After Dark Horrorfest 2009: Eight Films to Die For III
After Dark Horrorfest 2009: Eight Films to Die For III
Coverage by Dustin Hall
For the third year running, the After Dark Horrorfest has blessed us with 8 new horror films from up and coming talent, or from foreign creators. The After Dark guys have one of the greatest concepts running here; fresh, inventive horror films flooding your Halloween screens and your Christmas stockings. Of course, there are a few problems with the concepts.
First off, this year’s film fest got pushed back from October till January. Happy Halloween? Bloody New Years? I dunno. We can hope next year’s festival makes it in time for horror’s most blessed holiday, so they better get crackin’ on the next eight. Secondly, there has got to be more marketing for this thing. I don’t think anybody knew Horrorfest had been moved to January. There is an After Dark Poster and a trailer that gets run about two weeks before the event. Most people can’t even name the films. And by the time you read these reviews…well, the damn thing will be over. Also helpful would be an 8-film screen pass. Having to buy 8 movie tickets at $10 per pop, and concessions, takes the cost of the festival well over $100, which doesn’t seem conducive to getting people’s butts in the seat to sample more than one or two from the ‘fest.
Lastly, Rachel Miner of Penny Dreadful makes her third consecutive appearance this year. Are we still getting newcomers on the screen, or is Afterdark in danger of becoming an incestual in its uses of cast and crew?
Ah well, I can do nothing but wish these guys continued success. Every year there’s a couple crap movies, but some real gold in the mix too. Check out last year’s Frontier(s) (sadly, not given a theatrical run at most venues, due to its extreme violence. NC-17 here, guys) for a fantastic example of what these guys can find and/or create.
When you peruse your nearest DVD retailer for some fresh and frantic horror treats, take a print out of this article with you to separate the wheat from the chaff.
DAY 1:
Butterfly Effect 3: Revelation
Director: Seth Grossman
Starring: Chris Carmack, Daniel Spink
Brutal As Hell Rating: 2.5/5
The Story: Sam, armed with the same time traveling mutant powers as Ashton Kutcher before him, attempts to unravel the mystery of Girlfriend’s decade-old murder. Every jump into the past gives new clues, while also taking the lives of more loved ones.
The Skinny: I have to say, I had some reservations about this year’s festival, given that it started with an unwarranted sequel to an established franchise. It’s akin to opening Sundance with an American Pie sequel. Not to mention how absolutely terrible the straight-to-video Butterfly Effect 2 was.
Thankfully, the odd numbered Butterfly movies are of a higher standard. While Revelation cannot come close to the dismal, abject horror of the original cult classic (the movie that made me not need to punch Ashton Kutcher in the face), it does have a story with a solid emotional background, and enough interesting character turns to keep the audience stumbling along with it till the end. This is the film previously mentioned Rachel Miner appears in, offering her best performance to date, and lead Chris Carmack offers some intense acting as well.
Where the film falls apart is really in the fundamentals of its structure. It throws you into the middle of a murder mystery without knowing any of the characters or history. You’re assailed by a host of meaningless names lost in meandering dialogue. The one-two punch of Sam’s memory loss and poker face make the set up of the film an uphill climb for most viewers.
There’s also a bit of (very weak) humor added to the mix to break up all the bleak investigation, but usually at the wrong moments. There’s not many kills to be had in the film; a sight gag involving sawed off fingers turning on a nearby radio took out the suspense from one of the few jump moments of the movie.
Of course, die hard fans of the first film will be upset by the writers again changing the rules of time travel from the original premise. Sam can now jump in time, and in space, and through numerous plot holes.
Despite the faults of the film, it’s a fair effort. You won’t be wowed by anything, but there’s just enough intrigue to go around. And if nothing else, you can enjoy the ADR work. Whoever made the sound effects for the sex scene just went crazy. It’s like a piece of wet leather slapping a Jell-o mold.
