Fresh

Fresh

Director – Mini Cave

Writers – Lauryn Kahn

2022, USA-UK

Stars –     Daisy Edgar-Jones, Sebastian Stan, Jojo T. Gibbs

 

It’s probably what you thought ‘A Wounded Fawn’ was going to be, and it even goes psychedelic for a moment with the (late) credits going all Joe Meek. Although there are not so many surprises, the true gold is to be found in the performances, the chemistry between Daisy Edgar-Jones (Noa) and Sebastian Stan (Steve). Stan is all quiet charm and confidence and it’s easy to see why Noa would fall for Steve. But it’s even with Jones and Jojo T. Gibbs, conveying a full friendship without much screen time together, or the interaction between Gibbs and an ex (Dayo Okeniyi).

 

‘Fresh’ goes for a dungeon chic aesthetic with an exceptional production design by Jennifer Mordenfor the house created for the film. Otherwise. Cave offers up a long set-up to make you care, an excellent soundtrack that goes from indie pop to hip hop via an ‘80s classic, a nasty showdown and some flashes of degenerate “customers” in kind of Alejandro Jodorowsky tableaus. That last is a little obvious, a little shoe-horned, perhaps, but it doesn’t dwell and it’s not aiming for torture porn veracity. But its feminist credibility is more organic, stated in a couple of key lines (“It’s always their fault” and “Women like you are the problem”) and the fact that the women pull together for quite that kitchen battle. No one is stupid (you can’t even blame the guy who assesses the situation and decides he won’t actually hang around to play saviour) and the maturity of the characters is where ‘Fresh’ really excels. 

 

 

It is slick, just a little sick and a little standard, and, having allowed itself a slow burn to the credits, never loses it pace or is diverted by abuse when it kicks in (another benefit of having women at the helm where it’s the betrayal that hurts?).  Despite its truly nasty premise, with the perpetrator’s barely acknowledging the brutal misogyny, ‘Fresh’ has one of the most charming villains and a fun realisation. And again, another horror film that provides excellent female performances.

Bones and All

 

Bones and All

Director – Luca Guadagnino

Writers – David Kajganich (screenplay by), Camille DeAngelis (based on the novel by)

2022, Italy-United States

Stars – Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance

 

All I knew was that Luca Guadagnino was directing and that this was covered on the Evolution of Horror podcast. I knew nothing else, and that the poster looked like a coming-of-age drama but being featured on EOH peaked my interest even more. So, thoroughly clueless, the opening shocker came as a pleasant and gruesome surprise. Oh, so this’ll be the real deal, I thought. And it is that too.

 

[And here’s the spoiler alert.]

 

Then Maren (Taylor Russel) is left by her father and starts a road movie to find her mother. Then she meets a tour de force performance of ambiguous creepiness from Mark Rylance – a balancing act he keeps up right up to the end – and then meets Timothée Chalamet, translating their otherness as a junky hustler’s odyssey. This otherness, outsiderness, is what they call being an “eater”. Then they meet Michael Stuhlbarg, who matches Rylance creep-for-creep, possible threat for possible threat. It becomes obvious that this tale is almost as freewheeling as a Jarmusch ramble, except a little more control of the pace and a little trimming might have stopped the Young Adult source starting to dominate. This is despite the fact that the editing will chop short scenes to keep the flow (the opening montage of the empty school hallways that begins the film immediately set the tone and got me). And yes, we are in the realm where screenwriter David Kajganich says he doesn’t really think it’s a horror and seems a little disappointed when Mike Muncer says that’s how he sees it (Evolution of Horror podcast). Horror has long been gleefully eloquently mashing-up genres so somewhat dreamy coming-of-age horror for strong stomachs really shouldn’t be seen as beneath intelligence or sophisticated emotion.

 

But the horror moments are strong stuff, and the film-makers conviction that it had to be was why it had to be independently financed, surely why the supporting cast is so, so impressive – everyone gets a memorable showpiece – and why the YA tropes don’t quite come to dominate. Indeed, Guadagnino will fade out the dialogue when it threatens to get bad and leaves Reznor and Ross’ score or a moody song take over, which simultaneously circumnavigates cheesiness but steers unapologetically into wordless melodrama. As well as the eating.

 

Perhaps a little too slacker, a little too YA for those looking for straight-out horror, but it’s a fascinating wandering road movie horror with the dangerous youths just trying to mimic normality and fit in. That it takes its potentially adolescent concept of all-consuming love equating to cannibalism means it is never quite sentimental or silly - and the players steer clear of this too - grounding their moral conflicts in the gore set-pieces. And yes, as is typical of the road movie genre, it’s quite often a series of vignettes and for that occasionally it feels it isn’t quite gelling. But the cast are fantastic, it’s beautifully shot, Guadagnino leaning on the poetic-romantic and gonzo-gruesome in equal measure, and although it is not poignant or revelatory in its portrayal of outsiders, its meandering nature means you never quite know which genre it’s going to pit stop next. It also means you can take the morsels you want from it, romantic, mood piece, actor's showcase, arthouse road movie or horror.

