FrightFest 2016

FrightFest 2016 it is then. I like it for the moment halfway through the five festival days of horror and harder edges thrillers when you realise you have lost all sense of time and self and your only worry is if you are going to reach the next film in time. There was a moment when I was in the lobby and I thought I heard a fake zombie noise. Actually, it turned out to be a baby in a pushchair, but to be fair I had just been handed a flier by a zombie a moment earlier. But it gives some idea of how your mind becomes so quickly accustomed to seeing and hearing the signifiers of the horror genre when you are knee-deep in it. 

This year, rather than Leicester Square, FrightFest had moved to and taken over Shepherd’s Bush Vue and – perhaps I had missed something before, but it certainly seemed more sociable simply because it wasn’t taking place on multiple levels and so perhaps there was a greater chance of bumping into people. And there was the moment when I was chatting and someone simply came up and handed us free copies of ‘Martin Collins’ without a word. Why, thank you. And then there was the moment I saw Dominic Monaghan crossing the street towards me and it took me a moment to realise that I probably shouldn’t stop him in the middle of the road to tell him that I had enjoyed ‘Pet’.

I do miss the big screen of The Empire Leicester Square where the main screen could house something like 1,300 people, all of who were tuned into the film and all justabout on the same wavelength (that screen doesn't exist now). This was particularly great when the film onscreen wasn’t so good and people started openly laughing and treating it like a comedy. The so-bad-it’s-good thing. However, there was still this reaction to ‘Blood Feast’ and ‘Sadako vs Kayako’, making them a good length more enjoyable as a shared experience.

The main menu of films is split and staggered over three screens these days and I have seen some complaints on forums that the main screen roster is somewhat tame and some of the true gems were in the alternative Discovery screens. Now, aside from ‘Willow Creek’, my experiences with the Discovery screens have not been great, so perhaps next year I will not only stick to the main screen and maybe try other things too.

And the films…

Day #1:

MY FATHER DIE

Sean Brosnan, 2016, USA

A fine slice of grimy Southern Gothic and surprisingly the only fully fledged vengeance narrative on the main screen where the FrightFest selection is usually inundated with them. When they were kids, Asher (Joe Anderson) saw his brother murdered by their father: now their father is being released and Asher is preparing for revenge. Sean Brosnan directs his debut with enough flair and artiness that it mostly succeeds on aesthetics alone, something like if Cam Archer directed straight horrors. It’s all surface deep as the relationships are thin and the father is a thorough is a thoroughly one dimensional slice of brutality (hey, he murders a cop on his first day out; his being released early for ‘good behaviour’ is the most unbelievable aspect of the whole affair). But, like a song with a single great riff, if you like it the pace has a full-ahead momentum that it will undoubtedly make a raw impression. 

CELL

Tod Williams, 2016, USA

A cell phone signal turns people into murderous zombies. One of those Stephen King tales that starts out promising and then gets so bogged down its earnestness that it just becomes dreary and tiresome. It’s not as bad as ‘Desperation’ but it is too close to that to be interesting. And this despite a great opening where we see a quick zombie outbreak in an airport lounge and a memorable final image of the mindless ones circling a transmitter. But then the ragtag ensemble of survivors meet the Stacey Keach of Exposition and it’s all duller and duller from there. And then there’s the thing that mobile phones make you a mindless zombie (hey, social commentary!!) and the perpetrator is something Satanic in the guise of a hoody guy with big headphones. No, really.

I don’t usually associate John Cusack, Samuel L Jackson and Stacey Keach with flatness, but they pretty much sleepwalk through this. On the poster it has the Kim Newman (an instantly recognisable face wandering around FrightFest) blurb saying ‘Cell’ is “Smart, persuasive, intriguing … a refreshing throwback.” No, it isn’t those things. 

I didn’t get through all of Cody Calahan’s 'Let her Out'  (Canada, 2016) due to a bout of being ill near the end (I’m recovering from a chronic cough) so it would be unfair of me to review it all. 

* That big screen doesn't exist now. I was there for it's last use to show 'Big Bad Wolves', so it least it went out with a bang.

