Silent Running

Douglas Trumbull, 1972, USA

If there was ever a hippy science-fiction, this is it. But although it’s feel is quintessentially Seventies, its ecological message feels more contemporary that ever in an age of Global Warming. 

On a spaceship around Saturn, Lowell (Bruce Dern) and a team of ever-changing colleagues mind the cargo of samples of Earth’s terrain, now that Earth culture itself is apparently totally synthetic. Whilst Dern is thoroughly in love with these nature domes, his colleagues are less impressed, thoroughly immersed in the artificial world they have left behind. To them it’s a job; to him it’s a cause. The catalyst for this is when they are ordered to destroy the domes so that ship can be returned for more commercial use. Dern finds himself taking drastic action to preserve the last vestige of an Earth he doesn’t really care to return to.

Trumbull’s spaceship effects are exemplary, as you would expect from he who worked on ‘2001: a space odyssey’, and worth the price of admission alone. The model work is  The shot of the spaceship against the rings of Saturn is gorgeous. This is the kind of sci-fi that looks lived in, where the hardware is dirty and scuffed and all the more working class for it. The film starts with pretty pictures of plants and wildlife before revealing its all on a spaceship. Characterisation is straightforward: we know his colleagues are wrong’uns and probably doomed by the way they recklessly speed their buggies around inconsiderately. Dern kills his colleagues – more from the desperation of the moment than premeditated – and thinks he can survive alone on the space station with Huey. Dewy and Louie the maintenance robots. But humans are predominantly social and nature turns out to just simply not be enough. Then, if there’s any doubt of the film’s hippy-leanings, Joan Baez sings about children running free.  

But it's mostly Dern's one-man show, and he does a fine job of articulating the regret beneath the fortitude. Mostly, it’s Dern’s relationship with the pet-like robots which he and we anthropomorphise that give the emotional charge. "Amazing companions on an incredible adventure" the poster blurb says. They are diminutive and just this side of cutesy, falling just short of R2D2 twittering – although at one point one nudges the other when the human is approaching. Even so, he can’t quite make them human enough; after all, they don’t talk. As a kid, I used to cry at the eventual perpetual oblivious solitude of the robot at the end. Its sentiment is on its sleeve and powered by emotion and human failing rather than swamping man with metaphysics and his smallness in the scheme of things; indeed, Trumbull apparently made this as reaction to Kubrick’s ‘2001’. It’s probably this sentiment that leads Mark Kermode to say it’s superior to ‘2001’, as that is more his taste. It certainly means this is a less questioning work when the answers are so clearly evident: nature good; business bad; robots cute; boorishness bad; anthropomorphising good; etc. But it is more morally complex than that – as John Kenneth Muir details - as Lowell cannot reconcile his actions with his morality and humanity. 

“Silent Running asks viewers to countenance a man who wants to save the last forest of Earth, and does, but pays too a high a personal and moral price to achieve that noble end.” 

(But more than that, I wonder how it takes Lowell, as an ecologist, so long to realise that sunlight might be important to the growth of the forest. After all, the ultraviolet lights are right there.)

Nevertheless, that its agenda is so emotionally transparent and achieves its effect with a little anthropomorphising blunts its edge and – as a retort to ‘2001’ – leaves mankind foolhardy, desperate and emotionally fallible. In that sense, it's more of the Ray Bradbury strain of sci-fi. As a comparison, ‘2001’ is the more optimistic vision – one of transcendence – and ‘Silent Running’ as a riposte is left wanting by reducing humanity to self-destruction. Nevertheless, as a science-fiction vision and cautionary tale about man’s casual indifference to nature, it’s vivid and highly enjoyable and earns its place as a Seventies genre classic.

I Was Born, but...

 大人の見る絵本　生れてはみたけれど Otona no miru ehon -
Umarete wa mita keredo "An Adult's Picture Book View — I Was Born, But...”

Yasujirō Ozu, 1932, b/w, Japan

One of the great things about Ozu is that he proves the failing of much cinematic and soap opera drama in that their tendency is to always, always fall into melodrama. The quietness of Ozu’s dramas may look as if nothing much is happening, but a relatively still surface does not mean it is untroubled beneath. Hierarchy and manners and social mores barely seem to keep frustrations and anxieties and unfairness at bay, but time and again Ozu’s characters rely upon those traditions to hold things together and to bare compromise.    