From Within
Director: Phedon Papamichael
Starring: Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Kelly Blatz, Laura Allen
Brutal As Hell Rating: 3.0/5
The Story: A suicide at the edge of a Christian community creates a curse that turns the townsfolk against themselves. With the body count rising, a literal witch hunt begins that could consume the town much faster than the specter they fight against.
The Skinny: Director Phedon Papamichael (seriously) has not headed many film projects, but he’s no newcomer to the industry. He was a Cinematographer on films like W., Pursuit of Happiness, and 3:10 to Yuma. Its no surprise he’s created a great looking, very professional horror film. But does it deliver the scares?
First off, this film seems to be geared more towards the teen horror audience, despite its R rating. It has a largely teen cast, and shies away from the gore. With one or two trims, this movie could join the multitude of PG-13 high school horror movies that plague the theaters today. This is fine, as long as the suspense is revved up enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Sadly, its not. Papamichael is a great visual director, but the timing, at least with his scares, is all off. A major characters crashes into a tree, scared from the road by a ghost, her car catches on fire… so, why don’t we see the death? Why don’t we hear the agonized screams? Why do we not feel anything about this terrible event? All of the impact is just missing.
Of course, there’s still a nifty story to be had here. It’s a bit overblown, the idea that the entire town, with the exception of two girls, is a bible beating Christian that attends the local mega-church seems pretty farfetched. I realize there are Christian communities out there, but it seems like there would be more rebellious kids in those communities. Overall, the fire and brimstone angle is played up to an almost comedic degree. Despite that, the ‘curse that makes you want to kill yourself’ is a pretty cool idea, and the idea that the religious fervor consuming the town is an equally deadly curse works very well. Of course, despite the ‘sow the wind, reap the whirlwind’ experience of the town church, the director seems to inadvertently make the holy soldiers into the good guys. The curse may be revenge for their past transgressions, but still, look at the indiscriminate evil those witches released. Ouch.
Between the anti-religion/establishment story and the mopey, long-haired witch boys, if you’re an emo kid, you’re pretty much bound to love this movie. Even if you’re not emo, still worth checking out for a fun performance by seasoned supporting actor Adam Goldberg, and the best closing title scroll this side of Slumdog Millionaire. Really, this film ended very well.
Dying Breed
Director: Jody Dwyer
Starring: Mirrah Foulkes, Leigh Whannell, Nathan Phillips, Melanie Vallejo
Brutal As Hell Rating: 4.0/5
The Story: On an expedition through Tazmania to find a supposedly extinct breed of tiger, four backpackers find that they are the hunted. A group of deranged cannibals stalk these woods, hoping to find new breeding stock.
The Skinny: In my review of Dismal (2008), I made a comment about horror films being as cannibalistic as their villains. This story is nothing new. Texas Chainsaw cannibals meets Deliverance hillbillies, moved to the Tasmanian wilderness. In fact, not only does this movie feature someone falling face first into a bear trap, just like Dismal, but it also makes a reference to the Dueling Banjos scene in Deliverance! But, I also said in that film that the devil was in the details with horror movies, and in that regard, Dying Breen comes out very well.
The tale starts fairly slowly, with a lot of character building between the four main characters, all of whom put in solid, subtle performances. Well, Nathan Phillips’ (Wolf Creek) Jack isn’t subtle, but he’s a perfectly believable asshole. During this, Nina (Mirrah Foulkes) is haunted by disturbing fantasies of the death of her sister, who disappeared in the same woods almost a decade earlier. The quartet spends an evening with a town full of backwater hillbillies that you just know are drooling over their young flesh.
Once the four are out in the bush, though, is when things get good. Dying Breed brings some very disturbing ideas and images to the table, and at no point does it ever flinch. The corpse of Nina’s sister, haunting her dreams, is a powerful and disgusting image. Everything, from crossbow wounds, to cannibalism, to dismemberment, to rape, everything is in your face and terrifying. This movie had what the two preceding it were lacking, suspense and intensity.