Cross My Heart and Hope to Die

Ti kniver i hjertet

Marius Holst, 1995, Norway

Although the US packaging tries to sell this “in the tradition of My Life as a Dog”, this is in fact more akin to darker strains of ‘The Northeners’, or even ‘The Slingshot’. As pastiche of moods and genre trappings, including rites-of-passage, mystery, domestic tragedy; complete with cellar secrets, dangerous staircases, bogeymen caretakers, enigmatic delinquent strangers, stolen cars and river corpses. Most of these are in fact false leads, of which the opening narration and uplifting song are just the first; and although the hints of peripheral horror are never consummated, ‘Cross My Heart and Hope to Die’ is at pains to estrange and alienate its young protagonist from his peers and family, and to inflict near irreparable damage to his relations to both. Here is loneliness and the mundane horror of the adult world. 

The set-up is typical: it’s the 1960s and young Otto (Martin Dahl Garfalk)  is at a loose end for summer, being an outcast from his peers. And then… Moderate and whimsical as the tone might seem, like Otto it is unlikely that any audience will walk away uplifted. It culminates in a mash of near hopes and irresolution. It is not always successful, moving from the sunny pranks and smiling face of Otto to the muted finale, but it possesses flashes of brilliance, of which perhaps most hypnotic is Otto’s decent into a dream-like near-surreal costume party, only to burst the bubble with his first proper sexually charged indiscretion. Or even a trip to a train station that inexplicably becomes emotionally charged with rain and alienation. Otto’s world is packed with red herrings; his attempts to join his peers are scuppered by his ability to always do the wrong thing; his childishness is dealt merciless blows, and if he ends the film more adult, this is no comfort. Fear of the dark, blind piano tuners and games of blind-man’s-bluff accompany the quasi-voyearism subtext, but if this is about the seeing the truth ~ don’t always trust what you see, he is predictably told ~ then it is hard to tell exactly what the truth amounts to. Then the worst happens, but not necessarily the way you think. It is true that families can fracture and reunite, that innocence is not enough and will not survive and that Otto’s secrets really don’t amount to much. But if there really is no answer, the discovery of the questions here remains an intriguing and occasionally baffling mood-piece where the threads of growing up do not necessarily lead to answers.

Swordfish

Dominic Shena, 2001, USA

Despite ‘Swordfish’s opening call to arms, in which it attacks Hollywood for producing vacuous rubbish, the film really has nothing to say: it follows standard action formulae; its terrorist and conspiracy theories are worth only the space on the back of a matchbox. What is presented instead is a stream of action set-pieces: the opening shocker robbery; the mid-way car chase; the flying bus routine. That’s the undemanding thrill quote fulfilled, then. All these are executed with trendiness and slickness and incredible mass-destruction and grand unseen body-counts, and they create the necessary diversion from the very average plot. The film’s post-modern, self-reflexive quoting of films really provides little more than the idea that our bad guy has got all his terrorist set-pieces from other, better movies. But in the argument about Hollywood endings, ‘Swordfish’ concludes that an action audience actually really wants a mass murderer to escape. If they’re John Travolta, that is.  

Great Expectations

Alfonso Cuarón, 1998, USA

Contemporised version of Dickens’ classic updates marshland and London to Florida and the New York art scene. The film looks great and green, it is lush and holds many memorable moments, not necessarily Dickensian. The updating also means that it is more sexuality; there’s a redundant voice-over; there’s a grungier and funkier backing score; the convict-benefactor is involved with the Mafia, etc. There’s much to enjoy in the transposition of the earlier scenes to the Everglades, where the endless expanses of water maintain the book’s Gothic eeriness; or with Nora Dinsmoor’s mansion turned into a virtual swamp, and the later Thames scenes to the city underground trains. But there is less sure-footedness in the later New York scenes. The main problem is that all the central weirdness of the original text is increasingly swamped under American romantic conventions ~ and romance was arguably not Dickens’ main interest for “Great Expectations”, more a reader’s lure. It also means that many of both the peripheral and central eccentrics from the novel have disappeared and that Pip/Finn’s reunion with his convict-benefactor, now incarnated as the perfectly menacing-fatherly Magwitch De Niro, is a rushed affair. Luckily, a final ambiguity remains between the lovers ~ who here no longer remain totally unrequited. Ethan Hawke makes a rockier, less bewildered Finn/Pip; Paltrow is a fair femme fatale and Anne Bancroft’s Dinsmoor-Havisham is fine. 