Ozu’s silent masterpiece “I Was Born, But....” starts off as a kind of Japanese “Our Gang” frolic but ultimately shifts into something far more resonant and troubling. It is troubling in its outlining out of the hierarchies of society that allow for bullying, humiliation and the compromise of character. Even in the more slapstick and amusing first half, this is already being sketched out in the tale of two young brothers dealing with bullies when they move to a new town. Although not exactly the timid sort, the brothers avoid school to avoid the bullies until they employ the services of a bigger bully – the local delivery boy – and mercilessly move into the role of gang leaders. It’s all about power games. 

The coming-of-age story takes a darker turn when the brothers attend a home-movie screening in which their father – a mild and fair man – is seen goofing around, seemingly to gain favour of his boss. The boys are humiliated and furious and confront their father with accusations of being a loser and unworthy. If you would ever think a verbal confrontation to lack power when conveyed by inter-titles, “I Was Born, but...” is probably the film to prove you wrong, for so fluid and engrossing is Ozu’s set-up and flow that the seriousness of the argument and the clash of generations is indeed distressing. Father turns to sake and the boys put on a hunger-strike. There is no harmonious ending here, not even a true acknowledged truce, just recognition of human weakness that lasts a lifetime and shapes character. And life goes on.

The Conjuring 2

James Wan, 2016, Canada-USA

Oh, surely full of the kind of stuff that a horror audience usually both laughs at and with: although not really marred by bad acting, it has bad dialogue and an over-earnestness that only amplifies the condescension of the conceit that this is a “true story”. Oh, it’s bad with a lack of focus because it’s so busy squeezing out a franchise. The popularity of the extending empires of James Wan’s ‘Insidious’ and ‘The Conjuring’ is probably down to the most obvious mainstreaming of horror slickly reduced to the noise/jump scares: not that horror fans don’t like them too, but they also act like your unhip uncle’s idea of “scareee” and “spookeeee”. They don’t care for depth, just noise/jump-scares that are supposed to sate that most superficial and perpetual horror qualification of “Was it scary?” Now, there is nothing wrong with just being a vehicle of dispensing horror vignettes – the recent ‘Terrified’ and ‘The Grudge’ series does that nicely – but for any artistry Wan has, there is something phoney at work here. 

‘The Conjuring 2’ feels like his laziest yet, not really providing a truly distinctive scare or surprising set-up and frequently veering into unintentional comedy. The use of “I Started a Joke” to accompany the emotional moment when the girl is found falsifying the possession is hilarious – and then it rains for some pathetic fallacy; but I laughed out loud from the first chunk of dialogue when Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) is conducting a séance in Amityville (!) and tells those around the table, “Envision yourself in a halo of glowing white light. It will protect you.” It’s too professional to be in ‘Troll 2’ territory but it’s wading in the same shallow waters. But then again ‘Troll 2’ was sincerely intended, not realising how deliriously stupid and delightfully inept it was being*; ‘The Conjuring’ franchise by contrast is deeply cynical, peddling noise scares as fear and the “True Story” as some badge of validation, ransacking the grift of a couple of con artists for material.

It cares not for the truth: if it did, “Annabelle” would be a seemingly innocuous rag doll and the original “demon” Valek plaguing the Hodgsons wouldn’t have been swapped for the more franchise-friendly Nun; not that Valek was “the truth”, but just that his replacement by the Nun shows how fast and loose this will play with the source. And it also shoe-horns in The Crooked Man. The thing with ‘The Exorcist’ however silly it may be (and silliness is a general genre ingredient), there is no doubt that it absolutely and vividly believes in itself and so the silliness doesn’t matter; it doesn’t register because it’s too busy being unnerving. But yes, streaming trivia pop-up does say this is "loosely based" on the Warren's Enfield investigation and it's probably redundant to expect credibility. ‘The Conjuring 2’ is so starkly a shrug at the lowest common demands of horror tricks it has the conviction of someone jumping from a closet shouting “Boo!” and then getting all unconvincingly serious and earnest about the motivation.

