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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FrightFest 2023: 'It Lives Inside', 'Creeping Death', 'Where The Devil Roams', 'New Life', 'Faceless After Dark', 'That's a Wrap'

 

Director: Bishal Dutta.
With: Megan Suri, Neeru Bajwa, Mohana Krishnan, Betty Gabriel.
US 2023. 99 mins

Yes, it’s tropey, but with a little Hindi twist and a decent lead character conflicted between her heritage and forging her own identity, there’s enough to keep this fresh. But mostly, an endearing practical monster makes up for a lot.

More alarming is the apparent conclusion that, although the malevolence is imported from the old world, if you don’t absorb and follow it, swallow it down and keep feeding it, it will destroy all your loved ones.

 

Director: Matt Sampere.
With: Monique Parent, Scott Lea, Matt Sampere, Delian Lincourt.
USA 2023. 93 mins.

 It is quite hard to review a film when increasingly it is impossible to see what's going on, the editing makes it unintelligible, and the music stings blare out seemingly at random at everything.

Directors: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser.
With: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser.
USA 2023.  90 mins.

Indie-low/no-budget filmmaking at its best. Sideshow sinister stuff and Depression era family murder road trip, with a big topping of body-horror. Often resembling a story told through vintage photographs, a film that looks the part while embracing its anachronisms without forfeiting mood (the wonderful rock music!).  Fascinating faces and black humoured morbidity abound, but when asked in the Q&A what this film might says about the Adams family, Toby Poser elucidated that she felt it was concerned with the question of children facing their parents' mortality. Might be the Adams family’s most ambitious and accomplished.

 

Director: John Rosman.
With: Sonya Walger, Hayley Erin, Tony Amendola, Ayanna Berkshire.
USA 2023. 85 mins.

 Not quite what you might think initially, this impressive debut has two excellent lead performances that effortlessly guide through the myriad genres to discuss the issue of failing bodies. Rarely do we see the subject touched with such focus in this way in genre. There's character drama, chase thriller, horror, sci-fi - a heady mix. It's the stuff that inspires body-horror (indeed, the film says this very thing), but the empathy and humanity that guides this right to the end is quite unique.

 

Director: Raymond Wood.
With: Jenna Kanell, Danny Kang, Danielle Lyn, Michael Aaron Milligan.
USA 2023. 86 mins.

 Impressively mounted, acted and stylish. 

It turns out to be another tortured-artist-makes-murder-art scenario with a little feminist anger and social media disgust. The very smart filmmakers in the Q&A seemingly want their protagonist to be an anti-hero and/or ambiguous, but when all is supposedly muddied, she’s a torturer and murderer seemingly motivated by her envy of her more successful (?) friends even more than online misogyny and a home invasion. And smirking to camera never quite does it for me.

 

Director: Marcel Walz.
With: Cerina Vincent, Monique Parent, Sarah French, Gigi Gustin.
USA 2023. 94 mins.

Another Murder-Art scenario. Camp, daft, meta, exploitative, occasionally funny, with one unforgettable murder moment; tries to have its cake and eat it by flirting with real motives, and anyway undoes any goodwill by an untenably long revelation denouement.

FrightFest 2023: 'Suitable Flesh', 'The Dive', 'Cheat'

Suitable Flesh

Director: Joe Lynch. With:

Heather Graham, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Davison, Johnathan Schaech.

USA 2023. 100 mins.

Starting headlong with the obligatory 80s homage, Joe Lynch’s love letter to Stuart Gordon is a decent facsimile, taking the basics from HP Lovecraft’s ‘The Thing on the Doorstep’. However, doesn’t have the goofy excess, going for an 80s erotica angle instead. And reading Lovecraft’s summary of the idea he had in a dream turns out to be scarier in implication than anything in the film. The last act livens up and you realise the film, has been treading water for a while - However, the reversal camera in the car gag is everything.

 

Director: Maximilian Erlenwein.
With: Sophie Lowe, Louisa Krause.
Germany 2023. 100 mins.

Slick with excellent underwater photography. The lobby afterwards had several saying what they would have done better in that situation, but it seemed to me it was about maybe not making the best decisions at the right time and that not everyone is heroic. The situation is all a metaphor for the sisters’ dysfunctional relationship, of course - she's stuck in the depths while hers sister clumsily tries to save her, etc -  and overcoming that together to solve the situation. Drowning drama has inherent high stress levels if that’s a phobia of yours.

Directors: Nick Psinakis, Kevin Ignatius.
With: Corin Clay, Mick Thyer, Danielle Grotsky, April Clark.
USA 2023. 85 mins.

Likable enough cast, beautifully shot, charming regional work, but ultimately unconvincing.

And evidence again that local libraries are the bane of malevolent ghosts.

 

At FrightFest ... do not disturb....

The Damned Don’t Cry - Les damnés ne pleurent pas

 

The Damned Don’t Cry

Les damnés ne pleurent pas

Director ~ Fyzal Boulifa

Writers ~ Fyzal Boulifa, Gabriel Gauchet, Rungano Nyoni

2022, Freance-Belgium-Morocco

Stars ~ Aicha Tebbae, Abdellah El Hajjouji, Antoine Reinartz

 

A portrayal of the disintegration of a mother-son relationship that relies upon hustling on both sides to get by. The social realism leaves them in a constant state of precariousness adrift in North African poverty and at the mercy of the generosity, manipulations, and prejudices of others.

The first time performances by Aïcha Tebbae and Abdellah El Hajjouji are everything, convincing and touching. She just wants to be free, deluded, regal and out for a good time; he just wants some security, if not true options. The street scenes bear the kind of realism found in ‘Pixote’, or ‘Capernaum’, or something like ‘Son of Babylon’; the sense that a just point-and-go camera effortlessly captures the environment, a culture, the dust and dirt and cramped rooms and chances of a peripatetic existence where a TV set comes to represent stability. It’s a place where people are foolhardy rather than villainous, but where foibles are enough to keep ruining things. Salem (El Hajjouji) finds that is natural paranoia and distrust is only ever rewarded; his mother (Tebbae) is quite aware that her fantasies are scant consolation for the truth of things, but what else does she have? There’s the sad sense that this isn’t really, truly, anyone’s fault. For all the tinges of melodrama, the hardships of neo-realism only ever leaves melancholy.

Naturalistic and convincing, a quietly bruising tale of not having the privilege to be yourself when you’re just scraping by.

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.”  

 

Malignant

Malignant

Director ~ James Wan

Writers ~ James Wan, Ingrid Bisu, Akela Cooper

2021, USA-China

Stars ~ Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young

I suppose there is camp value, but right from the off there is neglible acting and dialogue, and after the credits, we get set-pieces that haven’t earnt any of our intellectual or emotional investment. It’s slick with the camerawork overcompensating for the rudimentary horror shenanigans. A pleasingly showy overhead shot of our protagonist running through the house, but which leads to nothing; giallo homages; random Roxy Music; wafer-thin characters and dialogue; a fairly engrossing/bonkers chase that owes more to superhero physicality; and then ….

 

Hahaha! Well, it’s one of those films where the craziness of the last act makes up for all the underwhelment that preceded. It’s that last act that means everything and it’s likely, if you’re a horror fan, that you’ll be grinning at the audacity. For this alone, it’s the most satisfied and least insulted I’ve been by a James Wan film since ‘Saw’ (his style is too pantomime for my taste). Of course, it doesn’t make a lick of sense, it’s all resolved with weak speechifying and sentimentality, and it's not particularly good, but by then the pleasure has been had.