The pace is beguilingly moderate and the presentation is consummately pleasing on the eye. It works on a drift rather than the cut of the narrative. It has a bad reputation and indeed it is Dickens for the MTV age, perhaps, but Alfonso Cuarón knows what he’s doing. So, not necessarily good Dickens, but a decent tale nonetheless. 

Salem's Lot

Tobe Hooper, 1979, USA

  

This scared the hell out of me as a kid, so I will always have a soft spot for this Stephen King adaptation that tells of a small American town gradually destroyed by vampires. This deterioration is watched by typical King heroes: a successful novelist and a teenage horror fan. Central is the old Madsen house with a gruesome, haunted reputation and the arrival of antique dealer Straker (James Mason) and his employer Barlow (Reggie Nalder). Overnight, the vampire is delivered to the quiet town in a crate and the deaths begin.

With two genre heavyweights Stephen King and director Tobe Hooper at the helm, expectations were high for this adaptation. The general consensus amongst critics appears to be that King’s novel suffered from the limitations of television, but the novel was never particularly explicit in its horrors. It was more interested in the menace, in atmosphere and weakening community. In this way, the TV film format

seems ideal for King’s picket fence society threatened by the supernatural. The wide cast of secondary yet vividly drawn characters that populate King’s fiction often offer a soap-like backdrop, yet there may be something to Peter Nicholls’ accusation of David Soul being a “predictably wet bit of television casting.”¹ It is up to James Mason to deliver the acting delights in a nicely ambiguous turn as Straker. And it is also true that the moments of horror  that crescendo to a freeze-frame might hint at CBS censorship more than subtlety and yet the lack of gratuitousness doesn’t make any less scary. The same year, John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ created a similar community under supernatural threat horror, yet also demonstrated how a film may be both bloodless without compromising its violence too far.

Hooper’s ‘Salem’s Lot’, as Kim Newman has written, is a “respectable rather than devastating” adaptation that lives under the “baleful shadow of ‘Psycho’.”2 He identifies the more typically Hooperesque moment as that when a husband catches his wife and her lover and humiliates them with a shotgun. The feel of this scene - with the over-wrought facial distress and violence implied by editing rather than by outcome - is certainly more akin to ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ than the rather plain direction elsewhere (don’t forget that ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ was relatively bloodless too). For a moment, it seems as if it might transcend the Seventies TV demeanour and head into the  grimness of the period’s more notorious horrors. Nevertheless, there is enjoyment in its long running time and slow build-up of character and incident that is closer to the novel than the 112 minute film that was subsequently edited from the miniseries.

‘Salem Lot’s greatest improvement upon the novel is in its use of the Glick brother vampires. In the novel, what mostly happens off-stage and is known through exposition is here given an unforgettable visual rendition. The vampire boys float outside windows, scraping on the glass, demanding to be let in. It is perhaps the film’s most memorable and chilling image, although certainly not it’s only one. I remember as a young teenager watching ‘Salem’s Lot’ and being terrified, not only by the vampires-at-the-window moments, but also at the graveyard cliffhanger and the Mr Barlow reveal. I remember being excited that it was on television a second time (this was in the prehistoric era where there was no guarantee such a thing would ever surface again) and watching from behind a cushion because I knew it was going to be scary.

The film’s greatest deviation from the novel is in its conception of Barlow the vampire. Hooper has opted to make Barlow a homage to Max Shreck’s ‘Nosferatu’: he is no longer the pretentious, condescending orator of the book; he is now primal and animalistic with Straker now his mouthpiece. Barlow’s entrance is another unexpected shocker, but his appearance gains the story little more than monster-make up which is nevertheless a strong defining image. It is at its best when Barlow invades an ordinary domestic dinner scene. Its ambience and shock moments certainly worked on me again and I am sure this particular mini-series traumatised a generation of horror fans. Those Glick brothers…

In many ways, ‘Salem’s Lot’ is a successful King adaptation. Despite its TV conventions, ‘Salem’s Lot’ manages some rawness, black humour and shocks. It is at least frightening and atmospheric and has aged better than the televised and fondly remembered version of ‘It’. It’s a long way down from here to ‘The Lost Boys’. There is no vampire genre deconstruction as in Romero’s ‘Martin’, but ‘Salem’s Lot’s greatest strength is in allowing the vampires the vivid visual set-ups and juxtapositioning them against the otherwise naturalistic framing. Vampires sitting in rocking chairs and coming to life on autopsy tables will still provide the delights for genre fans. I will always be fond of this TV shocker.

