FrightFest 2017 - day 4

KILLING GROUND

Damien Power. Australia. 2016

Perhaps the one film I saw this FrightFest unmitigated by humour or otherworldly elements that truly tapped into a sense of dread. Here’s another horror to put you off ever going on holiday. A couple go to camp in a remote spot by a lake, but there’s another tent and we see that other family going about their holiday too.  And perhaps it takes a moment to realise that we are in fact alternating between two different time zones, Power crediting the audience with the skills to follow what’s going on even if it is not immediately obvious. 

The slow-burn of the opening half reaps rewards for the last act when tension is held and no easy get-outs are given. As I went in not knowing anything about this, there was even a moment when I thought it was supernatural (the kid toddling in the background seemed otherworldly, and I wasn’t the only one that thought this), but that isn’t the case. Rather, this is as you would expect but it has an excellent ensemble cast with a central couple whose affection is naturally conveyed and some bad guys who fall short of being cartoonishly drawn: in fact, their sadism is all the more discomfortingly for being innate and casual.  It succeeds in being upsetting and convincing. The buzz of talk afterwards in the cinema once the credits ran seemed notably loud for this one. Gruelling.

THE END?

Daniele Misischia. 2017. Italy

A zombie invasion as seen from the claustrophobic point-of-view of a man trapped in an elevator. Claudio’s a bit of a git, so there’s room for a character arc even as the office he sees from ajar elevator doors descends into undead mania: he may not be able to get out but they can’t get in either. Alessandro Roja holds the attention as Claudio, making the most of arguing, patronising and then sympathising on the phone with various people, as Misischia and cinematographer Angelo Sorrentino manage to keep the confines of the elevator interesting. . The title is maybe a bit awkward – apparently FrightFest’s own Alan Jones suggested it from the original Italian title ‘The End in One Day’ - and perhaps implies a bigger scale that is only seen when closing. As an allegory for Claudio’s stalled state – between the needs of his wife and the brain-dead carnalism of the office – it holds some weight but it doesn’t find anything new or creative to do with the zombies and that is a major disadvantage. But as far as High Concept zombie devastation, it’s a decent entry.

DOUBLE DATE

Benjamn Barfoot. 2017. UK

Alex (Michael Socha) is determined to help his pal Jim (Danny Morgan) lose his virginity before he hits thirty. Meanwhile, there are a couple of women who need a virginal sacrifice for a ritual, and they’re running out of time. 

Initially, it’s the kind of boys-stuff premise that would leave me rolling my eyes, but Morgan makes for a likeable protagonist and although Socha starts out as the annoying mate, his cluelessness and Socha’s comic timing soon prove the film’s secret weapon. As with ‘Game of Death’, ‘El Bar’, ‘Mayhem’ and ‘Better Watch Out’, setting a time limit on events keeps thing focused and urgent: the guys meet the girls and think their luck is in, embarking on what they think will be a night of potential fun. This involves a comical birthday celebration and a visit to a hilarious Dexter Fletcher.  Georgia Groome as Lulu gets to angst about what the sisters are doing but Kelly Wenham doesn’t get much else to do but be bad-ass; and it’s true that they don’t really get the comedy.

They know they have the upper hand when the guys are obviously so needy but it’s the awkwardness of the men that proves the true source of amusement. It’s consistently funny and even manages to handle a fight between a man and a woman without making her indestructible or losing his befuddlement. It works as an allegory for thinking losing your virginity will be both farce and horror story (with additional disapproving father-figure) and balances both by being highly likeable. 

MAYHEM

Joe Lynch. 2017. USA

Where the crowd-pleasing is so evident it’s almost desperate. We hate the dog-eat-dog world of office politics, right? Well here it’s aided with a contagion called ID7 that makes the infected super-violent, offering a get-out-of-jail-free card for a tale of butchering your way to the top. Our hero is Derek Cho (Steven Yuen) who supplies the narration/exposition and who we can cheer on as he slaughters those who have framed and mistreated him as the virus takes over and the building is sealed off until the antivirus takes effect. The violence and gore are of the slapstick variety while the satire is just as subtle: the super-violence and caricatures here are the source of laughs. There’s mileage to be had envisioning the office as an arsenal and a warzone but it’s all very obvious, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s surely a queasy aftertaste when it posits a world where murder and carnage end up meaning very little. It’s fun while it lasts but it’s not as clever as it perhaps thinks.

THE VILLAINESS

Byung-gil Jung. 2017. Korea

You know all this from the examples set by the likes of Park Chang Wook and ‘Lady Snowblood’: a female assassin out for revenge and so on. It’s brilliantly made and elegant where Western visions of this tend to be blunt; but where this differs is in its use of p.o.v., the kind that defined ‘Hardcore Henry’. This perspective delivers a bravura opening where Ok-Bin Kim mows her way through a corridor of bad guys (then she looks back at the trail of corpses and the audience broke into applause) which we see like a first-person kill-game; then her head cracks against a mirror and the p.o.v. is jolted into a more detached camera as if we are being smacked out of her head. The film never quite tops this moment of fluidity between perspectives again and indeed, later, there is a sword fight on speeding motorbikes whose jaw-dropping qualities are compromised by the fact that the camera can’t stay still enough to show fully the skill involved. But ‘The Villainess’ delivers what you expect – a sniper in a wedding dress, anyone? – even to the point where it’s familiar story of a girl trained to be a killer when she grows up, with all the requisite deceptions, betrayals and unexpected romance, is all a bit more mixed and complicated than it necessarily needs to be. It’s the polar opposite of Hsia-Hsien Hou’s ‘The Assassin’, but it’s fun and often exceptionally well-made, even if it is nothing new and it can’t quite hold the camera still when it needs to.