Grimmfest Easter Horror Nights 6: 'Keeping Company', 'Paradise Cove' & 'You're Dead, Helene', 'Minimally Invasive'

 Keeping Company

Director - Josh Wallace

Screenwriters - Josh Wallace, Devin Das

Starting off on the more goofy end of horror, with humour quite broad, but hammering its satire harder and harder until we get bloodstains on white business phones. Trying to have the same bite as, say, ‘I Care a Lot’: it even has that "I'm a shark" bullshit. In this world, parents are monsters, meat is fast food capitalism, life insurance is just a scam, workers become unwitting murderers. It just doesn’t have that virtuoso streak of ‘Society’s finale or a footing in reality that might make the characters more engaging; or the gleeful silliness of ‘TerrorVision’; or, if we’re talking cannibalism and What Lies Behind Suburban Surfaces, the drollness of ‘Parents’. It becomes wearisome, even if it has a good pace.

Paradise Cove

Director - Martin Guigui

Screenwriter - Sherry Klein

2021, USA

I liked Martin Guigui’s ‘The Unhealer’, but although it starts with a clean and fresh air, ‘Paradise Cove’ just sticks to the clichés until there’s nothing to it. A couple buy a beachfront house to renovate, only to discover there’s a dotty homeless woman under it that just won’t leave. Any hope that it might take a surprising turn from all the other Eighties thrillers that are just like this and keep on coming are quickly disabused as soon as the knife goes in. A pleasing coastal setting make it nice to look at, but that’s no surprise and can’t stop plot holes and the central problem that, if they know she comes and goes and overhears them as she does, why not just leave? They don’t even discuss it. For all its gesturing at social conscience, it just becomes another tale of the privileged finding out that all their prejudices against the homeless aren’t unwarranted. 

&

Michiel Blanchart’s ‘You’re Dead, Hélène’ is tale of being haunted by a dead girlfriend that just won’t quit when you’re trying to move on. It’s funny, but deftly handles shifts in tone to horror and romantic sentiment. 

Adam Harvey’s ‘Minimally Invasive’ has that one-location horror scenario that short films do so well. A nervous patient undergoing a routine operation … well, that’s all you probably need to know. The helplessness and squeamishness are all present and correct. It’s blackly comic fun.

endnote...

And I don’t know what happened because I thought I had bought the whole Grimmfest pass, but I hadn’t and therefore missed what I have seen called the best of the festival ‘Rendez-vous’, as well as ‘Sleepless Beauty’. More than that, I didn’t know that there was also free shorts until midway through the festival and thought I had time to watch… but I misjudged and then they were gone. So I missed a whole chunk. Silly me. 

FrightFest 2020 digital - day 4

Shortfilm Showcase 2

Marcius Meedts’ ‘Werewolf’ has a group of friends playing the eponymous sinister party game. It’s very funny and nicely acted but ends on a somewhat perfunctory note – I wanted to see it play out more.

Ciaran Lyons’ ‘The Motorist’ offers a mixture of folk horror and surrealism and succeeds in the oddness that the short film format allows.  

What if you were stuck under siege in typical scenario with your asshole boyfriend? Charles de Lauzirika’s ‘Love Bite’ posits that culture wars will still be a thing when the world goes to hell. It’s slyly, cruelly pleasing that the film uses the word “snowflake” to truly trigger, and suggests that cheating is all they have.

Laura-Beth Cowley’s ‘The Gift’ is a neat animated feature about a woman gaining and accepting her feminine power, one with its roots in the history of women and witchcraft. Some nice facial expressions too. … Again, this is a trend I saw arising from last year’s FrightFest where women’s concerns are more prominent than ever in the genre, giving that little extra bite from familiar tropes. Hermione Sylvester’s  ‘Fuel’ also centres on a women feeling consistently harassed by men and the aforementioned ‘Love Bite’, ‘12 Hour shift’ and ‘The Columnist’ all have this already, and it’ll take precedent in ‘Dark Places’.

‘Wash’ by Kiggs delivers a nicely presented horror scenario just as ‘Povlotron 500’ creates a quick sense of future despair where all you want is some quiet time. ‘Keith’ plays on the monster-under-the-bed trope with a notable young performance from Mia Hemerling and voicework from Bear Winter-Perreu.  

