FrightFest 2023: 'Piper', 'The Seeding', 'Cold Meat', 'Raging Grace'

Director: Anthony Waller.
With: Elizabeth Hurley, Mia Jenkins, Jack Stewart, Robert Daws.
USA 2023. 105 mins.

In a German town full of cliches and random accents, the malevolent spirit of the fairy tale that made it notorious turns out to be true. Sort of. With a constantly declarative tone, many scenes are just plonked next to each other without much flare. Elizabeth Hurley's performance wings between knowingly camp and embarrassing, but she does self-flagellate onscreen as penance. It’s Mia Jenkins that is the best in show.

It was hard to tell if the audience was laughing at or with, but as a chunk of crew was in the audience, I am guessing towards the latter. Certainly, a CS Lewis wardrobe gag during the closing credits imply deliberate. But it is naff, doesn’t do much with its threat to all the town’s children, and certainly can’t be taken seriously.

Director: Barnaby Clay.
With: Scott Haze, Kate Lyn Sheil, Alex Montaldo, Charlie Avink.
USA 2023. 94 mins.

A man finds himself in a massive hole in the ground with a reticent woman and savage boys above and no way out. Scott Haze, who essentially has to carry the film, is excellent. It's a bad title that gains credence when you know what it refers to. It's a Descent Into Hell narrative strung out on mystery and a few shocks as Haze goes from hints of entitlement to scraps of what he used to be, never quite knowing that he's fated as soon as he offered help to a child seemingly lost in the wild. The slow burn keeps up the disquiet, but it's a film of a stunning rock-face that never stops being awe-inspiring.

Although the film tries to hold its cards close to its chest, if you do guess what's happening, the inevitability is still unsettling. The boys are allowed to roam free and do and get away from anything, to indulge in predatory and sadistic play, and any dissenters will not be tolerated (they're a bit 'Mad Max' delinquents). Women are baby-machines that are the ones that tragically uphold these traditions. Again, perversion of gender roles and homemade family traditions/religions make families the most dangerous places. The film offers no more than an extreme version of somewhat conservative norms (women the homemakers while men go play). Accusations of misogyny don't quite hold water because this is the very core of the film's horror. Ignorance itself is the main source of this horror.

And on the other hand, it is refreshing to see a man being manipulated, caged, abused and impotent for once instead of a woman suffering. It's a folklore horror cosmos where you may just find yourself in someone else's crazy plans, and that alone continues to be one of the essential themes and bedrocks of horror.

Director: Sébastien Drouin.
With: Allen Leech, Nina Bergman, Yan Tual, Sydney Hendricks.
UK/Canada 2023. 90 mins.

 After an initial twist, a chamber piece of killer and victim in a car, stranded in a blizzard, offers two great performances with a decent script and a lot of enjoyable detail about their predicament.

If the supernatural element seems like a deux ex machina, even if foreshadowed, and there may be a little cultural appropriation here, but this doesn't scupper the good work that has gone before. A relatively smart and entertaining thriller.

Director: Paris Zarcilla.
With: Jaeden Paige Boadilla, Max Eigenmann, David Heyman, Leanne Best.
UK 2023. 99 mins.

A film where the Gothic House tradition is seen through the Filipino staff, and in that way achieves both a lot of genre subversion and social commentary. And seeing through this lens also makes sense of why the English characters are verging on grotesques: if it's a little broad, that arguably fits with the Gothic melodramatic custom (even look to 'Cobweb' for comparison to horror parallels). The four leads are exceptional: Jaeden Paige Boadilla is especially endearing and disarming as Grace.

Jon Clarke's score makes sure the Fillipino roots are always foregrounded - and this is how you end a film on a dance number. Paris Zarcilla (in the FrightFest Q&A) talks of the rage that fueled the script, the anger he felt when during Covid, how Filipinos were staffing the NHS and yet the British government committed more and more to demonising immigrants. It was this anger echoed by the other crewmembers and this aspect that evidently greatly moved much of the audience. Indeed, the choir that we see at the end are all NHS workers which only seemed to add to the poignancy. Again, adding increasingly diverse viewpoints to familiar tropes only reveals how potent genre is for expressing and exposing rage and social injustice. And yet, Zarcilla talked of getting past this to get to the joys of life, and to that end the film never feels despairing and this agenda is captured in the final musical sequence. In this way, the film achieves its goal and ends up unexpectedly moving and deeper than its surface pleasures. 