FrightFest 2017 - Day 3

THE BAR

Álex de la Iglesia. 2017. Spain

A group of people argue and reluctantly collaborate when trapped in a Madrid coffee bar after they see someone shot on the street when leaving. What’s going on outside? How do they get out? It’s the old under-siege narrative that allows for plenty of friction, humour, characterisation, suspense and notable acting and de le Iglesia’s ‘The Bar’ delivers on all this. We know from such examples as ‘Night of the Living Dead’ through ‘The Mist’ to ‘The Similars’ and many, many others that people do not particularly respond well to such stress and this is no exception. There’s a lot of comedy drawn from the religious ranting homeless guy Israel (Jaime Ordonez) and the bar’s owner (Terele Pávez), and it’s of course informed by post-9/11 paranoia (hey, that guy has a big beard!), and naturally spins our initial assumptions about characters. But as rounded as they become, characterisation mostly crashes for the last act in the sewers. What it’s about, rather than the infection/zombies outside which we don’t see, is how such situations reduce people to their worst before their better natures usually kicks in. And it’s surprisingly ikky for a film set in a coffee bar, reminding us how close we are to bodily fluids and base levels, even in an environment that it meant to indicate civility, by primarily using cooking oil and the sewers. 

ALONE

David Moreau. 2017. France

Based upon Bruno Gazzotti’s French/Belgian comic book, a teen girl goes to the funfair and wakes up in a deserted city. Then she meets other teens and they slowly bond as they wonder where everyone has gone and what are the walls of clouds closing in? Moreau directed the thoroughly unsettling ‘Ils/Them’ and this is equally slick but doesn’t quite surpass the limitations of its Young Adult Fiction format. The kids are decently drawn and there are lots of nice incidental details around them; there’s the sensible lead girl, the slightly timid rich kid who seems only too pleased to have a gang of friends to pal around with; there’s the sullen delinquent who has to be won over; etc. The script never loses sight of their youth, having them all wanting to sleep together for safety or the moment where one boy immediately turns to overwrought angst when he thinks he’s been too drunk to remember killing someone. The adventure also knows to tap into the teen fantasies of driving unrestrained through a city and indulging in what an empty hotel has to offer.

But of course there’s a more immediate threat where it seems someone is out to kill them. (And here you should stop reading if you really don’t want spoilers:) But the answer to the mystery is that it’s a limbo is unimaginative and the idea that the afterlife is represented by a white stately home is trite. And then it ends on a cliffhanger that will lead into the sequel and it’s here that I reveal my ignorance of the source material, for where will this go: ‘The Hunger Games’ in the afterlife??

JACKALS

Kevin Greutert. 2016. USA

And speaking of ‘Ils/Them’, few films can match that one for home invasion terrorism. ‘Jackals’ starts strongly with a p.o.v. long take of an entire family being killed before it’s ‘based on a true story’ premise kicks in. A family kidnap their son who has joined a murderous cult intending to de-programme him; but the cult wants him back and pretty soon, the house is surrounded. A few years ago, FrightFest screened ‘Faults’, an insidious and tricksy de-programming drama which teased questions about character and need. ‘Jackals’ is the opposite, a straightforward nocturnal under-siege tale.

The drama and perspective rarely rises upon TV movie-of-the-week with characters acting somewhat stupidly and impulsively from emotion, giving the cult the edge, which somewhat undercuts the tension and undermines dread. Its main interest is in the suggestion that de-programming may not be possible – and certainly it will take longer than given here. But it is solidly made and delivers enough chills to be worthwhile.

ATTACK OF THE ADULT BABIES

Dominic Brunt. 2017. UK

A conversation heard outside the cinema:

Guy 1: … I’ve been hearing about ‘Adult Babies…’

Guy 2: (Shakes head) Oh mate.

Guy 1: Well I guess you have to have one or two films low on the pole…

Guy 2: Ah mate, it didn’t even reach the pole.

Brunt's 'Bait' was decent, but this is a thorough embarassment. 

VICTOR CROWLEY

Adam Green. 20178. USA

The existence of this sequel was a big secret that it was not even being listed in the FrightFest programme (it was called “Hatchet: 10th Anniversary Special event”). Green told the tale of how it was George A Romero himself that told him that the ‘Hatchet’ franchise was bigger than him now and who was he to deny the audience what it wanted? So here it is, and it certainly plays on all the crowd-pleasing notes. It’s almost like a horror version of ‘Airplane’. But Parry Shen makes for a likeable protagonist with the characters being archetypal enough that there’s no need to invest when they are killed off. It takes time to be clever with the revival of Crowley (rather than just having some devil-dog piss in the swamp or whatever) and makes good use of its crashed-plane limitations. There are plenty of genuine jokes (“Sign this!”) and fun to be had for this is the realm where an audience cheers outrageous deaths committed by a seemingly unstoppable celebrity ghostly killer. You know how this goes.

GAME OF DEATH

Sebastian Landry & Laurence Morais-Lagace. Canada. 2017

A bunch of typical young partygoers gather around a pool to kill time with sex, drugs and alcohol and toy with an old fashioned board game that, as soon  as it has drank their blood; it demands that they kill 24 people to “win”. And by winning, it means survival. Pretty soon, after an exploding head, they know it means business. They best get killing quickly.

The FrightFest programme calls it “’Jumanji’ meets ‘Battle Royale’”, but I was thinking it has the downbeat artiness of ‘It Follows’ with the low budget aesthetic of ‘Beyond the Gates’. The character introductions come as moments that blur with a detached knowingness, setting a tone more aligned with indie cinema than ‘Porkies’. There’s the drug dealing pizza boy, a brother and sister with an incestuous vibe, a guy with a dick drawn on his face, etc. This crowd are probably one-step removed from the types you find in ‘Final Destination’ but their mercenary if distressed edge is the kind of casual cruelty that you find in Brett Easton Ellis. A few characters see this as a welcome excuse to let their kill-instinct run free, but rare for this kind of enterprise, the characters try to find some moral solution to their dilemma, especially as this comes from the probable psychopaths, leading to slaughter in a hospice. As the game sets a time limit for the killing, things move briskly and urgently and the 70+ minute running time keeps things tight. It’s a brutal, rapid, and sly and more thought-out than these things usually are.