·         Larry Cohen made A Return to Salem’s Lot, another television horror in 1987, but its relationship to the original novel and film was highly tenuous.

·         The 2004 remake of ‘Salem’s Lot’ with Rob Lowe and Donald Sutherland is slicker but it does nothing to improve the story.

·         Stephen King’s anthology ‘Night Shift’ contains a short story that vaguely follows up ‘Salem’s Lot’ called ‘One for the Road’. Typical of the collection, it is a slight, only mildly satisfying short.

*

1              Peter Nicholls,  Fantastic Cinema: an illustrated survey, (Ebury Press, London, 1984) pg. 145.

²               Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies: a critical guide to contemporary horror films, (Harmony Books, New York, 1988) pg. 54.

Bone Tomahawk

S. Craig Zahler, 2015, USA-UK

There’s a reason that S. Craig Zahler's ‘Bone Tomahawk’ turned up on a lot on horror blogs. It packs a considerable punch and by the time you get there, you have been lulled into a false sense of security so it strikes all the more; that is, you probably will think you know its limits, although the opening throat cutting should have been a clue to what is to come. Where Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ plays with the genre of the spaghetti western, all full of colourful characters trying to outdo each other, recent films like ‘The Homesman’ and ‘Bone Tomahawk’ all come from a more neo-realistic, revisionist slant, mired in the heartache and consequences of violence and showing up ‘Eight’ as a dress-up pastiche. ('The Revenant' falls somewhere in between all these.) Even the affectations of ‘Slow West’ point towards an emotional realism. However, Katie Rife suggests it makes more sense through the lens of Italian Spaghetti Westerns. But when ‘Bone Tomahawk’ gets to its third act, anyone familiar with Don’t-Go-There horror will know the geography, and this is a truly creepy and horrifying example. This is walking in the same doomed trail as ‘The Offspring’, ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and ‘Humains’, but in keeping its western neo-realism paramount it is all the more convincing and disturbing. 

A gang of men go in search of feared tribe of “Troglodytes” – the film is careful to separate this clan from Native Americans, although how successfully is perhaps open to question – when they appear to have abducted a woman from the town. Kurt Russell leads the ill-matched rescue team, composed of a rambling “back-up deputy”, an obviously bigoted gunman and the kidnapped woman’s husband. As “backup deputy” Chicory, Richard Jenkins steals the show by providing the film with most of its humour: his non sequiturs are one of the film’s great sources of pleasure, but look closely and don’t be fooled: he maybe past his prime but he’ll deliver as best he can when needed. His friendship with Kurt Russell’s Sheriff Franklin Hunt glues everything together and the writing never lets any narrowness of character create limitations. For example, Matthew Fox as the mercenary John Brooder goes someway to suggesting that beneath his brutality is something good struggling to get out; or Patrick Wilson as Arthur O’Dwyer manages heroism in a role that could have quickly become annoying – the crippled but stubborn-no-matter-what character. 

Elsewhere, Freddy Waff’s production design is also notable for being so credible (and perhaps it is inevitable that the cave scene will look most like a set) and Benji Bakshi's cinematography supplies the  crisp visuals and pretty Western vistas (and has a western ever felt so chalky?); Jeff Herriot’s and S. Craig Zahler’s score is mournful and unobtrusive. And although all these details are consummate, ultimately ‘Bone Tomahawk’ is a story of strong meat, centred on themes of duty and sacrifice. The troglodytes are genuinely scary, frightening embodiments of male violence unmitigated by the civility of the other characters of Bright Hope that are just as defined by it. It is happy to have a slow build-up of characterisation to ensure its gratuitousness has maximum impact. A great and gruelling show.