With ‘The Conjuring’, there was at least no doubt that James Wan could stage and frame a scare, but aside from a prolonged Nun sequence in this sequel, this just feels indifferent and baggy. It’s unnecessarily over two hours long, which I guess allows for the inclusion of Patrick Wilson’s Elvis impersonation and gives him time to knock up a painting of The Nun (!) (“Hey, I know I’m no Picasso but I didn’t think it was that bad.”). It also allows a brief trip to Amityville at the start, but despite a pleasing reveal of the iconic Amityville windows (which can be seen as a nice nod to horror aficionados) it appears that that “true story” was just another set-up for The Nun.

In Enfield, Wan seems to have no idea that the cramped interiors of an English house would allow for all kinds of memorable claustrophobia and cramped cold corners: instead, we get a house with the most unconvincing interior; it’s too big and no poor family on their last pennies would not have such a place (and the “Trivia” pop up when streaming points out that the spooky chair’s corner changes size repeatedly). What’s amusing is that the film closes with a series of pictures of the real Enfield haunting and Hodgsons which imply the actual cramped conditions. And what about that seemingly permanently flooded basement? …and why don’t they just get rid of the apparently possessed chair? I’m sure the Warrens could have found space for it in their lounge.

And it’s a shame because Wan has proven he can set-up trashy scares (even if he then hammers the point home) and the cast of kids all seem to be acting with a great conviction even as the dialogue lets them down. It’s bright and glossy enough, but it’s unconvincing and has that unintentional comedy in that special way that horror can provide.  

·        See Michael Stephenson’s ‘Best Worst Movie’ on the making of ‘Troll 2’.

The Spy Lodgers "Codename: Redacted" file 003

The third EP from The Spy Lodgers "Codename: Redacted" files. I informed and sung on these tracks. music by Henrik Svedlund and featuring undercover spies Bernadette Ulla (Unbeknownst) Thomas Meyer, Johannes Lang and Frank Flemisch.

Files: "The Sea Sessions", "Down With the Wildlife", "In the capsule of the werewolf heart" and "The Romance of the Colossus". 

FRIGHTFEST day #5, 2018

 OPEN 24 HOURS

Padraig Reyolds, 2018, USA

Mary (Vanessa Grasse) has just been released from a mental institution for setting her serial killer boyfriend on fire – how’s that for baggage? She is barely keeping it together as she tries to embark on a normal life and gets a job at a remote all-night petrol station (you see, there’s your problem…). Things are made harder by the fact that she has the stigma of being called “The Watcher” due to the fact that her boyfriend The Rain Ripper (cue old classic rain-themed popsong) used to force her to watch him kill. …But she keeps seeing him right now: is she going crazy?

Despite the fact that it’s a pretty crowded story, it’s more of a grab-bag of tropes and red herrings to mask the fact that it’s your usual slender premise. There’s nothing wrong with that but the twists don’t really resonate as much surprise as they should and the whole premise of is she imaging it? runs out of steam pretty quickly. It’s nowhere near as tricksy and trippy as it should be. It also cheats in that the Rain Ripper seems to be able to appear whenever and wherever. Too long and without a good shave to sharpen itself up, ‘Open 24 Hours’ provides unremarkable genre diversion.

THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL

Yannis Veslemes, Ashim Ahluwalia, Can Evrenol, Severin Fiala, Vernika Franz, Katrin Gebbe, Calvin Reeder, Agnieszka Smoczynska, Peter Strickland, 2018, USA- New Zealand

There’s always one FrightFest film that induces unintentional humour, but it’s not usually the arty subtitled one. On paper, this looks like a winning premise: eight tales from folklore and myth by a variety of international directors. Fiala and Franz’s opening story, “Die Trud” has the quietude and pace that speaks to the patience of European cinema: in a time ago, a couple of girls try to conduct a love affair but only seem to summon the eponymous monster. It’s promising and despite the vivid and troubling Trud itself, the story seems to go nowhere – although I am willing to accept that perhaps this impression is because I am unfamiliar with the legend. The man next to me just threw up his hands in bafflement when it ended. But what is most interesting about this and Katrin Gebbe’s “A Nocturnal Breath” is that the summoned monster is embraced by the women for sexual freedom.