Mad Max: Fury Road

George Miller, 2014, Australia-USA

I’m inclined to believe that most if not nearly every modern trailer makes a film look bad: they resort to a list of clichés instead of capturing a flavour and the constant fading to black is a tic that really makes me twitch… CGI usually looks worse in a trailer too, flaying about out of context. I confess I wasn’t exactly eager after the first trailer for ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’.  “From mastermind George Miller” it said. Oh?  I countered, raising an eyebrow. Keep in mind that I think “Mad Max: The Road Warrior” is one of the best action films in the genre and its influence should not be underestimated (there were a lot of films where the gangs seemed dressed for the bondage club after a little post-apocalyptic delinquency). But the “Fury Road” trailer was full of people apparently driving through fireballs, etc, and that threw up for me the same red flag that warned me off, say, “Pompeii”. That is: it looked like it might be another CGI-fronted effects picture that didn’t care much for the basics of physics; and the original “Mad Max” films were nothing but full of dirt and grime and sand and injury, however silly and unrealistic things got. Also, initially I thought they had made Max a woman now. In fact Charlize Theron. Then I heard Tom Hardy was playing The Road Warrior, and as I was always a great fan of “Mad Max 2” and am a fan of Hardy, I went to see “Fury Road”, but with cautious expectations.

Of course, many people were legitimately excited by the trailer for “Fury Road” - I was in the grumpy minority - but even that cannot prepare you for the film. The opening is laden with a voice-over just to explain a few things and is soon followed by quick-quick editing, both choices that puts my guard up, but once the film has Max in the clutches of the unhealthily white war boys and, meanwhile, has the brides of the tyrant Immortan Joe (Hugh Keayes-Byrne) make an escape bid, things start to settle down. By which I mean if that small synopsis sounds busy, that is because the whole film is packed full. The plot is slender but as soon as Max is strapped to the front of war boy Nux’s (Nicholas Hoult) car, chasing after Furiosa (Theron) across the desert, the screen and details are so hectic that many will only become evident on repeat viewings.

For example, the war boys: diseased and delusional, poisoned by Immortan Joe’s suffocating and self-serving view of the world; they are a stunted population suffering from Joe’s patriarchy. They are both mentally and physically scarred and seem to want only to go out in a blaze of glory to meet better lifetimes in Valhalla: it is hard not to see an affinity with the suicide bombers that grace headlines. Beware fundamentalism.

Women are either milk-makers or baby-machines, it seems, giving the film perhaps the first of its alarming images with a row of large apathetic women hooked up to milking mechanisms. They are barely humans at all, not in the eyes of the society that Immortan Joe has propagated. And he holds the precious resource of water whilst trying to tell the population not to become addicted to it. This one man would seemingly hold all the power and keeps the people and his children so deprived (of resources and education, etc) that there seems no one to question it. Immortan Joe has made the world to his bidding and everyone around him is kept weakened in some way so they would not think beyond this world. It seems the desperate people know no better. Except the brides, who do receive some education to make them better breeders, but this also leads them to want more – and it should not be missed that Furiosa used to be a bride. In fact, intelligence seems to be mostly housed in the female protagonists.

All this comes across as a scathing satire on the kind of world that the wealthy patriarchs of today would imagine: for example, the CEO of Nestle opining that water should be privatised; or that a baby will be carved from a woman’s body in case it might live and be healthy seems the logical end to pro-life activism, to stories such as this. The comic of 'Mad Max: Fury Road - Furiosa' implies other sexual deviance for Immortan Joe (all those war boys) but this is an unneeded tweak to the story which would be just as strong with Joe simply being a woman-hating patriarch.

That is to say that the complexity and ramifications lay within the details of the film rather than its narrative, which is a typical chase scene through a hellish post-apocalyptic world. Where it succeeds is in a vision that equality will come through the direst conditions, eventually. There are hints that the women have been left no choice but to blame men for a world in ruins, but the male-hating is not consummate: is not a smidgeon of sympathy that converts Nux, showing that women have not lost that capacity (and Hoult's vulnerability has never been put to better use)? It is simply in this vision, women will not wait for men to save them, do not even consider it and cannot afford to. Theron will do what is necessary in an action film without resorting to machismo posturing and quips. Miller consulted female perspectives from such as playwright Eve Ensler to help ground it’s feminist credentials, and certainly some “Men’s Activist” groups have called for the film to be boycotted, which implies the film is doing something right. Miller uses the language of the Action Genre to show how narrow and male-centric it has been; it comes across as fighting the genre from within. It is no mistake that I mistakenly if briefly thought from the trailer that they had changed the gender of Max.

Speaking of which: into this merciless world comes Mad Max. Ever since the first film, Max had been more a facilitator of other people’s dramas: he turns up in some ongoing scenario, just trying to get by, and finds that his action skills come in handy in helping out. He tries to be amoral, because audiences love that anti-hero angle, but this doesn’t last so long. He’ll try to be mercenary but in the end he always helps the underdog. The opening pace of ‘Fury Road’ is frenetic, but this is misleading: it’s just to put Max to where he needs to be so that he’ll on the front of Nux’s car when Furiosa makes her escape bid. There was square-jawed blankness to Mel Gibson onto which a sort of “madness” could be imposed, but Tom Hardy can convey emotion and inner turmoil with the faintest facial tics so he is perhaps seems a more vulnerable Max as a consequence: not so much “Mad” as troubled. No matter: this isn’t really his story, but you get the idea that Max knows this, that he’s just trying to get by and hold himself together. Nux’s story gains more flesh and is more intriguing, changing from wannabe-suicide-assassin and rejected damaged son to finding a genuine place amongst the escapees. His is self-sacrifice for another, not martyrdom for a twisted cause.

Yes, there is all this and you would be foolish to ignore these details – or, for example, how casual the film present Furiosa’s prosethic arm, a unfussy approach that is surely progressive in how little attention it presents this as a “disability” or a character trait. There are mis-steps, the most discussed being the shot of the brides hosing themselves down beside a tanker, which is as Andy Nayman says “at once parodic and pandering.” But here, again, the moment is slightly complicated from looking like a lad’s mag photoshoot by one of the women being pregnant (which, by the way, won’t stop her from being an action star either). It’s true that for all its feminist credentials, the film can’t quite stop gawping at these pretty women – but maybe that has some point: of course Immortan Joe would choose the most attractive. Nevertheless, the film doesn’t quite overcome some objectification where the brides are concerned. Along with this I still have some reservations about the opening narration (unnecessary) and the flashbacks that are meant to show Max’s Madness, despite looking like they’ve been inspired by some James Wan idea of a nightmarish vision, all music-video quick editing and ghostly faces etc. I could also do without the yelling-your-agony-in-the-sunset-atop-a-dune and the nods-of-understanding-across-a-crowd clichés, but these are minor glitches, swallowed up and overcome by the whole.

