Keep

Keep

Writer and Director ~ Lewis Rose

2023, UK, 23 mins

Starring ~ Phil Davis, Weyal Bariz

A few months ago, I got see my longterm pal’s Lewis Rose’s short film in Soho screening rooms. Now you too can watch ‘Keep’ on Disney+. Lewis has made a handful of shorts that have won awards at festivals, and the underlying theme is of different cultures and lifestyles coming together, but never at the expense of their respective cultures. Don’t be fooled by the bright, easy-going surface, for there is a fierce humanitarian core engaged with the troubled times. Watch and be charmed and a little provoked.

https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/browse/entity-2947767d-bf1a-4037-9e6c-c2debf5d2f9a

FrightFest Halloween 2022

FrightFest Halloween 2022

 

Tripping the Dark Fantastic

Director: LG White.

With: Simon Boswell, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dario Argento, LG White.

UK 2022. 93 mins.

 

Simon Boswell in concert at Earth Theatre, London in 2021, with each track coming with some backstory from Boswell and interviews with a few director cameos. I have always loved ‘Santa Sangre’ and ‘Hardware’ scores (the former being one of my all-time favourite films) and the performances here are impressive with Boswell’s 12-piece band, Caduta Massi. Stepping in for Goblin – who had to cancel due to COVID – Boswell sticks a coffin on stage and concentrates on his horror scores. I still don’t care for ‘Demons’, and there’s some dodgy lyrics, but it’s a wonderful mix of rock-out and classical approaches via circus tunes, because Boswell covers a lot of ground and styles.

 

I thought a concert film/documentary was a curious/audacious way to start the Frightfest Halloween day, but I was thoroughly entertained. LG White – Boswell’s wife – is still editing and throws in lots of overlapping visuals to try to capture the stage activity and live video backgrounds featuring cameos (Iggy Pop! Argento!) and film clips. It’s a fine presentation.

 

Freeze

Director: Charlie Steeds.

With: Johnny Vivash, Ricardo Freitas, David Lenik, Jake Watkins.

UK 2022. 90 mins

 

Starts out promising a low-budget ‘The Terror’ Lovecraftian monster movie, which is all good. There’s admirable ambition, the Norwegian ice-scapes are breath-taking, but there’s some dubious acting and, worse, the monsters are somewhat ill-served. Not only is the fun design given away immediately (no build-up here - but just look at it!), and perhaps we can step back from questioning their logic (assumedly they are amphibious monsters that get their fishy food diving under the ice? Seals? Bears?), but their squat-walking really doesn’t seem to be any sense (I mean, they’re in a cavernous environment).

 

Gnomes

Director: Ruwan Suresh Heggelman.

With: Moïse Trustfull, Duncan Meijiring.

6mins.

 

I can report that Paul McEvoy, once of the FrightFest founders, sat near me and laughed his socks off to this. The main source of humour to this swift and hilarious short is the splatter excess. The designs of the gnomes and their attack machines are delightful. It’s a show-piece kill segment that doesn’t waste time in being outrageous.

 

Mad Heidi

Directors: Johannes Hartmann, Sandro Klopfstein.

With: Casper Van Dien, David Schofield, Alice Lucy, Leon Herbert

Switzerland 2022. 92 mins.

 

A parody frontloaded with its best gags, but then gets districted by women’s prison satire and then weighed-down by increasingly leaning on plot rather than jokes. Nevertheless, agreeable enough fun, powered mostly by Casper Van Dien’s consistently funny villainous performance.

 

Outpost

Director: Joe Lo Truglio.

With: Beth Dover, Dallas Roberts, Dylan Baker, Ato Essandoh.

USA 2022. 84 mins.

 

Takes a moment to settle down and make sense, but soon settles in to a seemingly straightforward tale of a woman trying to escape a troubled past of domestic abuse by becoming a fire marshal atop a forest lookout. A film unafraid to takes its time, strong on empathy and performances – Dylan Baker as the prickly neighbour and Ato Essandoh as Kate’s taciturn boss were personal favourites.       