It’s true that I probably enjoy giallo tributes more often than the original films themselves. With ‘Death Walks on Nitrate’ director Kevin Fermini follows the work of Cattet and Forzani in taking the giallo visual aesthetic as a springboard for psychedelica. Filmed on Super8, it’s visually inventive and enjoyable.

Dimiter Dimiroff’s ‘The Afterlife Bureau’ uses the short-film-as-skit with a nicely written riff on the bureaucracy of the afterlife.

 

 

Skull: The Mask

Armando Fonseca & Kapel Furman, 2020, Brazil

A pulpy mash-up of Brazilan mythology, comic book pulp, horror gore, slasher kills, demons and wrestling. This is the perhaps more honest fun as a homage because it is earnest rather than just using “homage” to wallow in the previous bad habits and weaknesses of genre. So in ‘Skull: The Mask’ this earnestness means that budgetary restrictions, rough edges and wavering acting are part of the package rather than weaknesses. For example, you know our protagonist is a tough cookie because she puts her hands in her pockets, on her hips, is contrarian and rips up cards of potential investigation leads because they are arrogant assholes. There’s a lot to remind of Jason Vorhees in Anhangá, the executioner of Tahawantinsupay a Pre-Columbian God, as he strides around town gutting people. There’s mythology, a hint of religion, street-level aesthetic, some decent gore that doesn’t seem heavily relying on CGI, commentary on corruption and plenty here to entertain. There’s always something going on. The visions of a red hellish otherworld are impressive, trippy and a highlight. A personal highlight: a priest pulling a sword from a statue of Jesus, as priest do. Also, our ostensible hero collecting a flamethrower from a tomb…? In the Q&A, Fonseca and Furman speak of how Brazilian horror is still trying to move on from Coffin Joe, but this conveys that same Go For It! gusto that José Mojica Marins ran on.

 

Two Heads Creek

Jesse O’Brien, 2020, Australia

Siblings go from the Brexit xenophobia in UK to the xenophobia in Australia in search for the truth about their mother. The humour and cultural representation is broad, but the cast know how to play and it’s consistently entertaining and funny. Of course, the locals shouldn’t be trusted. The encounters with Don Bridges as Uncle Morris are uniformly hilarious. It’s the kind of film that throws in a dance number as well as copious amounts of blood. It’s silly and fun with the underlying subtext that nowhere is welcoming to outsiders and that a government conspiracy will allow locals to murder. There’s some nice asides and barbs for the one aboriginal character too, right until the end. Like the best satire, it has an edge too.

 

Hall

Francesco Giannini, 2020, Canada

There’s a virus unleashed down a hotel corridor where some are having marital problems. The virus apparently incurs violence but mostly just causes people to lay in the corridor wheezing and croaking. Although the setting up of the characters and personal issues are fine – there’s a good portrayal of an abusive husband subtly undermining his wife – when the virus takes hold it becomes obvious that there isn’t enough story or inventiveness to keep things propelled. Instead, there are endless scenes of crawling down the hall, or our main protagonist Carolina Bartczak taking a long, long, long time to hobble down the hall on an injured ankle. Apparently she’s not quite concerned enough about her young daughter out there on her own to pick up speed; and when they do get out, she just strides away on that same injured ankle. And she doesn’t bother to alert anyone else attending the gala of the dangers, not properly. Also, since when do viruses cause someone uninfected to hear voices and hallucinate their father? The problems with the dramatic pacing are evident when there’s a long mid-credits news broadcast explaining more story.

 

A Ghost Awaits 

Adam Stovall, 2020, USA

A film that is obviously coming from a place of such good faith that I am happy to overlook many of my personal preferences. Macleod Andrews makes for an agreeable protagonist as Jack, who fixes up houses for rental. Temporarily kicked out of his place and with no one willing to put out for him, Jack stays in the property that’s his latest assignment… the only problem is that it’s haunted. With one location, lots of amusement, after a while the central joke emerges that Jack isn’t really spooked. Maybe my favourite is Jack refusing to be alarmed by a cabinet door opening by itself. This causes much bureaucratic disturbance amongst the spectral agency, which is the hub of the humour for the middle of the film and perhaps it’s best sequence with ghostly infighting. Then it moves into romance. The supernatural romance is not a sub-genre that I am particularly convinced by and typically I feel, as with many films that have conjured up a reliable temperament of humour, the urge to go for sentiment feels like a cop-out. But those who enjoy supernatural romance will feel differently. However, I still have issues with the idealisation of suicide as romantic devotion.

In the Q&A afterwards, the sense of good faith I got from the film was confirmed by Stovall and Andrews obviously being so smart and warm. Hence, it doesn’t quite tick all my boxes but that matters less than the fact that it’s smart, winning and nicely played.