I enjoyed it more the second time round, knowing what I was looking for.

What you will be watching mostly are the stunning visuals and John Searle’s cinematography. You’ll be trying to work out the vehicle designs, which include cars-welded-to-cars and cheeky spikey swipes from ‘The Cars that Ate Paris’. Yes, the look of it and the action sequences are delirious, beautiful, crazed, spectacular and host of other superlatives. And the stunt work is incredible (just look at the stunt crew on IMDB to get some idea of what a massive undertaking you’re witnessing). How wrong I was in the impression I got from the trailer: the CGI here aids and abets genuine jaw-dropping stunt-work. The ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ flaws and achievements are as obvious and loud as the metal guitarist that fronts one vehicle, gleefully and manically bouncing around, motivating this remarkable spectacle. But it’s the satire and the targets of its ire, the themes and details that glue the stunts together that really add resonance and will surely make this one to return to and something of a instant classic.

"Crack in the World"

"Crack in the World", Andrew Marton, 1965, USA

Old-fashioned disaster flick with aging, cancer-ridden, over-ambitious scientist Dana Andrew’s plans to tap the Earth’s core for power resulting in the movie’s title. Desperate and deluded scientist Andrews foolishly still competes for his wife with a younger, equally ambitious ex-student Moore. The global crack runs parallel not only with his disease, but with these domestic troubles: personal and external frictions and frissures finally meet head-on so that the old man’s suppressed rage and cancer explode, sending his soul/life/delusions/guilt etc. spiralling into orbit as a serene second moon.

          Ludicrous End of the World films have always enjoyed an eager audience keen to assuage their fear of headlines, hysterical and otherwise. Talky but lively, the cast try to give “Crack in the World” some emotional gravitas while dealing with science and disaster that, even to a layman, are self-evidently unconvincing. Namely, the end of the world as we know it surely would have arrived half-way through the running time. But the second-moon born in a new burning red world is a fair act of bravado and, finally, the implausibility of it all doesn’t quite hinder decent number of dramatic and special effects.

FrightFesat Day 4: 2013

By day 4, the real world is but a dim memory. At this point in the festival, all I am is a creature that moves from film to film with often very brief sojourns into the sunny centre of London for subsistence. Upon reflection, I am finding “You’re Next” a much better and more playful film; “100 Bloody Acres” and “Cheap Thrills” are my favourites so far with “No One Lives” and the cult episode from “VHS2” close behind for sheer entertainment (actually, I really dig the whole aliens-invade-sleepover “VHS2” episode without necessarily thinking it is especially good). What next?

“Missionary” is a dull and clichéd tale of a fanatic seducing his way into a family with idea of turning it into THE perfect family. The spin on this one is that he is a Mormon, but it’s not a film of any insight with this particular angle. Yes, we all remember “The Stepfather” and this kind of film only goes to show how witty that film was and remains. Some mostly decent performances give way to unintentional humour and underwhelming climax, the kind you know will have the antagonist yelling about family – and so it does. This ends up a bore and not the “Godspoitation” flick the Frightfest programme promises.

Jeremy Lovering’s “In Fear”, however, really does work up quite an atmosphere of unease, turning Irish country lanes into an inescapable maze of, well, fear. That the film manages to wring every ounce of tension from what is just a couple going round in circles in a car is quite a feat, helped no end by two fine performances by Alice Englert and Iain de Caestecker. For the most part, the whole thing is increasingly unnerving with the slightest of premises, and certainly knowing that Lovering held back the script from the cast during filming so that they did not know what was going to happen gives the enterprise an interesting edge. Eventually, it becomes more a think piece, not just a scare show, and the otherwise underwhelming title does take on a little more resonance, as in what would you do when in fear? Even if it nudges towards the existential, the highly authentic ambience of increasing isolation and terror is likely to remain long after the film is done.

Suri Krishnamma’s “Dark Tourist” is the kind of film that exists in its own little corner, digging deep into places that few horror films go. It may well compete with “Henry: portrait of a serial killer” as the quintessential study of the serial killer phenomenon, exploring both the reality and the mythology surrounding them. Michael Cudlitz gives the performance of Frightfest amongst a pleasingly wealth of good performance appearing at the festival: he is security guard Tim Tahna who likes to spend his holidays visiting places that were important in the lives of serial killers. The film slowly builds up its shocks but it also pushes for genuine insight and perhaps resolves itself as a horrified cry against the horrors and damage we can do to one another. “Dark Tourist” does go to places where most other films couldn’t even imagine and as both social commentary and disturbing character study, it is exceptional.

I did have a slightly funny experience with “The Conspiracy” because I misinterpreted something that director Christopher MacBride said when introducing it onstage and thought it was  a genuine documentary about people in the conspiracy theory community. It took me a little while to realise that I was, yes, watching a fiction, although I did feel that something about it was a little off. This is a fake documentary/character-cam horror but the angle at which it enters the genre – paranoia rather than slasher or supernatural, for example – does make it stand out. The conspiracy content is fascinating. Eventually, inevitably, the whole character-cam doesn’t really add up as it ends up being part fake-documentary, half horror vignette. But the sequence where they go undercover does provide a memorable descent into horror much in the manner of a “VHS” short. If it is a film of two halves that never quite gel, “The Conspiracy” at least does try to reach into different areas of horror and doesn’t let the character-cam Isabotage its intent (but yes, it doesn’t quite answer who is editing this? when it comes to the apparent “found footage” segment). A solid and slightly unusual, if flawed, experiment.

The above image is one of the most memorable I took away from Frightfest - it's gorgeous - and I wouldn't have usually posted it here for fear it might be a spoiler, but as you can see from above, it is being used for film promotion, so...

“The Last Days” by Alex and David Pastor is an apocalyptic feature, but not in a “The Dead 2: India” kind of way. The premise is that mankind experiences a sudden fear of going outside, which leaves them cooped up and underground and falling apart. One man decides to find meaning in this deteriorating world by resolving to make it across Barcelona to find his girlfriend. It is true that perhaps on paper this sounds less than thrilling, but it feels to me more akin to those 1970s post-apocalyptic films such as “The Quiet Earth”, “A Boy and his Dog”, “The Omega Man”, etc. and led more by concept than action. It has number of memorable action set-pieces, but it spends as much time on the mundane world of work that the characters come from and the dawning of a new age. The directors did send a message to Frightfest that the ending would totally divide people, but indeed it was one that made a pleasant change from the norm and headed towards something with hope and promise rather than endless horror.