Stranger Things

Matt & Ross Duffer, 2016, USA TV

When I first saw Franck Khaulfon’s remake of ‘Maniac’, there was a delirious thrill as soon as the synth score by Rob kicked in: this was a new thing, to hark back to the 80s synthesiser soundtracks with such flare. But everyone seemed to be taking their cue from Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Drive’ and it soon became a trend, doing the retro-thing, to great effect in ‘It Follows’ and more self-congratulatory with ‘The Guest’. But what seemed to be happening was that, given license by contemporary culture’s constant cashing-in on what was popular and homaging it to death, was that the new wave of horror-makers that grew up on and were influenced by eighties genre fare were regurgitating their influences. And signposting it.

So in that sense the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix TV series ‘Stranger Things’ seems a logical culmination of this trend, a total product of the times with its foundation as a homage being its whole appeal. It’s not just set in a certain period in time, like for instance the wonderful ‘Freaks and Geeks’ or the pleasant ‘Red Oaks’, but the references to Eighties’ horror genre is paramount. Never has it been so hard-pushed that the nostalgia is the lure – even from  the title’s font. Stephen King and Stephen Spielberg are obvious influences, but Joe Dante’s doesn’t seem to be quoted in reviews as much as he ought to be; and then there are references to ‘Alien’, ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and a wealth of others. As Scott Tobias notes: “Stranger Things exists in the same world as the movies to which it pays homage.” (The Vulture is a good place for pointing out the references.)

But additionally and most importantly, the Duffer brothers get the emotional tone of the genre right and manage not to let all this post-moderness and reminiscence get in the way of the story. In this way, it becomes its own thing too and not just merely a litany of references. The premise is simple: a boy goes missing mysteriously and at the same time his friends find an odd uncommunicative girl in the woods when searching for him. An unremarkable suburb subsequently becomes involved with government conspiracies and attacks from another dimension. But don’t worry: people of a certain age can wallow in recognising the Eighties details, can obsess over the music (and how no American kid would yet know of The Smiths; or how certain songs used came out after the date the story is ostensibly set, and whether this matters if the song is non-diegetic, etc.) as fans can count the movie references.

But modern TV is surely an influence too, for we expect a higher quality of writing, acting and characterisation now than ever before and the show delivers. There are a few thinly drawn bullies on the side but mostly the characters make their way to fuller personalities.  It’s in the way Mike (Finn Wolfhard) gives way to his temper at times; it’s in the way that Jim Hopper (David Harbour) is introduced as the standard washed-up policeman but proves anything but; it’s in how Steve (Joe Keery) is your standard pushy and horny jerk but sees quickly that Nancy (Natalia Dyer) brings out the best in him (and the final shot of him wearing a cheesy Christmas jumper must be one of the show’s best jokes). It’s how the show gets on with characters believing in what’s happening and not dwelling on denial: there is great satisfaction to seeing different character factions realising the truth of it all independently. 

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven is exceptional, emoting a whole spectrum despite having the least dialogue, stealing the show with silences and pained looks. David Hopper is winningly gruff and practical, his resigned and accepting look when he realises Well, I’ll have to punch my way out of this one a small highlight. Winona Ryder starts at hysterical as a mother who has just lost her son, crying into Christmas lights and making holes in walls (yes, ‘The Shining’), but her performance settles in with the context of increasingly being believed. And Gaten Matarazzo has proven a fan favourite as Dustin, the voice of mediation between his friends as well as being smart and goofy in his own right. Even the doomed Barb (Shannon Purser) has generated her own fandom. 

Yes, it’s mostly predictable but there’s a steady pace to keep it all going and it leaves enough unanswered to remain intriguing. It’s biggest misstep is when Nancy climbs into a organic hole in a tree which is obviously a portal to another world – as you would – and there is trouble with the end where the boys’ grief at losing Eleven is apparently all but forgotten when they have Will (Noah Schnapp) back; but in the latter example surely it would take half an episode to untangle and pace everything just right. For the most part, it manages to be scary and on the right side of its tropes.

