GRIMFEST digital 2021
SLAPFACE
Writer & Director: Jeremiah Kipp
2021, USA
Cast – August Maturo, Mike Manning, Libe Barer,
Mirabelle Lee, Dan Hedaya
Kipp frontloads his film about abandoned, simmering
youth with the game of “slapface”, where the two orphaned brothers slap each other’s
faces to vent pent up anger. Domestic abuse and bullying are the themes –
underlined by end text – where the older brother Tom (Manning) is ill equipped to
deal with bringing up his slightly wayward younger brother, Lucus (Maturo).
Lucus is friendless and bullied by three girls, one of whom he carries out a
clandestine friendship of sorts and flirtation, but things take a turn when he befriends
a witch he discovers in an abandoned Gothic building. The witch is deliberately
the kind found in old fairy tales, but is here a manifestation of his latent disturbance
and violence, and by being mostly kept as a looming shadow, is properly eerie.
In fact, the whole tone is a mixture of the consistently
eerie and the dejected realism of, say, ‘River’s Edge’, or the second
half of ‘Ham on Rye’. It’s not quite the supernatural unleashing the
child’s psychopathic side, as with an example like ‘The Pit’, for Lucus is
just a troubled, misunderstood kid and the witch – which he seems to have summoned
as an unforgiving feminine force – becomes a loose cannon protective monster
for him. Maturo puts in an excellent performance, by turns dejected, feisty,
frustrated and sad.
And in scenarios like this, we’re often left taking the blame for the monsters we have unleashed or have affinity for. As with all the best horror-bildungsroman, it conjures a troubling emotional charge.
The Night Belong to Monsters
Director – Sebastian Perillo
Screenwriter – Paula Marotta
2021, Argentina
Cast – Lu Grasso, Esteban Lamothe, Jazmín Stuart,
Gustavo Garzón, Agustin Daulte, Macarena Suárez
Again, set in a downbeat world of a troubled teen. Sol
is uprooted from her beloved Grandma’s to live with her mother’s new lover, who
mum can’t stop pawing. Bullied and friendless, vulnerable in a new bedroom
where the door doesn’t close, Sol saves a trapped white dog with seemingly
preternatural abilities, telepathically bonding with it so that it becomes her
violent defender.
Again, centred in a strong young performance from Lu
Grasso, Perillo’s film is low key and mostly nocturnal, its vibe moody and downcast.
It suggests a bond between violence and sex, primal reactions to adolescent
angst, etc, but it never quite has the poignancy promised by its title. Ultimately,
it leaves Sol codling her violent manifestations, a happy ending. Miserablist
coming-of-age with a supernatural uplift.
For Roger
Director - Aaron Bartuska
Screenwriter – Aaron Bartuska, Gwyn Cutler, Derek
Pinchot
2021, USA
Cabin in the woods; a masked assailant: yes, it’s low-budget
homemade horror time. It takes close to an hour before things kick in,
otherwise it’s Roger watching home videos of being a passive-aggressive dick to
his late girlfriend. A slow burn isn’t an issue, but there is the sense that
nine out of ten shots last too long. In the end, despite sparks of insight into
gaslighting and the “My Life On Film!” generation, the home invasion horror
gives way to Roger’s self-pity.
Father of Flies
Director – Ben Charles Edwards
Screenwriters - Ben Charles Edwards, Nadia Doherty
Cast - Nicholas Tucci, Camilla Rutherford, Davi Santos,
Sandra Andreis, Page Ruth
Comes across as a wicked witch/stepmother tale. It’s
perpetual oddness and conflict between naturalism and affection, even a hint of
giallo, and the ever popping-up threat of a cheaper horror of ‘The Conjuring’
variety make for an odd concoction. Again, another film grounded in a notable
young performance from Keaton Ketlow as the boy through whose perspective this
is mostly filtered. Camilla Rutherford plays up the English Oddball Stepmother
That Must Not Be Trusted for all its worth (the massage mask signals her
otherworldliness and untrustworthiness to the max).
For a while, this oddness and fairy-tale affectation reminded
me of Philip Ridley’s work. Ultimately, it ends up both more satisfying and cruel
than maybe predicted.
Happy Times
Director – Michael Mayer
Screenwriters – Michael Mayer, Guy Ayal
Cast – Michael Aloni, Iris Bahr, Shani Atias, Liraz
Chamami, Alon Pdut, Ido Mor, Mike Burstyn, Daniel Lavid
A dinner party that starts out privileged and ordinary
enough descends into violent farce via grudges both petty and large, as well as
bigotries both quiet and vocal. It’s a class thing with almost everyone a
money-making professional – one character laments why they can’t have a party
with just “normal” people – so the thin line between the monied and savagery is
a given, but it’s also a very pointed criticism of Israeli machismo,
stubbornness, misogyny and prejudices. It's this that is most provocative, but
it’s a satire that knows what it’s doing: no one is spared when the violence
and grudges start and there’s only one way it can end. And watch how a character
knows how to spin prejudice and accusations of prejudice to get rid of the
police.
Not so broad it becomes wanton slapstick, it keeps its
eye on the allegory, is well performed, escalating organically from insolences and
pettiness already in place. And it’s funny.
**
In the Q&A for ‘Slapface’, director
Jeremiah Kipp spoke of how horror is an ideal genre for dealing with domestic
horror just by throwing in a monster of some sort, and all these films adhere
and prove that. ‘Happy Times’ has no supernatural element, but the violence
and gore belong to the horror genre (the horror being their prejudice, privilege,
etc). The use of the genre in all these films lay bare the dysfunctions and disturbances in a way
otherwise not possible, resulting in emotional content and affect not reachable
otherwise.
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