 

It was obvious from the Q&A afterwards that Joe Lo Truglio wanted to be as sympathetic to his approach to PTSD with a potentially conventionally conventional thriller, and it is this that distinguishes ‘Outpost’ and motivates as well as allows for its narrative surprises.

 

On The Edge

Directors: Jen & Sylvia Soska.

With: Aramis Sartorio, Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Mackenzie Gray.

Canada 2022. 114 mins.

 

Aramis Sartorio gives his all while the Soskas pose and pout their performances. Any message about female empowerment is filtered into sadism-revenge fantasy as a family man that books a dominatrix in a hotel gets more than he bargained for. This sadism-revenge agenda also guided the Soska’s far superior ‘American Mary’ but the body-horror fascination there is replaced by two-bit Catholic morals here. Anal rape is the main source of humour. But even more egregiously is the badly recorded diagetic dialogue and amateurish sound mix that makes much incomprehensible. Which is problematic for a film that is constantly talking at you. Eventually it devolves into strobe lighting and bible verse and a simplistic morality play that makes a nonsense of any of its transgressive and feminist intent.

Look to 'Promising Young Woman', 'The Beta Test' or even 'The Special' for more nuanced, troubling and fun interrogations of these themes.

 

The Offering

Director: Oliver Park.

With: Nick Blood, Allan Corduner, Paul Kaye, Emm Wiseman.

USA 2022. 93 mins.

 

Introducing the film, director Oliver Park said it portrayed beat-for-beat terrifying nightmares he’d had since he was a toddler. One can only imagine that his nightmares came with bangs and blares and musical stings. Certainly I anticipated a more surrealist, nightmare-logic to the film, but what followed was a far more conventional horror. It relies too much on jump-scares, which quickly become tiresome, despite being distinguished by its Jewish family drama and folklore context, good performances and funeral home setting. 

______

Favourites: ‘The Outpost’, ‘Gnomes’.

Surprised I liked: ‘Tripping the Dark Fantastic’.

Sad that: I ended up being a little indifferent to ‘Mad Heidi’ after the opening had been such parody bonkers and fun. 

Grimmfest Easter Horror Nights: 'The Night', 'The Barcelona Vampiress', 'Imaginary Portrait', ''Echthaar'

 THE NIGHT

Director: Kourosh Ahari

Writers: Kourosh Ahari, Milad Jarmooz

2020, USA-Iran

‘The Night’ opens with an excellent set-up with a party of friends, effortlessly conveying relationships that are obviously long-term and no inclined to punctuation for the audience; these are people who have known each other a while, are perfectly aware of one other’s foibles. And this continues when the focus narrows to the couple Babek (Shahab Hosseini) and Neda (Nioushi Noor), and Iranian couple living in the USA. Their marriage feels lived-in, no room for niceties, the underlying love taken as a given, the selfish traits and admonishments casual rather than argumentative. He, a little boorish; she a little needling. In this way they feel real. And of course, they have secrets, albeit ones that are well telegraphed. 

So when they decide to stay in a hotel to resolve a marital disagreement, they are prime material for supernatural forces to exploit their human weakness. A hotel at night is always going to be evocative: pretty but impersonal. There’s a lot to enjoy in the slow-burn and perhaps ‘The Night’ is less riveting and more conventional when the situation is revealed, but the mundane fall-out of secrets and trauma are more convincing here for being organic as opposed to high dramatics. And there is enough creeping dread and surrealistic touches to keep this intriguing. 

[Spoiler alert:] However, the final note that you can never escape purgatory unless you face yourself is elegantly rendered and speaks of horror of a deeper, personal nature: one where you can’t escape your self-denial. 