Friends had mentioned that I should see Bobcat Goldthwait’s “Willow Creek” and indeed, even though it was a “found footage” film – which already flagged it as potentially another shaky-cam bore – it was also a Sasquatch film. And that interested me because a simple monster flick seemed like a great idea. Also, Bobcat had opened the festival and was very appealing, I had really liked “The World’s Greatest Dad” and I was most curious. “Willow Creek” was meant to be screened in one of the small theatres in the cinema and they had to shift it to a bigger screen due to popular demand. Well let me state from the start that I loved “Willow Creek”. A genuinely endearing couple travel to the eponymous Bigfoot land, out in the wilds of America, to try and have their Sasquatch moment, filming themselves all the while. And indeed, this film is how to film a found footage premise. It looks filmed in-camera (there are only 60+ cuts) and the sound is all diagetic, so you don’t wonder who has been watching and editing and scoring the footage – or why?! It is half exploration and gentle satire of the tourist culture and business of Bigfoot and contains a long sequence that proved one of my absolute favourite sequences of the festival: a long take that surely outdoes even “The Blair Witch Project” and takes its time to deeply reach into your most primal fears. Indeed, a woman in the audience did scream and I found myself seriously unnerved (it also occurs to me that no one laughed that she screamed because we were all so engrossed ans poked by the moment too). Another audience member was overhead saying that it was “so bad it’s good”, but I thought it had excellent and engaging performances by Alexie Gilmore and Bryce Johnson – I cared! – and ended up being intelligent and probing and genuinely scary. I thought it was great.

"The Road"... and the cracks in it

Haha, Philip Challinor - the excellent author and sharp-edged political commentator - takes a chunk out of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". He is right. I find myself being in the camp of being a fan of "The Road", and remaining a fan, even though the perceptive and enlightening criticisms of it that I have read seem totally correct also. Naturally, part of the issue is that Cormac McCarthy is a huge literary name and that he receives the kind of praise and worthiness that surely needs to be taken down a peg or two. [1] I dig McCarthy. But Challinor is very right on the issue of the moral challenges of the novel: namely, that if you are looking for that, "The Road" cops out. What follows, then, is my acknowledgement of Challinors correct deconstruction of "The Road", or at least its lofty status, and also my defence, rationalisation and allowances of the novel as a fan. I am hoping not to lapse into excuses.

I like that Challinor puts "The Road" in its proper context - science-fiction, if not horror - and grades it accordingly. Challinor's opening is a fine slice of iconoclasm:

"If you'll pardon the blasphemy, Cormac McCarthy's The Road is not a very good book. It is not an uncompromising vision of the Apocalypse; it is not a brutally realistic vision of the end of civilisation; it is not more frightening than the most frightening horror story; it is not more convincing than the best science fiction; and it is not a brilliant allegory of parenthood in the dangerous twenty-first century."

And here we shall differ, because I think it is and remains a good book, despite the flaws. Challinor's key argument seems to me to be that it does not go far enough; or rather, does not go far enough to warrant it's reputation of incomparable bleakness. Whenever a true moral dilema comes up, McCarthy throws in something new to divert the true test of the father's "goodness" and paternal love. He never really has to decide should I kill and eat another human being to keep myself and my child alive?

To me, "The Road" is a little by-way off of the true uncomprosing, brutally realistic vision of the Apocolypse and one of the most chilling horror stories and allegories ever: Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead", which I consider to be one of the greatest slabs of horror and humanitarian writing in genre fiction. Yes, I am going to add ever to that too. I have a hard time imagining how McCarthy might have stumbled onto "The Road" without at least someone having mentioned "The Walking Dead" to him. But it is then not so much the plot and its convulutions that generate the truth of the grim reputation of the novel so much as the context, conceit and sparseness of prose that create the harshness. It is in the atmosphere and execution. The feel of the novel alludes to the worst happening to the father and son at any moment, even if the magic of storytelling intercepts at just the right moments to pull them back from the brink. This aftertaste of a crumbling natural world and civilisation holds up long after the convenience of discovering a bunker stuffed with food (which, of course, is a moment designed also to provide our protagonists with a moment of reprieve and civility: for the father, it is the memory of civility and for the son a fleeting introduction. It is meant as a contrast to the outside world, evidently, and the episode would perhaps be successful at this if the father was faced with scenes that truly test his humanity. Just how hungry are they? We don't see them at the stage of eating algae or dry leaves for sustenance, for example). The mood triumphs.

Challinor does not believe that the boy would be the herald of the virtue in a world overrun by cannibals. Challinor on the scene where the son chastises his father for the way he treats a thief that tries to steal from them: "A child in a highly dangerous post-apocalyptic landscape, with only its father to rely on, would join its father in humiliating and murdering the thief, and give the corpse a good kick in the face to show it just how good the good guys can be." But, indeed, not every scenario has to be that way, surely? Not every child needs to be barbarous to make a point, and surely the challenge McCarthy sets himself is not to have a barbaric child, and the quest his father undertakes to keeps him from that barbarism. But I would say that Challinor presents an unassailable argument as to why McCarthy fails this challenge: as he puts it, something always comes along to circumnatigate the father away from the truly messy choices.

Again, I see no need to turn every child into a stray from "Lord of the Flies" in such a scenario, and I can swing with the idea that, with only his father's evangelical stress on being "the good guys" and keeping him away from any other survivors, the son may well find himself the bearer of conscience and the desire for a better world that came before... especially when: something always comes along. I would also suggest that the paradox of children is that they are as innately sweet as they are barbaric, and that some fall more one way that the other due to character, environment, influences, etc. They are naturally as fascinated with being good as they are with bad behaviour.[2] Under the sole, stifling influence of the father, why should this not be so for the son?

