Ben’s Last Word on Frightfest 2010
by Ben Bussey
So Frightfest 2010 is over. It was my first time at the festival, and all things considered it was a rewarding, enjoyable five days, from Hatchet 2 at 6.30pm on Thursday, all the way through to The Last Exorcism at 9.30 on Monday… except, alas, I wasn’t there for that one. Indeed, I regret to inform I missed quite a few of the screenings, including all the post-11 pm shows due to my need to catch the last tube home every night. Who knows, all being well the same time next year I’ll be able to get some nice cozy hotel in central London, and thus will be able to burn the midnight oil with the rest of the Frightfest night owls (hint hint, Marc, hint hint…). In any case, what with the screenings being spread out over two screens – the main Empire screen, and the considerably smaller Discovery screen – it’s not physically possible to see every movie showing at the festival, more’s the pity.
But anyway, to summarise all the ones I missed: Dead Cert, Burning Bright (Annie’s review), The Clinic, Finale, Isle of Dogs, Outcast, Red Hill, Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island, Alien Vs Ninja, Christopher Roth, After.Life (Britt’s review), Dream Home, The Pack, Amer, The Loved Ones (Britt’s review), Bedevilled, Red White & Blue (Britt’s review) and The Last Exorcism (Kayley’s review).
Oh, and of course A Serbian Film (Britt’s Review).
Hopefully you’ve been keeping up with my reviews of the most noteworthy films I’ve seen at the festival – Hatchet 2, F, I Spit On Your Grave, my personal highlight of the festival Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape, and The Dead (as well as The Tortured, although that’s noteworthy for entirely different reasons) – so here’s a quick catch-up on what I thought of the rest.
Primal – The second movie of the festival coming up straight after Hatchet 2, this is a fun bit of splatter from Australia. A bunch of students hike up to a remote spot in the outback in search of hitherto unseen cave paintings, but come into contact with some unknown force that reduces those it touches to ravenous, flesh-hungry animals. With clear echoes of The Evil Dead, Demons, and a dash of Cabin Fever, Primal won’t win any prizes for invention but it’s certainly entertaining. Well worth a look.
Eggshells/The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – This double bill preceeded an interview with Tobe Hooper, to mark his being named the inaugral Frightfest Total Icon, in association with Total Film magazine. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’re all familiar with the latter film. As for the former: Eggshells, Hooper’s debut film, was apparently thought to be lost until recently, and is now set for a Blu-ray release. It’s what might generously be described as… interesting. Essentially plotless, it’s a series of obtuse, surreal, and oh-so-60′s vignettes, charting the decline of the flower power dream via a group of hippy friends who slowly but surely sink into conformity. Or something like that. Total Film editor Jamie Graham, who also conducted the interview with Hooper, declared Eggshells to clearly display the roots of the themes that would come to fruition in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and that it was every bit as intense and confrontational a film. While I can see his point, I think there’s a bit of overstatement going on there. Whereas the simple narrative structure of Chainsaw make it a film that is easy to relate to, Eggshells is an exercise in arthouse alienation. Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid.
The interview with Hooper that followed was, I’m afraid, a really rather sad spectacle. Maybe it’s that Jamie Graham’s questions were so massively overloaded, maybe Hooper really doesn’t like the spotlight, or maybe he really doesn’t have much to say about his career, but few words passed his lips other than “yeah,” “no,” or “I don’t remember.” It was also hard not to note that the past twenty five years of Hooper’s career were effectively whitewashed, the most recent film discussed being Chainsaw 2. It could potentially have been an invigorating and inspiring discussion with one of the great horror filmmakers; in spite of the many duds he’s responsible for, I regard The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be perhaps the single finest horror film ever made, a feeling only confirmed further by seeing it on the big screen. Alas, seeing Hooper reflect on the great days of a career which are long since behind him, it made for a pretty depressing hour.