But there was a little response of bafflement to most of the tales. As Kim Newmanwrites, “many of the episodes have an unfinished, anecdote-like feel typical of often-told stories handed down with contradictions and ellipses.” There was outright laughter at the revelation of the melon-headed cannibal children (Calvin Reeder’s “The Melon Heads”). That, and the references to “fucking up a goblin” in "What Ever Happened to Panagas the Pagan ?" caused much laugbter. This Yannis Veslemes’ episode is so frantically edited and dark that I gave up trying to understand what was going on (forgive me: I am watching a lot of films here). Peter Strickland’s “The Cobbler’s Lot” perhaps proved the most satisfactory, channelling his inner Guy Maddin to conjure the ludicrous and nasty nature of his tale.

‘The Field Guide to Evil’ is by the same team that produced ‘The ABCs of Death’, Ant Timpson and Tim League, and the idea that this could be a similar series promises further improvements and gems, but for now this film succeeds mostly on its bizarreness.

THE DARK

Justin P. Lange, Austria 2018

There’s a pleasing patience and austerity to ‘The Dark’ that, at first, implies that there’s going to be a concentration of build-up to something perhaps unusual… the kind of tone and austerity that served ‘Inheritance’ so well. There’s even a slight playfulness at first and slyly delivered twists (Alex’s first appearance made me jump). But then it settles down to something far more recognisable, resembling one of those tween romance-horror about a misunderstood special one overcoming their alienation through friendship. Yes, I’m aware I’ve dampened its appeal as adult fodder, but there is much to like about ‘The Dark’ and that tone, although not especially leading to transcendent things, maintains a level-headed detachment and elusiveness throughout. The slightly drained palette helps.

Mina is a flesh-eating ghoul, mythologised as the creature in the woods praying on those unfortunate to stray into the trees. But then she accidentally discovers a blind and abused boy in the back of a victim’s car and, finding herself burdened with him, things start to change for her. For a start, Alex (Toby Nichols) is a far more convincing representation of trauma than Mary in ‘Open 24 Hours’, exhibiting a crushed soul and a little Stockholm Syndrome. It’s a physical performance where he always seems to be trying to make himself smaller. Mina (Nadia Alexander) is a little on the side of the bratty undead, a Goth girl fantasy about to save the nervy needy boy. Nadia Alexander’s performance storms ahead through the film like a teen strop, providing momentum that always seems a step ahead of the more deliberate pace. She provides the dynamism without disturbed the measured tone. The relationship of the kids doesn’t fall into unwarranted sentimentality and there is a healthy streak of nastiness to keep it on the right side of the tween horror I compared it to earlier. The pinnacle of such a tale is ‘Let the Right One In’, but ‘The Dark’ is a assured and spiky enough to conjure a painful coming-of-age fantasy.

THE GOLEM

Doran & Yoav Paz, 2018, USA

The Paz brothers produced one of the better found-footage films in ‘Jeruzalem’, a film that did right what ‘Cloverfield’ got wrong. For this reason, I had much anticipated for their second feature, ‘The Golem’. It starts much like I imagined the film would continue, with a huge Golem in the shadows. But this is the prologue and we then move into the tale proper. In 17^th Century Lithuania, Hanna is trying to assert herself as a woman as their community is threatened by outsiders. She uses Kabbalah magic to create a Golem from mud to protect them, even though she is forbidden to do such a thing as a woman, which puts her in conflict with the men and her husband. But the Golem she creates takes the form of her dead son, responding to her desires and dormant anger, and this can only lead to tragedy.

This isn’t a monster movie as you might anticipate, but something more concerned with characters and the question of genders and defiance. It’s the monster as an extension of the individual, an Id unleashed for both good and bad. In this, it benefits immensely from the full-blooded performances of Hani Furstenberg as Hanna and Ishai Golan as her husband who treat it like the serious drama of relationships and community that it also is. It’s intriguing and shows that the Paz’s are interested not only in Judaism but in the nature and origin of monsters, not just in unleashing them (‘Jeruzalem’ had evidence of this too). Perhaps I wanted more head-crushing Golem devastation, but this is a thoughtful, considered and well-rounded tale about the uses and causes of monsters.

CLIMAX

 

Gasper Noé, 2018, France

The surprise was that Noé was there to introduce the film. The opening question was from Alan Jones who declared how this film was receiving the best reviews of Noé’s careers, that is was generally getting great response, and then he asked, “So what went wrong?” Of course, Noé is notorious, loathed and heralded for being controversial and although the Twitter responses to ‘Climax’ have mainly been positive, I have also seen reactions bemoaning that this is not a horror film and should have not have closed the festival. All I know that I was fully engrossed and captivated and that then when I actually thought of the world around me, about two thirds into the film, I realised the women next to me had walked out and I hadn’t noticed: I guess that is an example of two differing responses.