The People Under the Stairs

 The People Under the Stairs

Writer & Director ~ Wes Craven

1991, USA

Stars ~ Brandon Quintin Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie

An oddity that’s tonally all-over-the-place, which isn’t unusual for Craven. Having enticed the viewer in with the promise of a sinister population under the house (they look like … zombies? Mutants?), there’s the odd mash-up of fairy-tale-meets-urban-realism. Our protagonist is a young black boy, “Fool”, not stereotypically streetwise but convinced to commit crime for the good of his family. It’s mentioned in the documentary ‘Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror’ that the fact that this hero was a black kid was a key moment for some viewers not used to seeing themselves portrayed on screen – and for this, the kind of territory we’re more used to seeing post-Jordan Peele, Craven is to be commended.* And Craven’s committed too: the villains are grotesque white landlords who have a room full of money like Scrooge McDuck, are greedy for greed’s sake, and kidnap people for kinks.

To this end, Everett McGill and Wendy Robie ham it up and then some as if they’re finally being let off the hook after being an odd couple in ‘Twin Peaks’, which wasn’t so straight to begin with. Ving Rhames comes on like a proto-Juan from ‘Moonlight’. All the way through, Brandon Quintin Adams as “Fool” is the endearing, sensible, resourceful voice running through the walls of this unhinged urban fairy-tale. There’s a queasy rollercoaster of slapstick, the genuinely perverse, implications of horrific abuse next to unhelpfully coarse use of gimp suits (they aren’t synonymous), righteous social awareness, both sympathetic and cartoonish characterisation, etc etc. Quite often, you may wonder where you are, and it’s full of red herrings (not least the title). But like the geography of the house, Craven isn’t particularly interested in pinning things down but rather creating a funhouse of genre moods where his empathies for the disenfranchised provides the peg to hang it all from. It’s uneven, doesn’t work as much as it does, of its time in genre-feel as much as it’s ahead of its time in its sociological awareness, and ultimately an intriguing little oddity.

·         * Indeed, “[Jordan Peele] tells the interviewer that seeing a young Black protagonist was rare and almost unheard of. As a result, it positively impacted the representation of Black people in horror. Fool does not follow troupes, he does not die first, he is not the sacrificial Black character, and he proves successful by the movie's end.”  

 

War Pony

 

War Pony

Directors – Gina Gammell, Riley Keough

Writers – Franklin Sioux Bob, Bill Reddy, Gina Gammell

2022, USA-UK

Stars - JoJo Bapteise Whiting, LaDainian Crazy Thunder, Iona Red Bear, Ta-Yamni Long Black Cat, Wilma Colhof

 

IMDB: “The interlocking stories of two young Oglala Lakota men growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”

 

Initially, Bill’s Bill (JoJo Bapteise Whiting) introduction as a barely responsible young swaggerer of two girlfiends and children and the loose-limbed feel has a hint of Larry Clark, or Harmony Korine without the carnivaleque. But Whiting’s performance soon becomes more relatable and complex, and despite his waywardness, it always has the essence of someone’s goodness trying to get out but thwarted by poverty and immaturity. Meanwhile, Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) is a somewhat quiet kid that just can’t seem to help getting into deeper trouble, cycling around the reserve with his pals like a drug-dealing variation on ‘Stranger Things’, although the feel is more loose-limbed like ‘We Are the Animals’. Or Waititi’s ‘Boy’, although this is even more obviously and deliberately downbeat.

 

Bill’s buying a poodle, hoping to breed, is not only a way for him to make money, but it feels like a subtle manifestation of his aspiration to care for something, even if he is a neglectful/clueless young father. Natho gets more resentful and angrier and neglected and isolated the more he tries to tough it all out. The film’s central sadness is watching him sink further into himself with bitterness. And there will be casualties, but not necessarily as you predict.

 

It’s this Native American specificity that gives ‘War Pony’ it’s polemic, social conscience and relevance (and it’s this that gives an otherwise mostly conventional low-budget sci-fi ‘Slash/Back’ added charm and poignancy). Screenwriter Sioux Bob is quoted by Nicolas Repold as saying at the Cannes festival: “In a lot of Native films, it’s either the poverty porn or it’s about onetopic. It’s about one dilemma, it’s not about everything, and that’s what thisfilm gives you: everything.” So domestic abuse will cut to the next moment: instead of dwelling, it quickly moves to how the circumstances, needs and opportunities have changed. And it’s this agenda that means the ending might seem underwhelming to some, that it might not satisfy, but that strikes as the point: you have an act of revenge, but you still wake up to the same shit’n’struggle every day.

 

Just as the story avoids being simply a downer, David Gallego’s cinematography stops short of being de-saturated by despair. And similarly, the characters we meet are given to hustle rather than melancholy. They’re not broken: they’re survivors. Perhaps poverty looks the same given any specificity, but film is a most potent platform/weapon for giving voice to the disenfranchised. ‘War Pony’ is one of those films that makes the ache of life within you rise to the surface.