Wound – Another Antipodean production (from New Zealand this time), I opted to see this on the Discovery screen instead of Isle of Dogs on the main screen on Friday afternoon; and even though I’m given to understand I didn’t miss much from Isle Of Dogs, I rapidly came to regret making that decision. This dreary, pretentious, pseudo-experimental drivel weaves a vague tale of incest and insanity. Overflowing with a sense of its own importance, with characters it’s impossible to give a damn about, it’s a tedious and infuriating experience. I’m told the filmmakers claimed on their Facebook page that this screening received a standing ovation; I think they may be mistaking that for everyone getting up and rushing to the door the second the credits rolled, for of all the people I spoke to about the movie, no one had a kind word for it. One to miss.
Cherry Tree Lane – You may have noticed in my review of F that I mentioned it was “not the first British horror movie to deal with the country’s fear of its own young, and nor will it be the last.” I wrote that well aware that this film was coming; and yes, “youthphobia” comes very much to the forefront here in this new film from Paul Andrew Williams. Unlike his fairly light-hearted last film The Cottage, this is a considerably darker tale, set entirely in one house and played out in real-time, as a fortysomething middle class couple are taken prisoner in their own home by three high school boys seeking revenge on their son. This one seemed to divide opinion with the Frightfest crowd, many applauding its intensity and realism, others dismissing it as a lazy excercise in shock tactics. I must admit, my feelings are mixed on the film. It is a very tense, well-acted and well-shot film, and truly unpleasant at times; but even so, it is clear from the beginning how things will come to an end, and ultimately the film does next to nothing that similar films haven’t done before. As such the climax may well leave the viewer wondering what the point was. Even so, this may well be a film to inspire debate.
13 Hrs – A significantly more lightweight affair, this teen-oriented tale treads very familiar ground, as a prodigal daughter returns to her family’s crumbling country estate to be reunited with her parents, siblings, and friends, but the reunion is interrupted by an unexpected party-crasher in the form of a werewolf. 13 Hrs is a very bland affair – lazily written, poorly shot and edited, with a good-looking but mostly vapid cast, a final twist you’ll see coming a mile away, and a title that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the film itself. Inoffensive enough, but nothing to write home about.
Monsters – As Britt already reviewed this in her SXSW coverage (review here), I figured it was hardly worth me writing this one up in full. As Britt rightly points out, this isn’t really a horror movie at all, nor even is it really a giant monster movie; rather, it’s a poignant, involving, and surprisingly touching story of the relationship that builds between two US citizens attempting to escape a Mexico that is “infected” with huge Lovecraftian creatures from outer space. Given that this is a relatively low-budget film that blends classic sci-fi with stark social realism, comparisons with District 9 are inevitable, but Monsters is a very different movie indeed. Where District 9 went into fairly conventional action movie territory in its last half hour, the focal point of Monsters from start to finish are Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy as the news mogul’s daughter and the photographer ordered to bring her home. The result is a slow-burning, tender, understated film. Gareth Edwards mentioned in the Q&A that he’s a huge fan of Lost In Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and indeed Monsters has far more in common with those films than it does any sci-fi horror in recent memory. One of the best films of the festival for sure, and one I have no doubt will be popping up on a great many 2010 top ten film lists in the near future.
We Are What We Are – This was my first viewing on Sunday. Sad to say, it did not start the day off right. This strange Mexican film tells of an impoverished family who, for some unspecified reason, need to ritualistically consume human flesh in order to survive. It’s not too different from Monsters in that it’s another slow-burning, understated, character-based piece, but unlike that movie, We Are What We Are utterly fails to command the viewer’s attention. What begins as intriugingly enigmatic quickly gets tiresome and uninvolving, and by the time the horror elements come to the forefront in the final act it’s too little too late. Very disappointing.