Chuck Bowen thinks it all contrived, which it is, but doesn’t quite incorporate how enjoyable the ruse is as well, so it’s not quite “pointless”. It’s immensely likeable and therein lies it well-deserved appeal and achievement. This, then, is good fanboy product, nodding to the tropes just enough without getting so caught up that it’s forgotten that the thing needs its own identity too, despite following the beats closely so that nothing truly surprises, but it does go some way to answering What if the characters in John Hughes film were, you know, realistic? And there is plenty of pleasing kids cycling around for adventure, which will likely please fans of ‘E.T.: the extra terrestrial’.* A film peer like ‘Goosebumps’ is mostly successful at capturing this teen-horror spirit where, although you know it’ll all be okay in the end, there is still room for the dark stuff. 

'Stranger Things' is too busy harking back to be seminal in any way, but it is fun.

·         *          As a kid, ‘E.T.’ didn’t do anything for me – no I didn’t cry and I didn’t really like the alien. These days, I’m prone to think that I’ll appreciate the domestic stuff, should I watch it again, but even as a kid I thought Spielberg’s sentimental side a turn-off.

Penda's Fen

Alan Clark, UK, 1974

When I think of Pebble Mill, I think of being a kid in the Seventies and the show ‘Pebble Mill at One’, a lunchtime current affairs and entertainment programme. I think of safe daytime TV. Pebble Mill used to be studios outside of London that produced far more than just that, though. Under producer David Rose (whose track record is quite something, including giving us Terence Davies amongst others) Pebble Mill gave us ‘Penda’s Fen’ in the ‘Play for Today’ strand, directed by Alan Clark and written by David Rudkin. Despite its look of rural England and rolling hills, it’s anything but cosy lunchtime viewing.

Stephen Franklin (Spencer Banks) is an uptight youth, mouthing conservative opinions, but his burgeoning sexuality increasingly makes him introverted and questioning all around him. Politics, sexuality, institutions, community and individuality, changing names, kindness and cruelty, art – it’s all here. It’s a quite an abstract piece and Alan Clark himself proclaimed that he didn’t know what it was about, but as a portrayal of an adolescent’s maturation set against his surroundings, rarely has a bildungsroman been so multifaceted on screen. At first the atmosphere is certainly tinged with the kind of abstractions that signalled the era’s uncanny horror, with Hammer Horror being a touchstone as well as the eeriness of serialised M.R. James’ stories and the elliptical narratives of such as Jerzy Skolimowsi’s ‘The Shout’ or Weir's 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'. (And to those ends, there’s a startling hand-chopping dream sequence.) At first, the moments where Stephen seemingly has visions seems to indicate that we are indeed in the realm  of the horror, of perhaps mental illness, but these prove to be simply manifestations of his imagination and alienation, of his thinking process. Through them, we see him discussing with deceased classical artists, envisioning demons and angels, and ultimately meeting Penda, the last pagan King. If it seems atypical of Clark’s work – as he is mostly known for neo-realist depictions and aggressive dramas – it is still characteristically tied to the sociological and English identity. It depicts rural villages as home to just as much personal internal narratives as anywhere else. 

It’s wordy and weird and Rudkin’s remarkable script is a dense tapestry of religion, philosophy, mythology, sexual awakening, socialist politics and the arts, all the realms Stephen has to explore to unlearn the misconceptions and prejudices of his life so far. There is a wealth of difference between when we first meet him spouting disapproval all around him and the youth who later gushes that he wishes a childless woman will have lots of adopted children because she is interesting, embarrassingly effusing like it’s the first time he’s acknowledged and used his own capacity for generosity. He goes on to realise then that he is multi-faceted and contradictory and he embraces all of that: this journey of self-discovery is just the start. When we leave him, he is a far more introverted and sympathetic character than when we met, but there is a sense of sadness as well. He has been humbled by the scope of himself. It is quite a remarkable chronicle of one person’s journey to self-awareness. 

Amusements

Nuclear war in "Akira".

Director Hou Hsaio-Hsien talks "The Assassin".

"Cancelled" podcast on "Eerie Indiana"

BFI Horror film list, and I won't argue with much of it.

...and David Lynch.