's autopsy. Absolutely nothing happens and by the end only the teenaged sister is left to carry on the family's traditions.

Amer (2009): Like "Monsters" above, this Belgian film came with a lot of baggage with claims of its brilliance and throwback style to the classic Italian giallos. All I can tell you is that it was all style, absolutely no substance, and altogether about an hour too long -- which is saying something for a 90 minute film. It followed the same character as a girl, a teenager, and a grown woman, but only the first section had any sense of foreboding and intrigue. Just when it started to be interesting, it cut to our heroine's teenaged years and went straight to nowhere. Even the black-gloved hand and slashing knives of the last section were cruelly empty.

Buried (2010): This slot was intended for "A Serbian Film" which is apparently a stomach-churner in spades. At the last moment the local powers-that-be refused to certificate its showing without massive cuts, and this Hollywood flick starring Ryan Reynolds was the 'surprise film' alternative. Now if you think that any movie, even one starring the likeable Reynolds, can get away with having only a single character buried alive under the Iraqi desert for ninety-odd minutes, think again. I suppose it was meant to be an acting tour-de-force, but I can't think of any modern actor who can hold the screen alone for this length of time. Yet had the movie 'opened-out' it probably would have been no more suspenseful. The whole issue was does he or doesn't he escape. Maybe he should have taken his cue from Uma Thurman's "Kill Bill". Incidentally another film pulled from the original programme, Gregg Araki's "Kaboom", was another one that I would have liked to have seen. He apparently shuddered at the thought of his movie premiering to a 'bunch of geeks'. That's us apparently!

Video Nasties - Moral Panic, Censorship, and Video Tape: This new documentary on Britain's shameful history of film censorship did not really cover much ground not documented previously, with many of the usual talking heads, but it was still interesting to view the history of those films which sparked that early 1980s outrage. I doubt that there were many people in the audience who had not actually seen most of the culprits in their uncut glory; of course a number of the titles only deserved to be banned because they were in fact very bad movies. If the truth be told, much more controversial films are readily available today with our many media sources. We didn't stay for the following Q and A since little remains to be said on this subject.

After Life (2009): This American flick was probably the most mainstream movie of the festival, so it was something of a surprise to find it wedged into the small 'Discovery' cinema. With the main cast consisting of Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Long, a main cinema showing would have been suitable, but far be it from me to understand the politics of film distribution. Neeson is an undertaker who can converse with the newly departed until they are buried and Ricci is the fresh corpse in his mortuary, fighting against the truth of her demise. Long is her would-be fiancee (he doesn't seem to have much luck in this area after "Drag Me to Hell"). Neeson seemed to be trying just a wee bit too hard to be creepy and Long was just a little frenetic, but Ricci, who spent most of the film semi-clothed or less, was the main attraction.

Bedevilled (2010): South Korean film-makers have been responsible for some of the most stunning genre movies of recent years and this is another worthy effort. A slow-burner, we find our worldly heroine leaving Seoul for a visit to the backward island where her grandfather had a home and where she deserted her best friend from childhood. The latter is in an abusive marriage and hard-done-by by all of her husbabd's family where she is treated as a workhorse and sexual object, After the death of her child something snaps and this is where this film becomes interesting as she seeks her bloody revenge. Perhaps there were one too many false endings where the film could have safely finished, but it was still nearly worth its full 115 minutes.

Red White & Blue (2010): This American movie wasn't of tremendous interest nor particularly well-made and was very reminiscent of the small town Texas milieu of Hooper's parochial "Eggshells". We're introduced to a lot of characters, most of them pretty unsavoury, and are meant to care about the fate of the local good-girl-gone-wrong town bicycle. A nearly unrecognizable Noah Taylor befriends her and takes it upon himself to dispatch all those who treated her badly. I for one just didn't care.

The Last Exorcism (2010): This brings us to FrightFest's closing film produced by the big-headed Eli Roth and again a movie that we were told upfront was something spectacular. Sorry again, folks. The evening was over half an hour late starting and was then prefaced by the usual self-promotion from Roth and the film's director. Shot in documentary style, it was meant to be the story of an evangelical minister who has now lost his faith and who wants to expose the fakery of most exorcisms. He visits a family besieged by the evil supposedly being unleashed by the 'possessed' daughter, but finds himself actually having to confront real demons. To be honest, after the first half of this farrago, we were so bored that we walked out, missing what may or may not have been the (I gather) rather unenlightening denouement.

So that's that for another year. Every year I think that this might be my last go at surviving the full programme and that I should just get individual tickets for the more promising films, but who can guess how I'll feel about this horror marathon in a year's time.