I can’t say there aren’t a couple of weak moments in the film, but on the whole, it’s an excellent horror flick that has little new to add to the mix, but takes familiar elements, and uses them to great effectiveness. It keeps you squirming in your seat, all the way to the screaming end.
I had high hopes for this one anyway. After all, it did have a poster that was banned in Australia.
DAY 2:
Slaughter
Director: Stewart Hopewell
Starring: Antonia Bernath, Craig Robert Young, Lucy Holt, Maxim Knight, Amy Shiels
Brutal As Hell Rating: 1.0/5
The Story: In an attempt to escape her stalker ex-boyfriend, a young girl moves to the country with a girl who has an equal distrust for men. But, if she distrusts men so much, why do so many men come over to her house for late night trysts? And what’s with all those screams coming from the barn…?
The Skinny: Due to the time constraints and schedule of this year’s film fest (Where’s the final day where all 8 films are screened? Nowhere.) I had to drive 40 miles, 80 round trip, to see this movie on its own. And, of course, it would end up being the worst film of the festival. Really, I should have seen that coming.
Slaughter is a horror film, only by the merits of the movie’s ending. 90% of the film is a drama, where in the two girls bond over their stories of the abuses they have suffered at the hands of men. City girl has been stalked (and her stalker boy gets his own sub-plot, trying to track her to the farm) while country girl was molested as a child, in about the most watered down, PG kind of way. Seriously, the pictures of her abuse imply that she never even had to get naked. Horrifying. Of course, this being a horror film, the acting never really reaches a caliber to support this drama; you’re never ‘moved’ by anything.
And so, the audience is lost in this terrible, hokey, boring drama for the better part of an hour and half. Sure, characters wander onto the farm and vanish, but the lead girl is totally oblivious to the fact until it becomes painfully obvious. The audience knows that people are dying, but since the main character doesn’t, there’s no tension.
At the end, we’re treated, for our suffering, to an extended torture sequence involving teeth. Its actually pretty grisly. Of course, with how bad the preceding action sequences were, I’m pretty sure the whole film was nothing but a slap-dash excuse to frame this oral horror that the director must have been dreaming of for years.
I’m not even going into the cast or anything, this movie was pointless. Skip it. It brings down the whole Horrorfest brand.
DAY 3:
Voices
Director: Ki-hwan Oh
Starring: Jin-seo Yun, Ki-woo Lee, Gi-woong Park
Brutal As Hell Rating: 2.5/5
The Story: The sudden murder of a young bride by her groom marks the return of an old family curse, one that turns your closest family and friends against you.
The Skinny: Originally Du saram-yida out of Korea, this film follows the tried and true stylistic approach of Asian horror. Pasty-faced kid ghost with stringy black hair? Check. Story that only barely makes sense? Check. Mysterious family history and brooding parents? Check. That being said, this film is entirely up to taste. If you enjoy The Ring, The Grudge, The Eye, Dark Water, Tale of Two Sisters, Heirloom, etc. and you still don’t have enough, then this film is completely for you.
The movie’s basic idea is a solid foundation. The idea that your closest loved ones turn against you can be particularly horrifying. And its not like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, your attackers have no idea they are coming for you, and when its done, they forget. There are no evil clones here, if you fight back, you’re hurting the person you love. Between that idea and the fairly ambiguous explanation of the curse itself, there’s a lot of room for personal interpretation, and from that you can draw some real frights from Voices.
Everything else is pretty average, the look, the acting, not great but pretty good. If you like Asian horror, then you’ll enjoy it. If you don’t, it’s kind of bland.
Autopsy
Director: Adam Gierasch
Starring: Ashley Schneider, Eric F. Adams, Michael Bowen, Jenette Goldstein
Brutal As Hell Rating: 3.5/5
The Story: Following a post-Mardi Gras car crash, five teens are taken to a hospital where the doctor is in…SANE! (Thank you, Dr. Giggles)
The Skinny: Autopsy has a lot of problems.