It starts with the epilogue and end credits and then a series of talking heads introducing the diverse bunch of dancers we are about to meet in a practice hall surrounded by the harsh winter conditions outside. Then they come together and dance in what might be one of the greatest dance scenes ever filmed. And when the music starts, it never stops: this is a constantly sublime dance soundtrack (a highlight being Aphex Twins’ ‘Windowlicker’, one of my all-time favourites).There is no flash setting or context or props, just amazing moves and glides and contortions: Noé uses a typically long take which allows the dancers to perform without edits interrupting or creating false fluidity; and when the camera does move, it’s to gently prod and probe the performances with flowing slides between them. Synchronicity is not the whole game here, although they do that too, but it’s the individualism of each dancer that is prioritised and celebrated. And I was mesmerised from then on as the long takes deliver a real-time descent into madness when someone spikes the booze.

Then the outrageousness takes a nasty turn. PeterBradshaw says, “It is as if Noé has somehow mulched up the quintessence of dance, coke and porn together and squooshed it into his camera.” The acting of hysteria is something I’m usually averse too (hysteria is often mistaken for poignancy in film, which is why I can’t quite get along with Zulawski’s ‘Possession’), but this is about that. There is a long scene where Selva (Sofia Boutella) puts her hands down her tights in a kind of onanistic ecstasy and then, in the following moment, has this abruptly change to panic when she thinks her hands trapped: it’s moment that plays out the ups and downs of drug-induced moods that can change in a blink, and a convincing playing-out of the high and lows of hysteria. We don’t get to connect with characters and we know just enough about them to give their LSD nightmare some context. But this is not a film for that: it’s just following them around as the barriers to their civility, restraint and responsibility crumble. And the music keeps pumping.

Descents into madness and/or hell are standard in horror – and of course represented at this festival - and in this way ‘Climax’ fits the horror mould: it’s not a fall into an orgy of gore and Bosch-like terrors, but there’s nothing truly stretching the realms of plausibility. In this way it’s all the more unsettling. It’s not a character piece, but the various personalities come through enough to make it a tragedy that we start out at a place of ensemble exuberance and, when the barriers are down, fall into the realms of irresponsibility and debauchery. By the end, it falls into the realms of an upside down camera with strobing editing which left me wondering what the hell was going on and I gave up trying to decipher; it’s only at this final hurdle that Noé lets the camera interfere instead of observe. But otherwise, it’s formally engrossing with its long takes and convincingly lays out its improvisations and decline into cruelty in real time. But it’s true that from the evidence of the first half of the film that Noé would do just fine with a ensemble piece if he ever decided to step away from being a shockmeister. Perhaps the camera is searching too hard to find the next outrage. It’s conclusion that our civility is a tissue-thin construct is an old one, but this mixture of dance and decadence is vibrant and compelling where hell is on the dancefloor.

FRIGHTFEST day #4, 2018

HELL IS WHERE THE HOME IS

 

Orson Oblowitz, 2018, USA

Beneath the clunky title is a reasonable minor thriller with enough suspense and slickness to keep interest. The programme says, “Two dysfunctional couples rent a modern luxury desert home for the weekend hoping to sort out their messed-up lives.” You see, that’s your problem right there: “a modern luxury desert home”, remotely located, plus you’re “dysfunctional” – that’s just asking for trouble. The film takes its time setting up its inner threat, laying out the domestic strife and prioritising characterisation so more context is given before the trouble starts. Then potential trouble knocks on the door in the shape of a woman who has broken down and just needs to use the phone. This gets their paranoia going and this is the film’s best sequence. Then there’s the external threat breaking in – the home invasion – and this is swift and, refreshingly, doesn’t linger to let bad dialogue rise to the surface. On the down side, the bad guys here are quite intriguing but this is never really satisfied; but maybe they are inriguing because they are given minimal time. It’s a crime thriller more than a slasher, which makes it a little different in current company. It’s decent and well executed with enough twists to keep things on edge, but it’s unlikely to greatly trouble you much afterwards.

THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIG FOOT

Robert D Krzykowski, 2018, USA

With a title like that like that, I was expecting something more along the lines of ‘Puppet Master’ or ‘Frankenstein’s Army’, but then in the introduction the cast and crew started namedropping John Sayles and composer Joe Kraemer started citing John Willaims as an idol, which meant I quickly reassessed my expectations. Someone said this was like an episode of Spielberg’s ‘Amazing Stories’ and that’s certainly a fair comparison. 

Sam Elliot is the eponymous Calvin Barr, trying to live humbly as real American heroes who have killed the poster boy for fascism are prone to do. This part of the film is all about old age and that Elliot is great goes without saying. Aiden Turner plays Barr as a younger man, killing Hitler: a touch of spy gadgetry is fun and the romantic subplot is the kind that harks to bubblegum romance. We're American myth-making again. The film has a big streak of nostalgia, the kind that starts to coagulate early as this is all about former peaks in life and waning in old age.

Then, as an old man, Barr is approached to kill The Big Foot as it’s causing an illness that might spread throughout mankind, or at least America. As a fabulation, it’s an agreeably oddball conceit that swaps potential fun for earnestness. By the end, you may be moved or feel smothered with Kraemer’s score and the soft hues for its insistence on being emotional.

HE’S OUT THERE

Quinn Lasher, 2018, USA

A somewhat by-the-numbers slasher when a family go to their secluded holiday home – you see, there’s your problem… - unaware that they have been watched there over the years by someone in the woods who is now ready to unleash his craziness. There are fairy-tale trimmings all the way through with a read thread guiding protagonists through the trees and whatnot, but this is just the kind of window-dressing that isn’t half as poignant as it thinks: that fairy-tales are kindred spirits to horror is old, old news. Its most risqué feature is putting two young girls in constant threat, but only in a TV Movie thriller way. It’s fluid and nicely filmed, but with only bland characters to root for against a mask-wearing maniac, there isn’t so much to get to grips with.

TERRIFIED

 

Demian Rugna, 2018, Argentina

You see, the thing I do like about ‘The Grudge’ series is that its premise is just an excuse for a series of scary set-pieces; it’s not so concerned with causes and resolution. There’s some of that to Rugna’s ‘Terrified’ with an entire neighbourhood suddenly suffering from malicious supernatural phenomena. Two paranormal investigators come to sort things out, but really they do nothing except get frightened – and that’s all good. In the paranormal investigation arena, it isn’t insultingly po-faced or obsessed with itself as ‘The Conjuring’ but just gets on with its scares. In the face of true supernatural force, what good would investigators actually do when there is no plot-convenience and a deux ex machina to resolve things? No, more importantly ‘Terrified’ concentrates on the scares. Oh, and there are plenty. And if you’re not unnerved, there’s plenty of creepiness.

The man under the bed/in the closet is unlikely to be forgettable. But it’s the boy corpse at the dinner table - just sat there in broad daylight - that I won’t be able to shake. An example of how well-known scares can still pack a punch when done correctly and with flare, with cutting away just at the right moment and perhaps lingering a little too long at times. All it’s interested in is a neighbourhood under siege by horror set pieces. ‘Terrified’ provides lots of fun in being a showcase for the genuinely unsettling.

TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID

Issa López, 2017, Mexico

It’s hard to think that this film, which has been so warmly received and whose worth and skill are obvious, had such trouble getting accepted, but that’s the story López tells. No one wanted it. But it was apparently taken under FrightFest’s wing and now it’s blooming. It came frontloaded with such a reputation that I dashed from ‘Terrified’ to the Predator statue at the top of The Empire’s stairs to queue for passholder tickets (I was second in line and got the very last ticket for the screening at The Prince Charles cinema). It’s easy to see where its emotional clout comes from as it’s based in the truth of street orphans in Mexico. There is a long history of coming-of-age cinema crossing over with horror – ‘The Secret of the Beehive’, ‘Celia’, ‘Class Trip’… oh, too many to mention – but the obvious reference is Guillermo del Toro in its particular mix of brutal realism and escapist fantasy, harsh truths mitigated with magic realism. Murder and dead kids mix with ghosts, animated toy bears and graffiti coming alive, for example. When her mother goes missing, abducted by the ruthless Huascas, a trail of blood follows Estrella (Paola Lara) everywhere – and indeed, she does seem to get people killed – and she falls in with a street gang for survival. The ostensible leader of this gang is the diminutive but determined Shine (Juan Ramón López) who is both threatened and fascinated by Estrella. When he pickpockets a mobile phone and a gun from one of the Huascas, a fatal run-in with the gang seems assured.