THE BARCELONA VAMPIRESS

La Vamipra da Barcelona

Director: Lluís Danés

Writers: Lluís Arcarazo, María Jaén

2020, Spain

IMDB says “In early 20th century Barcelona, little Teresa goes missing shocking the country. When police start investigating Enriqueta Martí, the "Vampiress of Raval", they cover a much more sinister affair.” But that isn’t quite the plot. This is the story of a troubled but apparently gifted journalist Sebastià Comas (Roger Casamajor) mired in the case of Enriqueta Martí, motivated by personal guilt at the death of his sister. But, like Alan Moore’s ‘From Hell’, and films such as ‘The Limestone Golem’ or Lang's ‘M’, Arcarazo and Jaén’s script is more interested in cultural context, commentary and corruption. Comas’ journalism is soon mutilated to fit an agenda and he crumbles even as he tries to cling to a truth he is told no one wants. The people want the “morbid”. 

With strong themes and despair established, Danés goes out to play with aesthetic: black-and-white and vintage cinema quirks launching into colour for the nightmarish, or red dresses; there are real sets and cut-out sets. Sometimes sets drop into Derek Jarman minimalism even as the affectations of Guy Madden comes to mind. But this is not to compensate for a lack of script and plot, which is always intriguing even if Comas’ doesn’t see the depth of corruption that the audience has long guessed. In fact, on first watch, the post-modern visuals may distract from how solid the characterisation and thriller elements are. It’s premise that unreliable narrators and biased storytelling and corruption make the truth an almost impossibility to reach is timeless.

It’s a fascinating film where all the artifice isn’t allowed to get in the way of a solid, sad tale of scapegoating.

&

The advantage of short films is that coherence is not necessarily as predominant a requirement as with long-form. Felipe Martinez Carbonell’s ‘Imaginary Portrait’ and ‘Echthaar’ by Dominic Kubisch and Christopher Palm both capitalise on the nightmare logic that short horror films can excel in. Both are often gorgeous to look at and a little open-ended that will not frustrate a briefer tale.

‘Imaginary Portrait’ is a picture of a girl trapped at home under the oppression of her father and grandfather. It’s often elegantly presented but not afraid of a monstrous figure walking in the background. It easily conjures outrage and creepiness. 

'Echthaar’ has gorgeous monochrome photograph and some vintage pop songs to distinguish it. It packs a Fifties setting, hairdressing and the eeriness of display dummies and jukeboxes into a tale that doesn’t have to make sense, simply beguile. It has a little of that dark, surreal humour that reminds of ‘In Fabric’. 

Amusements

 Some distractions:

Seven years making 'Sator'.

"Crash: The Wreck of the Century"  by Jessica Kiang

The biggest music revolution you’ve never heard of

by Jimmy Andrex

This is Jimmy Andrex's excellent review of the excellent book by Martin Christie, "Electronic Music Travels", which I have a personal stake in as someone who has attended and even performed at the Electronic Music Open Mic nights. Oh, and Martin is a friend too. I think the book is looking for a second print run. Here is me being serenaded with "Yes sir, I Can Boogie" by Jan Doyle Band at the last London EMOM hosted by Martin in 2019.

And here is an excellent economics lesson from Jimmy Andrex:

Jimmy Andrex · Wealth Creators

And an essential tale of horror:

And ending with essential electro-sounds from MHO:

FrightFest 2020: digital edition - day 1

 

Of course, Corona19 is pretty much a horror scenario come to life. Didn't I see an article saying research shows horror fans coping better with its stresses?

Anyway, the pandemic put paid to the annual trek to London to stick my head into horror films  and, as they say, “the dark side of cinema” and not to come out for days. Dodgy eating, racing for the night bus, spending a bit much on new films at Fopps, etc. But, like everything else, FrightFest moved online, so here we are. It’s minus the casual party atmosphere and it means there’s no eavesdropping on other’s comments when leaving a film for the lobby, or overhearing the groups outside The Empire Leicester Square, or buddying with your seat neighbour, so I’m missing out there.

It’s a slimmed-down programme, but it’s great to still have it!