My conclusion is doubtlessly not going to satisfy detractors, and probably not some fans either, but in light of Challinor's accurate squewering of its Achilles' Heel, I read "The Road" more as a fairy-tale. A fairy-tale in its rendering of the son as a "pure" character, as the father as a knight of sorts, both travelling in a world of monsters. A fairy-tale in that something always comes along, that convenience and coincidence always strike where most appropriate (like in those good old canonical classics!). Challinor feels it fails as an allegory, but I don't think it fails consistently or completely. For just a moment, I doubted someting would come along at the end. Of course it did and anything else would feel unbearable or take a longer novel to resolve. A more devastating ending would have the son falling into cannibalism - either as victim or feaster. As it is, he has to rely upon something always coming along which, for myself, I do not believe is such a cosy coda. But I believe it works as fairy tale, although detractors may see this as excuse-making and fans may see this as a challenge to its lauded verisimilitude.

As Challinor states, you have to go to, say, Harlan Ellison's seminal "A Boy and His Dog" to find the real moral dilemma of this scenario faced. This ground has been well covered before in science-fiction and horror, and by McCarthy himself. I propose that what was seemingly new and transcendant about "The Road" for many was that they had not read the key genre fiction that mattered, that had gone before... if they read genre fiction at all. "It's a horror novel!" I would tell people, because I read in "The Road" something that I have seen evident in mainstream cinema: the appropriation of horror motifs and excesses that had previously been found only in cult and b-rated cinema. I can see "The Road" as a crossover success, from the lowly sewers of the horror genre to the bookshelves of the literati. The literati, of course, ought to slum it a little if they liked this stuff. I recommend "The Walking Dead".

So Challinor is right, but I am a fan and, making allowances or not (as you must do with any work of fiction) I believe "The Road" still stands as an important work of post-Apocolyptic speculation, for its atmosphere, prose and crossover status if nothing else.

~~

I recommend Phillip Challinor's anthology "Radical Therapies". The first story, "The Little Doctor" in particular is a fine example of how he deals with ethical challenges.

~~

[1] I do not like Picador's new packaging of McCarthy's novels. The cover is a stack of words: the novel title stands out, surrounded by lines extolling the brilliance, importance, etc., of said novel. In the case of "The Road": "a work of such terrible beauty that you will struggle to look away." I will? Really? Jesus, that's a tall order and deserving of a kicking. Challinor's review certainly cleans out the works to get some perspective back into viewing the book's weaknesses and strengths. Blurb has replaced art and design on the cover. It is as if you can simply congratulate yourself and take yourself out for a celebratory meal just for buying it.

[2] I recently watched "The Girl Next Door" and was struck how the film and Jack Ketchum's source novel credibly presents a throughly good character faced with the potential of his own ability and complicity in torture and inhumanity. His goodness is innate and wins through, but not in a way I consider to be trite: characters of Goodness can be wearisome, but they do not always have to be so, for they can represent natural moral awareness, empathy and rightness of action. I believe it is possible to see the son in "The Road" in this light also, and that such a character does not necessarily have to be the representation of natural childhood cruelty; one might also argue that that might have been the easy characterisation and certainly the novel would have fallen into into the exploitation/horror genres more visibly.

THE ROAD

1: "the text…" 1:
According to director John Hillcoat, Cormac McCarthy felt that the voiceover in the film adaptation of his novel "The Road" was "indispensable".[1] It isn’t. It is another example of superfluous narration that gives the impression of behind-the-scenes concerns that the audience does not get the set-up without it spelt out to them. And this is a tricky set-up. The world has fallen apart, nature is crumbling, burning, dying all around and humanity has been lost. There are people, but humanity is in very, very rare supply. Into this world, a couple have a boy, a child who has not known the civilisation, wildlife and bright colours of the world that has been before. This world is full of falling trees, ash and cannibals. The woman cannot bare to live in such a world, and the man is left to spend his days desperately defending his son and preparing him for the worst. Which includes teaching the boy to shoot himself should it become necessary.

McCarthy’s novel is a true horror novel, terrifying in its depiction of a human race in its death throws of paranoia, distrust, violence, cannibalism and desperation. This then is the last brick separating a person from the inhumane: cannibalism. The "good guys" are those that don’t resort to it, but the good guys are in rags, increasingly frail and ill and dependant upon sheer luck and suspicion to get through. These too may not be enough, or ultimately right. Pretty early on, McCarthy indicates that this is a world where the worst will happen. The fragility of the boy and the fears of the man are upsetting and scary, reminding the reader of their mortality and helplessness against overwhelming threats. McCarthy does not write with the density of, say, his Border Trilogy, nor really with the stripped down efficiency of "No Country for Old Men". Rather he whittles his sentences down into prose-poem, a skeletal dance of vignettes and stark repetitions. But father and son argue, and through this we see that the boy is one of the last carriers of conscience. Conscience and kindness are the ultimate salvation McCarthy offers in a Godless, imploding, violent world.

This prose contains an illusive magic of grim poeticism and precision that does not carry over into voiceover. Hillcoat creates some stunning end-of-the-world visuals with isolated cabins, dead docks with tomblike ships, endless bleak roads and end-of-nature scenarios such as the man and boy caught in a falling forest, or the bleak litter-covered beach drained of colour. There have been so many faux-poetic and unnecessary narrations aspiring to what McCarthy achieves on page that when spoken it feels the same, and ultimately unnecessary. All the brutal beauty of the words are conveyed by the film visually, and that is as it should be.

2: "as the world eats itself…"
It probably looks just as you imaged as a reader. Ironically, in rendering beautifully stark vistas successfully, this may actually be one of the keys to Hillcoat’s adaptation’s weakness. It stands alone as a great and uniquely downbeat film to come from the Hollywood machine - typically and predictably, they seem to have had problems knowing how to market it - but somehow the grey visual splendour and the somewhat sentimental musical cues by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis compromise much of the ruthlessness of McCarthy’s original text. The majority of reviewers find the film lacking in comparison, but isn’t that usually the way, nine times out of ten, with adaptations? There is much damning with faint praise, as with Phillip Kemp:

"Still, [McCarthy’s] tone, that elusive tone, is absent. If the film misses the resonance, the sad deep anger of McCarthy’s work, it’s a creditable shot at it; but for one of the most powerful and original novels of the past decade, creditable doesn’t quite cut it." [1]

But there is so much that rings right in the film, and taken aside from its inspiration, it’s such a grand achievement in itself that it is hard to see how it might have been improved upon. It is one of the definitive post-apocalypse/post-civilisation texts ever written. Just as McCarthy deprived his modern westerns like "All the Pretty Horses" of pleasurable machismo and vengeance fantasies, and just as he stripped "No Country for Old Men" of the same plus the thrill of a showdown, in "The Road" he deprives the end of the world of the survivalist thrills and big special effects so common in, say, Hollywood disaster epics. All this is to force the action of the novels to give way to the metaphysical and the increasing interrogation of violence; of its justifications, its effects, its catharsis and randomness, to lay it naked. In "The Road", there is very little else but the fear of what people will do to one another in order to survive. And then, later, you realise that it is more about what someone will do to protect the ones they love.