Damned By Dawn – The first notable replacement film, this took the Sunday evening slot that had been set for Gregg Araki’s Kaboom, until that film was withdrawn (for whatever reason; Araki has refuted claims that he said he didn’t want his film watched by “a bunch of geeks”). Surprising that Damned By Dawn wasn’t in the line-up anyway, for it’s a really quite enjoyable spook-a-blast movie, filled to the brim with creaking floorboards, whistling winds, long dark shadows, and thick fog. Another Aussie production, this one sees a family coming under attack from a screaming banshee and a horde of skeletal phantoms. It’s immediately evident from the title alone that The Evil Dead movies are a major influence, but thankfully the elements Damned By Dawn borrows most from Raimi’s trilogy are the old-fashioned fairground haunted house theatrics, rather than just gore (which is not to say it doesn’t have its fair share of the red stuff). The abundance of poor CGI for the ghosts weakens things a touch, and the plot is a smidgen overcomplicated, but this is still an effective bit of supernatural horror, and as such a refreshing change from the brutal realism that largely dominated the festival.
Buried – The other replacement film of the festival, and more notable in that it was a last minute surprise substitution for A Serbian Film. I think it’s fair to say that Buried is by far the less provocative movie. Ryan Reynolds plays an American civilian working in Iraq who wakes up following an ambush to find that he has been buried alive in a coffin, his only connection to the outside world being a cellphone. So, it’s 90-odd minutes of Reynolds and a selection of disembodied voices in a dimly lit box. Introducing the movie, Frightfest’s Alan Jones declared its claustrophobia to be “The Descent times a hundred,” which I think is overstating the case somewhat. Given that the whole movie takes place in the one location with only the one actor onscreen, this is certainly an intriguing film; it’s also quite frank in its commentary on the US presence in Iraq. Even so, for me Buried was never quite as tense or gripping as it could have been. The bombastic musical score felt rather incongruous and distracting, as was the often roving camera; yes, believe it or not room is found to move the camera a lot within that space. They somehow even manage an action scene of sorts in there. Reynolds was smart casting; he’s a very likeable actor, and he gets to make the most of his talent for dry wit and understated rage. But at the end of the day it’s hard to see Buried as much more than a novelty, a stylistic exercise rather than a story, in much the same vein as Castaway or Phone Booth.
Fanboys – My final film of Frightfest 2010, on Monday afternoon in the Discovery Screen. Obviously it’s not a horror movie in any way, shape or form, but I can’t think of a more appropriate place for it to screen than a genre-specific film festival. Innumerable Star Wars references, Jedis vs. Trekkies, and other such geek humour in abundance; the crowd here absolutely ate it up, myself included. Quite why the Weinsteins have been so afraid to release this movie I don’t know. Yes, it has a tragic element that at times sits a little awkwardly with the cartoonish tomfoolery, but that just ensures that the film has a bit of heart to give weight to proceedings. In the wake of the Apatow movies which balance comedy and emotional content far more efficiently, Fanboys falls a little bit flat, but as a foray into the joys of fandom and a nostalgic look back at the late 90′s (replete with music I haven’t heard of or even thought about in years, bands like Spacehog and Presidents of the USA), Fanboys is one of the most enjoyable geek comedies since Mallrats; yes, that’s a compliment. And as such, even though it has little-to-no relation to the horror genre, I couldn’t think of a better film for me to kiss Frightfest goodbye on.
A festival of definite highs and lows, then; lows in the form of Wound and the truly abysmal The Tortured, highs in the form of Hatchet 2, I Spit On Your Grave, Monsters, The Dead, and above all the remarkable Video Nasties. But on reflection, the good outweighs the bad by far. Frightfest has long since established itself as a major event in the global consciousness of horror, and – despite the absence of A Serbian Film – this year will do nothing to change that. Indeed, that the festival organisers would rather pull an uncompromising film from their line-up completely rather than show it in a censored form is a commendable act, and I suspect shall only serve to boost Frightfest’s reputation as a place where horror is taken seriously. Not too seriously, of course; after all, nowhere else have I seen audiences break into rapturous applause to every scene of graphic gore. Also, never before have I hastily dashed to the toilet mid-movie, only to see the same film’s leading man in there with me. (F/David Schofield, since you ask. Could have been worse. I could’ve gone during I Spit On Your Grave and encountered Sarah Butler with a pair of rusty shears.)
As soon as they announce the dates for Frightfest 2011, I’ll be marking my diary. A great event which I very much look forward to returning to.