First off, you hate the kids. You’ve got a foreign guy tagging along to mack on the girls, a milquetoast dude who becomes the MacGuffin of the whole story, and Ross McCall playing Jude. Jude is undeniably the KING OF DOUCHEBAGS. Jack from Dying Breed was a jack ass too, but at least he knew how to use a crossbow. Jude is not only the group’s biggest prick, but all he does is wander around, stealing drugs, yelling, and getting the group in worse trouble than a hospital run by sadists and ex-cons already provides. I’d say the two delightful females in the group would make up for the male portion of the cast if I weren’t so troubled by their complete lack of concern that they just got drunk, ran over, and killed another man five minutes into the movie.
Also, this film is pretty ugly. Most of the movie focuses on the kids wandering around the 3-story hospital (which must be impossibly big, with how much walking they do), which is mostly dark, but lit in shades of red, green and yellow. You know, all the colors that would instantly make most people realize this isn’t actually a hospital.
There are a few plot holes to boot. For instance, what happens to the other patients in the hospital half way through the film? When the kids get there, patients are running around the place, all looking cut up and crazy. A few are still coherent, though, and try to warn them to leave. So, where do these guys go when the kids decide to fight back? Why has no one decided to enlist the help of the giant black guy who was locked up on the 3rd floor? Sure he only had one eye, but I bet he still had two fists. And the zombie girl that attacks Jude, is that real or a hallucination? Hey, Autopsy, you’ve got a dangling thread, there.
Yet, despite these problems…man I enjoyed myself with this movie. It was during a scene where I was drinking in the particularly garish lighting when I realized when I’d seen films with this look before: the 80’s. This is a straight up 80’s style movie, with guts and blood and ridiculous plot twists and drug use all over the place. There’s nothing to do but sit back and have fun. Once I’d made that realization, I could sit back and laugh and enjoy the movie much more. I even really enjoyed the inclusion of Robert Patrick as the doctor. Dr-1000, I call him. (he’ll never escape that movie, btw)
Even if you’re one who can’t get into the camp fun of the movie… did I mention that part of the score is provided by a Theremin? A FUCKING THERAMIN!… once you’ve gotten through the belt sanding of corpses and torture by needles, you’re treated to the single coolest visual in the entire festival. Bobby’s fate is one of the greatest horror visuals I’ve seen in years, and though the rest of the film is pretty average, his visceral doom is a work of genius.
Autopsy is goofy fun, with a real showstopper at the end.
The Broken
Director: Sean Ellis
Starring: Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins, Melvil Pupaud, Ulrich Thomsen
Brutal As Hell Rating: 3.0/5
The Story: While recovering from a car wreck, a young woman struggles to reconstruct the days of her life leading up the accident, and finds herself pulled into a supernatural mystery.
The Skinny: When it comes to technical awards, this one will win them all from this year’s festival. Broken looks good, it sounds good, and it’s well performed. There’s some amazing slo-mo photography, a great score that really ramps it up during the intense moments, and it has an interesting premise to boot.
Unfortunately, there’s not much under that coat of polish. The film tries to flesh out its story with a noir mystery, and is generally unsuccessful at it. The premise of a world beyond the mirror, and evil reflections makes it not only a spiritual successor to Prince of Darkness, but offers a great Body snatchers type paranoia theme… something that is never really utilized. Instead, rather than focusing on the terror of not being able to trust your loved ones, or the notion of being consumed yourself, the movie focuses on the shoe-horned mystery, the climax of which causes the main character, Gina, to turn on her heel in a completely nonsense fashion at the film’s close. The most frightening moment in the movie centers around the little Asian-neighbor-guy, who trembles with fright as he returns home to his evil duplicate wife, unable to prove that she is not the woman she pretends to be. Her wicked grin was a terrifying visual, and the idea behind it really should have been the focus of this movie.