It also shares much of the same feel and despair as Robert Kirkmans’ seminal zombie-survival magnum opus "The Walking Dead", possibly the most genuinely traumatic graphic novel/comic serial ever written (and illustrated by Charlie Adlard). With landmark texts such as Richard Matheson’s "I Am Legend" and Harlan Ellison’s "A Boy And His Dog", there are a lot of open horror and action motifs. But it would surely backfire for Hillcoat to have upped the horror ante - we have seen Romero’s living dead and ‘crazies’, after all - or to have spiced up the thrills with Mad Max homages. You can keep your "2012", "The Day After Tomorrow" extravaganzas. Kemp feels the unforgettable cellar of horror is bungled by Hillcoat, but again I would suggest that Hillcoat understands that McCarthy wants the horror of it, but not the Horror Genre gruesome delight of it, which would veer dangerously into neglecting the humanity of the skeletal cellar victims. It is the screams that come soon after this seen that are unforgettable. (Then again, the flare gun death is sure to burn itself into your memory).

3: "and the end of the world…"
McCarthy is barely even interested in the bigger picture; well, he is in metaphysical terms, but what remains brightest here is in reducing the struggle for humanity to what is essentially a two-man chamber piece. We don’t need to know the back story as to why everything is turning to dust. There are brief side-characters. There is a great fireside conversation between the man and Robert Duvall as Ely, an old man, but many of the encounters become distressing by succumbing to violence, distrust and humiliation. The flashbacks try to open things up a little, but they feel mostly like intrusions into the pale austerity of the rest of the film. Mostly, it is for Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-MacPhee as man and son to carry the film, and they do. Mortenson is convincingly haggard, with the trademark flare still in his eyes, and although Smit-MacPhee never looks emaciated enough, his baffled vulnerability and fledgling defiance are palpable. The rapport is convincing and if you are going with the story, your heart is sure to be broken.
Hillcoat says:

"Cormac said that it’s a book about human goodness. It’s frustrating when people label film as bleak because the bleakness is just a backdrop. Unfortunately, everyone seems to focus on the backdrop. … The gestures towards hope that the film makes, the finding of the Coke can, the frolic in the fountain are that much more special because of the tremendous obstacles that the characters are up against" [3]

Well yes; the obstacles are that very bleak backdrop which renders those moments "more special"; they do not exist without one another. It is one of the wonderful mysteries of this story that it is as cathartic and emotionally rewarding as it is, despite or/and because of the dark context. But it seems Hillcoat has surely missed the irony in choosing the finding of the Coke can as a moment of hope - really? A potential symbol of the very civilisation that potentially brought about the end of the natural world? Perhaps the definitive symbol of American capitalist branding decadence? But I am surely being facetious: Hillcoat is sure to mean that the Coke represents a world of flavour and colour that has been lost. Myself, I prefer the moment where the boy stares at the mounted head of a stag: although little is made of the moment, we can fathom for ourselves that he has never seen such a thing before and the fascination it must hold for him. No, that is not a moment of hope, but it seems to me to perfectly capture the void between the boy’s world and everything the man knows to be lost. It’s a quietly powerful and upsetting moment and is surely the film at it’s unforced best.

It may not exceed the novel, but "The Road" is an excellent rendition. An besides, it does not have to: it has to stand by itself, and it does. Once taken aside from the daunting original text [4], Hillcoat’s film will undoubtedly stand the test of time as one of the most uncompromising and humane of American films.
***

[1] Jonathan Romney, "The Wasteland", Sight and Sound magazine, February 10, volume 20 issue 2, pg.76
[2] Phillip Kemp, "The Road", review, Sight and Sound magazine, February 10, volume 20 issue 2, pg.76
[3] Jason Wood, "Ashes to Asphalt"; Curzon magazine, issue 18, January-February 2010; editor: Nadia Attias; AquatintBSC, pg. 31
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[4] I am a McCarthy fan, and I read often how important "The Road" is, how remarkable the prose is, that it is one of the most relevant novels of the decade, etc, and very little of this would I disagree with; or at least I do not care to find much fault with it. Again: I thought it an excellent work of horror and humanity. But my friend Omar has written a hilarious and accurate parody of McCarthy’s style in "The Road", one which also reveals how its repetitions, cadence and economy are vulnerable to readings of pretension, ponderousness, and cul-de-sac progression. I don’t agree, but the satire is also sharp and amusing. I wish to share some of this here, because I dig it, with Omar's permission: full text here: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=392354316&blogId=454606104

Review of Cormac McCarthy’s: The Road

On The RoadThe man picked up the little book. He read it. It was slow. Very slow. Slow as falling ashes. It didnt matter how big they made the fonts. Or how wide the margins and gutters. Or how large the spaces between the lines. It was long. Very long. And slow. Like ashes. And as he trundled his way through the little book he thought This is a piece of crap. What does trundle mean? the little book asked.
I dont know.
You dont know.
No.
Is it a good word?
It cost a lot of money.
A long time ago.
A long time ago.
How much?
Twenty five cents.
Was that a lot?
That was a lot.
For a word.
Okay.
Okay.

And he trundled through the little book.
You said that word again.
I know.
Its okay.
Okay.

And he kept trundling through the little book. Even turning the pages was slow. Slow as death. Slow as ashes on your face. Time was slow. It was especially slow when reading the little book. But he kept trundling through the little book because two friends recommended it the same week. Not that he thought it would ever get better after the first ten pages. He knew it wouldnt. He wasnt seeing it through for hope but curiosity. And as he trundled through the pages they seemed to turn very quickly but very slowly at the same time.
You keep saying that word.
I know.
Im scared.
Yes. I know.
Do we have to keep reading this?
Yes.
Because were the good guys?
Yes. Because were the good guys.
I want to quit.
Youre scared.
Yes.
Dont be scared.
Okay.
Okay.