And I am going to take a moment to recommend the documentary Chris Collier’s ‘FrightFest: beneath the dark heart of cinema’, made by friends and acquaintances of mine. This is a great primer for those that don’t know or those that are new to it (I’m assuming devotees have already seen it), and as I’ve been going for ten years now, I remember several of those events and speeches featured. 

So to digi-FrightFest 2020.

Things started off with the Evolution of Horror podcast’s FightFest pub quiz, hosted by the very agreeable Mike Muncer. This was on YouTube and free for anyone. I got about 50% of the answers right each round, give or take, so I maybe I’m not as much of a nerd as occasionally accused. Actually, I’m just crap at trivia. But I did get a particular question in the FrightFest specific round - the question was (I’m paraphrasing): what was the film screening at FrightFest where two people were caught in a sex act. It was ‘R.I.P.D.’: two people were caught masturbating and the incident was labelled the “‘R.I.P.D.’ shuffle” (I’m pretty sure it was Paul McEvoy announced this).

The Short Film Showcase used to be on the main screen but has moved to other screens in recent years. I always enjoyed the short films but mostly just stay on the main screen. I even asked Alan Jones once if there was going to be a FrightFest short film release DVD, but he said no as it was a rights nightmare.

Even if not remarkable, the Short Film Showcase One starts off with at least agreeably quirky genre angles. Ryan Irving’s ‘Bark’ a slasher scenario told from the point-of-view of a tree; Florence Kosky’s ‘A Bit of Fun’ where a séance exposes the rifts in some housemates’ friendship; ‘Breakfast’ by Paul Beattie and Melanie Rios is decently conveyed portrayal of a woman’s descent into zombiedom; Christopher McSherry’s ‘FLESH Control’ told from the point of view of bugs and featuring agreeably clunky costumes. But ‘Subject 3’ is all set-up and then ends just as it gets going.

The second half is a stronger crop. Ordinarily I find a story’s retreat into anthropomorphosis when concerning robots and AI a weakness, but of course it depends how it’s done. Aidan Brezonick’s ‘Jeff Drives You’ does it right, concerning a self-driving car loaded with so much AI and raised empathy that it’s more a commentary on how everything is marketed to sell to the consumer’s preference, the customer’s indulgence. You know: The world revolves around you. It’s wry, darkly funny, nicely played and, considering where it goes to, convincing within its 17 minute run time.

Nat Luurtsema’s ‘Ouzo and Blackcurrant’ isn’t remarkable, but it knows what it is and does what short films do so well: a striking single location, nice performances, the hint of backstory, just enough to let us know what the trope is, and then find an angle to hinge scares on.

Similarly, Finn Callan’s ‘Guest’ uses an anxious air and one unforgettably creepy visage to power his short. Inspired by a nightmare, apparently, and it shows.

Brian Gillespie’s ‘Tarrare’ has hardly any visuals at all, just an unsettling drawing and words across the screen. It’s a tale told in narration by Ian Lassiter but it’s fully engaging for it’s one of those horror tales that’s simple and nasty and works vividly in the imagination. Alternatively, although using similar storytelling, Shaun Clark’s ‘The Beholder’ is an Edgar Allan Poe rendition that uses animation and live action for a super-short (1 minute) Gothic shock. It’s a beautiful as it is quick.

 

SKY SHARKS

Mark Fehse, 2020, Germany

Nazi-zombies riding on flying sharks, so you know that drill. And there's plenty of amusement to be had from that even if you have to sidestep the issue that Nazi's aren't perhaps so much a thing of the past that they can be harmlessly trivialised.

It starts of decently enough with the first attack on an unsuspecting flight and there’s plenty of CGI gore and breasts and that knowing homaging to 80s cheese. Oh, and there’s some family stuff. But it’s one of those meta-exploitation tributes that gets bogged down in backstory – Nazi experiments to raise the ultimate army from the undead, etc – and in plot instead of gags that the fun wears thin. Decent zombies though, and that’s where practical effects have the edge.