FrightFest 2023: 'Monolith', 'Cobweb', 'Pandemonium', 'Herd', 'Farang', 'Transmission'

Director: Matt Vesely.
With: Lily Sullivan, Ling Cooper Tang, Ansuya Nathan, Erik Thomson.
Australia 2022. 94 mins.

Although conveyed only through telephone calls to a journalist seemingly willing to compromise herself when desperate, the mystery is riveting. Her investigation of sinister “bricks” is bizarre enough material to be gripping. Is she falling for a conspiracy or mass-delusion? Like 'Void of Night' or 'Pontypool' for example, a film that demonstrates that spoken-word genre storytelling can still work as a dominating factor is cinema. Down-the-rabbit-hole horror with an excellent Lily Tyler where all the clues do add up, there’s a little class commentary, lots of creepiness and a conclusion that, even if it goes in the direction you anticipated, still offers a few surprises to satisfy.

Director: Samuel Bodin.
With: Lizzy Caplan, Anthony Starr, Cleopatra Coleman, Woody Norman.
USA 2023. 88 mins.

Above average studio fare, there enough feints and genre-play to make horror fans laugh with recognition (oh, home invasion masks now?). The FrightFest audience also chuckled away at the scenery-chewing of Caplin and Starr as the parents who evidently neighbour ‘The People Under the Stairs’. Thoroughly entertaining. Cannier than you might expect with a genuine underlay of fairy-tale nastiness.

Director: Quarxx.
With: Hugo Dillon, Ophelia Kolb, Arben Bajraktaraj, Manon Maindivide.
France 2023. 95 mins. 

Excellent start with two guys accepting they are ghosts now, post car crash; but then it goes into twisted fairy-tale land about a bullying preteen girl whilst still seemingly referencing the first tale … and then there’s the tale of a mother not coping with the suicide of her daughter… and although always fascinating, not initially recognising this was a portmanteau meant I was mistakenly trying to find links and continuity where there was none. This also speaks to a confused conception when gluing these tales together, a lack of clarity. The first segment has a wit and promise that the rest doesn’t follow, so however interesting it may continue to be, whatever play and despair it may have with devils and damnation, it never recaptures it and a feeling of disappointment remains.

Director: Steven Pierce.
With: Ellen Adair, Mitzi Akaha, Jeremy Holm, Corbin Bernsen.
USA 2023. 96 mins.

 A gay couple just need a zombie threat to sort their issues out. Despite interesting-enough exploration of toxic masculinity in a militia context, it lets its insistence on being a mundane romance drag it into ridiculous and then redundancy - another film that doesn’t seem to realise how selfish and stupid the protagonist is, getting people killed - as long as they’re doing it for love. And when you’re screaming out in emotional pain, the zombies passing right by don’t notice.

Director: Xavier Gens.
With: Nassim Lyes, Olivier Gourmet, Loryn Nounay, Vithaya Pansringarm.
France 2023. 96 mins.

Action movie cliches perfectly intact: when you go a new city (in this case: Bangkok), find a high building, go to the rooftop and take in the panorama. There’s not the social commentary you might have expected/hoped for, and there’s probably too much ticking of tropes, but when it finally gets to the hallway and elevator fights, that’s everything. A film like Choi Jae-hoon's 'The Killer' and even 'Extraction 2' know to get on with the fights and play cursory attention to predictable, familar set-up, but 'Farang' is happy to wallow in comfort-action.  Nassim Lyles is magnetic enough presence and the fights look visceral and painful. And then it’s just silly season.

Director: Michael J. Hurst.
With: Vernon Wells, Felissa Rose, Dave Sheridan, Sadie Katz.
USA 2023. 73 mins.

Admirably ambitious in telling its tale through channel-hopping, providing a jigsaw narrative, but the core story of a filmmaker pursuing occult fascinations for apocalyptic ends is old hat and not distinctive enough. It can be hard to distinguish between the intentionally and unintentionally bad acting and the digital sheen does not suit all formats being homaged, so despite some impressive sci-fi effects, it occasionally looks unintentionally cheap.

Soul

Soul

Directors - Pete Doctor & Kemp Powers

Story – Pete Doctor, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers

2022, USA

Stars – Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton

 

Life is worth living and all that jazz.

 

Of course, you might have to die first to reflect on your lost chances, et cetera. This is Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a loser jazz musician who dies in an accident just as he gets his big chance. Or maybe you are a potential soul called 22 (Tina Fey) and are scared to live, and you hide this behind a smartass attitude and an annoying white middle-aged woman’s voice? As Joe is our way in, and this is about a life lived in lost chances, disapproval and regret, there’s quite a mature feel going in. Pixar demonstrates a deceptively gentle mastery of the family-friendly animation as there’s a lightness of touch accessible to all. The animation is excellent – look at that hair and fur! – and there are a lot of fun little gags in the background and in passing (the impressionable pre-life souls for example). It’s rich, amusing, addressing big themes, etc.

 

Then 22 body-swaps with Joe and he’s in the cat. Probably not enough cat-specific gags, but that’s not what causes a dip in investment. The issue is this: it was originally meant to be 22’s story but it became Joe’s and then got shared. But when 22 goes on a kind of teaching Joe how to live when in his body, it seems a betrayal of Joe’s agency and seems unwarranted. He doesn’t feel like the incompetent loser his mother says; he’s just following his muse and that’s a rewarding life in itself. Are we really to think that Joe wouldn’t convince his pupil to continue playing her instrument, that only 22’s possession and childishness achieved this? And what about how the people in the barber are all enraptured at 22-as-Joe’s childish profundities? There is the sense that Joe is being dumped on needlessly and incorrectly.

 

Something just doesn’t fit quite right – the result of the original 22-dominated script and trying to make that still work even though Joe stepped forward. And that’s before we get to the issue that, however androgynous the soul fleetingly claims to be, 22 has a sassy white middle-aged woman’s voice that defines the entity, and that’s what we sense when “she” appropriates Joe’s black character and life and teaches him life-lessons. It’s always Tina Fey’s voice and it never varies, although it could and probably should. Hey, her naiveté even wins over his mother. All the fine work establishing Joe’s relatable life-challenges and building him into someone to like, a maturity and flaws to root for, and it all plays second-fiddle to one of those animated sassy-troll conceits that dominate contemporary franchises. As I watched, I had the sneaky suspicion that Joe’s character was being betrayed and it was Robert Daniels’ writing that shone a light for me on why that might be. 

But, the jazzy feel is so accomplished that not even the otherworldliness overturns it: it’s likely the street scenes and the barbers that will stay with you. There’s an underlay of melancholy that sympathises with adult viewers’ life disappointments while at the same time offering its young audience the advice to seize your chances and yet appreciate what you have. It may stumble, but in its approach to this from both ends of life-experience shows the narrative ambition Pixar is often heralded for. ‘Soul’ is beautifully made, its exploration of The Meaning Of Life is standard, and one can only applaud its emphasis on art enriching a life and soul

 

Jazz and all that life, etc.