And as the man trundled through the little book he realized there was something deliberate about it. It was almost like the little book was going to curl up and die every few pages. But it didnt. There was always a little miracle. The little book would suddenly stumble over a few thousand words. Perhaps hidden in a cellar. Perhaps in a kitchen. And then he would feed the little book and give it a bath. But even a little trudgerous almost titillation couldnt save it. Trundlous.
Sorry.
Trundlous.
Its okay.
Okay.

Deliberateness was hiding there. It was in the short sentences. In the occasional twenty five cent word. In the deliberate spelling and punctuation errors. In the obvious spelling mistakes someone missed. In the tedious repetitive sentence constructions. In the formatting. In the word count. Yes. The word count. It seemed like the little book was only trundling along to reach a word count. A promise. Maybe to an editor. Maybe a publisher. Maybe a lawyer. Or wife. Or debt collector. Or film maker. Anyway the man soon realized he couldve written this turkey himself in a weekend and he was insulted. Very insulted.
Youre exaggerating again.
Yes. I am.
You promised not to do that.
Okay.
You wont do it anymore.
I wont do it anymore.
You promise.
I promise.
Whats a turkey?
Whats a turkey?
Yes.
An ugly bird.
Theres never going to be anymore are there?
I hope not.
Im scared.
Dont be.
Okay.
Okay.

CRACK IN THE WORLD

Andrew Marton, 1965, USA

　
Old-fashioned disaster flick with aging, cancer-ridden, over-ambitious scientist Dana Andrew’s plans to tap the Earth’s core for power resulting in the movie’s title. Desperate and deluded scientist Andrews foolishly still competes for his wife Janette Scotte with a younger, equally ambitious ex-student Kieron Moore. The global crack runs parallel not only with his disease, but with these domestic troubles: personal and external frictions and frissures finally meet head-on so that the old man’s suppressed rage and cancer explode, sending his soul/life/delusions/guilt etc. spiralling into orbit as a serene second moon.

Talky but lively, the cast try to give this some emotional gravitas while dealing with science and disaster that, even to a layman, are self-evidently unconvincing. Namely, the end of the world as we know it surely would have arrived half-way through the running time, but then the entire episode is only a vague acquaintance of science and geology. But the second-moon born in a new burning red world is a fair act of bravado - audacious barely covers it - and, finally, the implausibility of it all doesn’t quite hinder the decent number of dramatic floruishes and special effects.

ZOMBIELAND

Ruben Fleischer, 2009, USA

Although it encourages a lot of goodwill - and it generally gets it - "Zombieland" is disappointing in its narrowness. This is obscured by lots of post-modern and would-be zappy humour and effects (which both distinguish and aggravate the opening credits zombie slaughter marathon), a handful of genuine funny moments, a woeful voiceover and Woody Harrelson. In fact, it is Harrelson who saves the show, as does a quite bonkers and good-stupid cameo appearance (which I won’t spoil here, just in case you don’t know).

I dislike gratuitous voiceovers. A lot. Voiceovers, and especially American voiceovers, are ordinarily unnecessary and gratuitous by nature, and "Zombieland" bears a prime example of the annoying, distracting kind; it thinks itself smart and, heh, amusing, but it is really just intrusive and evident. It distracts like a finger being poked in your side every time the film is settling down, going "Eh? Eh?". It does not generate enough genuine wit, gags or interesting spin to feel warranted. Everything would be just as obvious without it.


Where the voiceover is over-written - script by Rhett Reece and Paul Wernick - the core of the zombieland concept is generally undernourished, both in the horror and the romance departments (some ornamental gore alone makes for a weak understanding of horror). It is more zany in its logic than properly grounded. The zombies aren’t really present, only there to give our humorous road-movie adventure gang something to flee from and be to look cool when killing. It is wholly appropriate that the title sounds like an arcade game and ends up in a theme park. "Zombieland" is more a rom-com and odd-couple comedy that has heard horror films are in vogue. Let’s go to the obvious precedent: if there is anything any zombie comedy should learn from "Shaun of the Dead" it is that the real good stuff is in the details. Details like logic and plausibility do not have be relinquished for wackiness. This has more in common with the latter, cartoonish Chucky films ("Bride of Chucky" and "Seed of Chucky") than the black humour of "Dawn of the Dead". In "Zombieland", no one runs out or worries about ammunition; in fact they often use weapons once against a single zombie and then toss that weapon aside. There is no real sense of threat. If our nerd hero (Jesse Eisenberg, who does come across as a cut-price Micheal Sera) is meant to be as cowardly as we're told, then how come we see him from the get-go dealing with zombies so efficiently and dispatching them without any hesitance? Is it that killing zombies must always look cool, regardless of proposed character traits? And, upon consideration, a prank based upon trying to scare a couple of zombie hunters by pretending to be a zombie… seems pretty dumb, actually. Funny, at the time, but it all feels sloppy. Yes yes, it’s a zombie film, and a comedy, but all absurdity still relishes internal logic rather than just flip film mannerisms. We could blame a post-"Reservoir Dogs", post "Friends" post-modern self-reflexism I guess. Hipness over substance.

Zombies are in season now, totally ubiquitous, and so much so that they can even play decoration to a nerd-gets-hot-bad-girl screwball romp. It does not bear the knowing pathos of "Shaun of the Dead" (which, as Mark Kermode has noted, is aging really well), where the zombies represent the total fear of the outside world barely repressed by its awkward but endearing characters. "Zombieland" really has no use for establishing any subtext or for its walking dead, or interest even giving them any essence. They are just there for a few over-the-top gags. It’s an odd-bunch road flick and a milkshake of a romance with some serious gore stirred in just to keep amorous zombie nerds interested. Okay, so let’s say it’s the "Ghostbusters" of zombie flicks, but not half as smart or knowing as it thinks it is.

This, then, is what a zombie film looks like now that zombies have become part of mainstream entertainment. Not that it won’t make you laugh occasionally and won’t try to charm the hell out of you, and as far as diverting, cartoonish amusements go, it’s a fair deal - but it’s a trifle. Not much meat to it after all.