The kids are hunted and ignored and not even acknowledged except as victims by this underworld. There will be no adult help or protection. Despite this merciless context, the kids still find time to believe in wishes and find moments of fun. It’s so good that you won’t really won’t really care that the phone seems to stay charged by the power of narrative, or why the Huascas are so worried about it when the police really don’t want to anything to do with it. Or why the kids don’t just turn it off at important moments. Yet it’s only in the last act that the balance seems to tilt to insistence on magic realism at the expense of some obvious character motivation and behaviour; like Del Toro, ‘Tigers are not Afraid’ uses horror for sentiment that eventually forgoes reflection for escapism. Nevertheless, there is no doubt López has produced something affecting and unforgettable.

Issa López 

FRIGHTFEST DAY #3, 2018

RAVERS

Bernhard Pucher, UK, 2018

One of those “alternative zombie” scenarios: this time, a batch of  over-hyped energy drinks that causes homicidal tendencies turns almost everyone at an illegal rave into quasi-zombies. This horror scenario is the perfect chance for Becky (Natasha Henstridge) to overcome her nervy, germophobic ways and reinvent herself as a survival girl. Elsewhere, the drug dealer (the only black male character – Kamal Angelo Bolden) sees a business opportunity when he sees the drink turns the people into obsessive addicts (“More!”). It’s this angle that distinguishes these brain-dead antagonists: rather than rampant killers, the drink amplifies their neediness (for drugs, drink, dance, sex, etc) to murderous levels when not placated. It’s a gleefully silly party-pleaser but it’s not witty or inventive enough to really break through the standard. And what is worse is that, for a film about a rave, the music doesn’t boost the adrenalin into your memory (whereas in ‘Climax’, it’s immediate and constant), although this might just be a matter of taste. 

HERETIKS

Paul Hyett, 2018, UK

I liked ‘Howl’ well enough, Paul Hyett’s werewolf film, but found ‘The Seasoning House’ woefully misjudged. ‘Heretiks’ is more like the latter, with a bunch of women cut off from the world and subject to abuse and horror, but it’s a marked improvement in that this isn’t constant rape. No, this is a bunch of nuns – which seem currently in vogue in horror – and although it’s set in the 17th century, the period makes less of a mark than the monastery: it could be any era that chooses to cut itself off from the world outside. The Reverend Mother saves women that are about to be condemned as witches by Michael Ironside (a cameo that hints at a charm and wit that the rest of the film doesn’t have, because he can do this in his sleep) and then consigns them to a locked-in repressive existence in the nunnery; but of course, there’s more to it than that and – after a slow and meandering build-up - there’s possession and nun zombies. But there’s nothing new here, it's portayal of good'n'evil being routine, and it quickly runs out of steam, even with its succinct running time. It just doesn’t muster up enough originality to match the potential of its setting and becomes dull long before the finale. But nice glowing eyes on the possessed nuns, though. 

CHUCK STEEL: 

NIGHT OF THE TRAMPIRES

Michael Mort, 2018, UK

FrightFest has presented several teasers for “Chuck Steel” over the years (there’s me in a Chuck Steel mask in 2013), but here it is finally, Michael Mort’s passion project. Chuck Steel is a bombastic, obnoxious lone wolf cop on the edge, a rule-free maverick, etc, who finds himself battling an outbreak of tramp vampires. In this, he is aided by Abraham Van Rental (now there’s a good pun), an increasingly crossdressing boss and a host of sidekicks that keep getting killed off. It’s a homage/satire on those ridiculously testosterone pumped action flicks of the 80s and has plenty of appropriate one-liners and posturing.