Instead, we get have a film where nothing really happens. Just…nothing. We get some great visual sequences of Gina having nightmares about her boyfriend turning evil, a foreshadowing of the paranoia to follow, and of blood falling from her ceilings. We’re treated to a well constructed scene as young Kate fights her doppelganger in the shower. Those bits aside, most of the movie is just plodding, with Gina wandering from place to place, trying to solve a mystery the audience already has the answer to. There are just so many moments of “fake” tension in this film, Gina wandering through dark attics and alleys while eerie music plays, just to have her change her mind, turn back, and have nothing happen in the sequence. By the time things really start to happen, you just don’t care anymore.
Now, I can’t be too hard on the film, because it does show a great mastery of film technique, and it is absolutely how all the films in the fest should look and sound, ideally. It’s a cool idea for a film, with some very good sequences, but it just can’t be called enjoyable with its snail’s pace. It’s well worth a viewing, but would it be worth a second one? My gut tells me no.
Perkins’ 14
Director: Craig Singer
Starring: Patrick O’Kane, Shayla Beesley, Mihaela Mihut, Michale Graves
Brutal As Hell Rating: 4.0/5
The Story: On the 10th anniversary of his son’s kidnapping, a small-town cop finds a connection to the crime in Ronald Perkins, a mysterious man picked up for a traffic violation. Upon investigating, the officer uncovers a monstrous secret about the communities missing children, one that now comes back to haunt them.
The Skinny: Horrorfest closes with a bang, as Perkins’ 14 serves up the most interesting plot of the festival. What begins as a serial killer/detective drama soon metamorphoses into something more when the police involved release Perkins victims, only to find them to be less than human. Perkins, filled with rage over the minimal effort the town gave to the investigation of his parents’ murder decades prior, has turned the town’s children into inhuman savages. Either they kill the town, or the town destroys their own children, but either way Perkins has his revenge. It’s a nifty idea that combines elements of crime drama with the brutality of 28 Weeks Later.
The budget constraints are, as ever, a concern. There’s some odd lighting used to cover up the less than grand set design, paired with a few obnoxious directorial decisions used to add more flourish to the dark landscape. What that gives you are sequences like a spinning downward shot with psychedelic color spray used to highlight something so simple as a guy yelling when his wound is disinfected. Perkins could also have benefited from a script-editor to avoid such dialogue as “Help me! Heeelp!” “What was that? It sounds…human.” *cue audience laughter*
Regardless, Perkins offers a pretty fun ride in all 3 acts, be it mystery, town zombie fight, or survivor stand-off from a jail control room. There’s lots of blood and guts for fans of it, and though the cast obviously isn’t experienced, they are all likable and believable, even if their characters’ actions aren’t always. Stand out among the characters is Perkins himself, played by Richard Brake of Batman Begins. You may remember Brake as Joe Chill, the guy who shot Bruce Wayne’s parents. Well, this orphan had a slightly different response to his parents’ murder. Brake offers an eerie grin, and a chilling sardonic tone as he narrates his torture and warping of the town’s children. Though his time in the film is short, he leaves a definite impression that does well at setting the tone of the film.
Much like Autopsy, Perkins’ 14 is fun enough to overlook its low-budget flaws, which is exactly what Horrorfest is all about. Its unique revenge plot makes it stand out from a genre that is full of slashers and zombies, and made for a perfect cap to the festival. Oh, but there were some folks behind me in the theatre complaining that there were no boobs. Sorry, no, there’s none of that, I guess.
So, I survived. Overall it was a good festival, with some worthwhile films mixed in, a definite improvement over last year. There’s something to appeal to every taste, whether its gore-fests, Asian ghosts, slow suspense drama, or zombie massacres. Dying Breed was my personal favorite, but with the exception of Slaughter and maybe Butterfly Effect, all the movies were worth checking out at least once. We can hope that Horrorfest comes back again, and on time, next year to offer us more hidden horror jewels from the four corners of the globe.
