GRIMMFEST digital: 'Motherly', 'Shot in the Dark', 'The Spore, 'The Pizzagate Massacre'

Motherly

Director – Craig David Wallace

Screenwriters – Ian Malone, Craig David Wallace

2020, USA

 

One of those thrillers that relies on its twists, with a spot of home invasion thrown in. With her husband convicted of murdering a little girl, a mother and her bratty daughter are hidden away in a small town with only a somewhat shabby policeman for contact with the outside world. It’s slick and entertaining; clues are parcelled out in dialogue and unreliable flashbacks, but any seasoned genre fan will likely see where this is going. It’s lifted by good performances and characters that are convincingly flawed and relatable for that.

 

 

Shot in the Dark

Director – Keene McRae

Screenwriters – Kristoffer McMillan, Keene McRae, Lane Thomas

Cast – Kristoffer McMillan, Lane Thomas, Keene McRae, Austin Hébert, Christine Donlon, Jacqueline Toboni, Brandon Sklenar, Kelley Mack

 

Elliptical and fragmented, this serial killer film won’t be for everyone, especially since it features the conceit of a guy reflecting on the past whilst tied to a chair as a victim. But it’s a film just as concerned with reflection and capturing the dead-end malaise of small town lives as it is recapturing the terror and suffering of, shall we say, “torture porn”. Its performances are smouldering rather than showy, the aesthetic and temporal play are reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammel, but the trippiness born of close-up montages remind of Harmony Korine’s ‘Spring Breakers’ or Andrea Arnold’s ‘American Honey’. It will likely be on a second watch where the pieces and details come together, but it is the poignant social commentary about friends and inertia that distinguishes this from run-of-the-mill killer films.

 

 

The Spore

Writer & Director – DM Cunningham

2021, USA

Cast – Haley Heslip, Peter Tell, Jackson Ezinga, Jeannie Jefferies

An infection horror with an ambient, mood-piece feel initially, helped immensely by Dreaming In Neon’s score. Leaving radio broadcasts to deal with the big picture stuff, ‘The Spore’ focuses on a few characters, providing vignettes of their encounters with a lethal spore that kills and mutates. An audience will likely spend several moments shouting at the characters onscreen not to act stupid (“No, DON’T go and check it out!”; and who goes backpacking when the news is full of coverage…? But then I remember the behaviour of some during this actual pandemic, so…), and perhaps the acting is a little hit-or-miss, but the ambience is good and the mutations increasingly fun. It’s beautifully shot with good use of the green of the forest and garage neons. The radio broadcasts are well done, and the infected are nicely sickening (body-horror fans will be satisfied) before it gleefully goes all goofy practical mutations, quite winningly.

 

The Pizzagate Massacre

Director – John Valley

Screenwriter – John Valley

2021, USA

Cast - Tinus Seaux, Alexandria Payne, Lee Eddy, Mike Dellens, John Valley

 

John Valley’s film (and it is his film as he directed, wrote, co-scored, produced and undoubtably made the coffee and acts in the key role of the bad guy) lays its cards on the table at the start as a commentary on modern toxic media and macho militias. When a reporter, Karen Black (Alexandria Payne), is fired from a despicable conspiracy-spewing right-wing television show, she sees her opportunity in making a mark by following up a conspiracy regarding a small pizza outlet (pizzagate was one of the most catchy and inflammatory Trump-era conspiracies). For this, she befriends Duncan Tinus Seaux, a deluded militia man (and David Koresh offspring) trying to pull himself towards something better but unable to quite let go of the conspiracies.

 

Even though the whacko behaviour of the militia is played for comedy at the early stages, Valley’s film isn’t just lampoons and caricatures. These militiamen act as if they are in their own action movie, and Valley says in the Q&A that this is what he’s observed himself; but Valley is more interested in humanising the deluded Duncan, and in this he is helped by an increasingly nuanced and excellent performance by Tinus Seaux. Alexandria Payne is adamantly unreadable throughout, her motives murky but evidently mercenary. Valley as Philip is potentially the most comic-bookish, but provided with such a reflective context, he comes across as the loose cannon he is, both laughable and dangerous. Lee Eddy is manic and hysterical as the conspiracy spewing Terri Lee, but that seems totally in keeping (note how the producer keeps reminding her of her contract when she’s threatened with death). It’s in these details that a complex web of motivation and complicity it conveyed. Who’s making the money?

 

It's funny and thoughtful and ultimately a plea from the inside to stop pouring toxic and crazy shit to the susceptible.

Looking at the two posters for this film, called ‘Duncan’ in the US, one plays up the conspiracy theory mind, but the other plays to the action grindhouse road movie angle. Both have merit, although the former implies a far trippier film.