The animation is often remarkably detailed and executed – the chaotic car chase earlier on probably being the highlight – and the script is often hilarious. There’s no doubting the commitment and scope of it all:

Animortal created for “Chuck Steel” 425 puppets to represent hundreds of different characters and creatures, and dozens of giant scale-model sets. The stop-motion content was shot at 24 frames per second instead of the usual 12. [Variety]

Introducing it, Michael Mort meekly said that some people found it offensive but the bad taste only helps in making it a great party film. It’s stupid, silly, outrageous and so fast that it skids over its constant retreat to coarse humour when it can’t manage anything else. There are times it falls into the misogyny it mostly satirises, but it is mostly balanced precariously on the right side. As these things tend to do, it runs out of steam and the humour gets a little squashed and shenanigans get a little prosaic as the finale gets bigger and bigger, but the animation is never less than captivating. 

WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE

Colin Minihan, 2018, Canada 

Jules and Jackie head off to a forest retreat to celebrate their anniversary, but if there’s one thing horror teaches us is that you should never trust secluded places. Soon, the anniversary is defined by violence. …Here’s one that’s hard to speak about without giving it all away, so if you haven’t, you should come back here only when you have.

Introducing the film, Colin Minihan said it was inspired by his interest in killers that get away with it. From this, he has crafted a slick enough stalk’n’slash tale that surely benefits from the central couple being gay: if Hannah Emily Anderson had been male, this would have been far more conventional and the one-liners more obvious and tiresome. Also, Anderson never finds the segue from lover-to-psycho that wholly convinces: she opts for turning either on and off when required that forgoes a more nuanced deception. What really elevates the film is Brittany Allen’s wordless evocation of a woman struggling to be a Survival Girl through the deceit and heartbreak that gives her a constantly pained look and perspective.

The finale isn’t impervious to that viewer penchant of “Well, what I would do in that situation is” and “Why doesn’t she just do that?” (for me, slightly more thought-out plotting would have prevented this) which weakens the third act even as it tries to carry its twists right to the very end. But it’s the pretty scenery and Allen’s performance and the underlying heartbreak that stayed with me and overcomes any weakness.

UPGRADE

Leigh Whannell, 2018, USA

Genre cinema is currently thick with homages to the 80s flicks that contemporary directors loved as kids: there was even the invite to “Dress in your 80s gear” for FrightFest opening night. And here’s another –  in this case: yes, ‘Robocop’; yes, ‘Terminator’; yes, even ‘Death Wish’, as the FrightFest programme cites. In the near future after a horrific accident and a run-in with bad guys that results in his wife’s murder, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is left paraplegic. But then one of his former clients that utilised Grey’s analogue skills at customising old cars implants him with a computer ship that “cures” his paralysis. But then it turns out this implant has a personality of its own, talking to him in his head and calling itself STEM, and it’s more than willing to help him on a mission of vengeance. 

Leigh Whennell of course gets his horror credentials from 'Saw' and (although this wins no kudos from me) the 'Insidious' franchise. In the Q&A, Whannell was keen to avoid condemning technology and was far more neutral: because, of course, technology is just a vessel that can be both good and bad (asked what he would choose if he could have an implant “upgrade” him, he said he would choose one to solve procrastination, which seems sensible to me). The film is pretty good at portraying the joys and perils of technology – for example, the self-driving car is wonderful until it won’t obey voice commands – and it’s near-future is convincing in that (STEM aside) it’s only a few steps away from what we know. It’s fun to see STEM giving Grey the superpowers he needs and Whannell is good at letting the seductiveness of this play right through the audience (we all love a good revenge fantasy). The fight scenes are striking and brutal, the story never forgetting the pleasures of its b-movie silliness and limitations; it’s frequently funny, slickly made and you can feel it being thought-out right until the last moments. Also, Marshall-Green delivers a fine physical and vulnerable performance that gives it all a solid foundation. It was a definite FrightFest favourite and an example of how a little invention and an attentive script goes a long way.

FRIGHT FEST

Ante Novakovic, 2018, USA

A wretched mayor decides that using slimeball horror director to stage a “Fright Fest” in the local abandoned asylum is a good promotional idea. But a bus transporting the criminally insane crashes nearby and… You get the idea. Soon, audiences can’t tell that people are really being killed and the director thinks it’s elevating his art to the next level. That kind of thing – but it’s rough and a faint air of amateurish keeps tugging at it. It’s one of those horrors that aims for satire but ends up as an example of how horror is the most self-loathing of genres, painting its creators as scuzzbuckets and the audience as prurient thrillseekers then stupid then deserving. It’s meant to be bad taste fun but it’s not.