 

 

His House

Director & screenplay: Remi Weekes, 2020, UK

Story: Felicity Evans & Toby Venables 

‘His House’s distinction is in using the genre to give voice to the experience of those that are not usually heard, just derided, mistrusted and used as scapegoats. This has always been part of the genre, speaking for the outsiders, but this particularly socially-aware horror of course follows a welcome recent trend invested in the experiences of the Black community that seemingly follows the roads kicked open by Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’. Saw an IMDB comment saying that the scares are the greatest thing about horror films, but that surely does the typical, tired thing of reducing the genre to its  most superficial level: the social commentary and reflection the genre offers is so often overlooked or just ignored. Or the troubling emotional truths of ‘The Babadook’ or ‘The Relic’ (2020) are the kind evoked in a way only horror can provide. If jump-scares are all you came for, you’re missing out.

‘His House’ is the tale of a refugee couple escaping horrific circumstances and trying for asylum in England. When they reach those stark, unwelcoming shores, they are given a list of stringent rules that do not seem a life at all (no work; no friends; but you must prove you are assimilating) and a house – a big house, as everyone reminds them, seemingly with surprise and resentment as if they are undeserving. Microaggressions all present and active. And of course, it’s haunted but it’s far from the glamour of delipidated Gothic. Mostly cleaned out and barely furnished, it still has the feeling of a potential squat, situated in a bland, unappealing English street. Where they are is never specified, all to increase the feeling of being unmoored and kept in the dark. As CH Newell notes:

“What’s unique is how Weekes uses the Gothic to explore contemporary immigration issues, which makes for a memorable story, and shows how rich the horror genre can be when we make sure stories from all cultures make it to the screen.” 

It’s a depressing backdrop more at home in a social-realist drama. Bol (Sope Dirisu) wants to pin everything on their new home, to assimilate, to sing stupid football songs in the pub, to eat with cutlery, to forget the past. Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) isn’t able to do that. One of the most memorable moments is when she goes out, gets lost and sees some black kids, assumes they will be allies, only to learn it’s very different here. And then the alleyways of the estate turn into a homage to the maze of ‘The Shining’ (Weeke’s deliberate and effective homage). It’s in a moment like this where the melding of kitchen sink drama and horror tropes blend most effortlessly. Nothing is truly welcoming.

This is where casting Matt Smith as their case worker is a true asset: Smith has an aura that you can’t quite pin down; friendly and on-your-side one moment, but somewhat threatening and broken the next. This is why he made such an effective ‘Dr Who’: there’s something about him you can’t quite pin down. He has a way of making prosaic lines seem threatening. 

Dirisu is all energetic but desperate hope, his vulnerability and denial almost embarrassingly open. Warm but obviously troubled. Mosaku, by contrast, is all wisdom and acceptance, without being patronising. Integrity and worry. They provide a mesmerising performance chamber piece without overbearing the tone (this could easily convert to a play).

Everything is uncertain, but when the supernatural pays a visit to make sure their past can’t be dismissed, she especially knows exactly what it is. It is an apeth, a Sudese witch of guilt and revenge following from their homeland to terrorise them. It is not what haunts them that proves the mystery – which is typical of haunted houses – but the secret of how to traverse assimilation (what is it, even?). As noted, the film is very good on the microaggressions the Black community experience, of creating a system an atmosphere where the needy are kept pleading and in their place, where they can't win.

The film deftly maintains its balance of social issues, speaking to the humanity of refugees against a Hostile Environment, as it delves into its haunted house tropes. Like films such as ‘The Babadook’ , ‘Under the Shadow’ or ‘Get Out’, it wears its analogy on the surface,  and it guides and permeates everything; rooted in the zeitgeist but never forgoing its genre thrills. The social-realism may date a little given time, but its horror movie identity won’t.

Oh, ‘His House’ is likely to spook and scare you at times with its holes in the walls and open doorways. The first appearance made me jump; a central set-piece where the ghosts just seem to pile on is a highlight. And just when peaking with dramatic conflict, the film segues into revelations of the past, into steps-into-flashbacks; the kind that often feel a lazy means of exposition in many genre films but is smooth and fascinating here. For rather than just explaining the mystery, the flashback complicates this story further, opening up more themes, muddying waters. It feels narratively straightforward and superficially familiar, but it’s always introducing new nuances and this makes ‘His House’  increasingly dense and always intriguing. Even when Rial calls the Englishmen officials bored, it provides an alternate perspective on the other characters that assume their positions of superiority.

And then, as you think you may have it figured, it turns into a monster movie of sorts. Within its framework, ‘His House’ never rests. Its deftness of genre tropes and social issues only become fully apparent upon reflection. If perhaps the final declarations feel a little too on-the-nose, they are fully earned and feel true to the characters. It is the mystery of people and community that leads here rather than the supernatural, but it doesn’t skimp on the spooks either.