50 odd days of anticipation, countless reviews, previews, and views read, and a night sleeping on the streets of London avec the gutter Clubbers and hobo hordes lead to this: Fright Fest 2011. Opening Night.
And boy, did it start with a bang... for all of 4 and a half minutes. Then it swiftly went downhill for 2 hours until a Mrs Cruise got snapped up like a Lego kit and sucked into a stove. I am, of course, talking of Dont Be Afraid Of The Dark. The Troy Nixey lead, Del Toro produced gothic remake of the 1973 less-than-classic. In my preview blog I mentioned that it looked like an amped up and ramped up Goosebumps episode yet I still went in expecting El Orfanato, which was probably my undoing. For me this big studio release had all the hallmarks of a sweet supernatural creature feature yet fell just short of being great; relinquishing it squarely to the ‘meh’ category. Thats not to say it didn’t have its gem moments; the under-the-sheets scene for one takes the biggest as best scare of the night (possibly the weekend, though we’ll get to that); the gothic grandiose opening wracks up the tension and anticipation for a creature design that –when revealed- is regrettably scarier when hand drawn by a 5 year old. Suffice to say, the fairies were nothing more than dextrous versions of the Compys’ from Jurassic Park 2 and however macro-close the camera got up in their grill, their chirpy chirps or pre-pubescent screams ultimately failed to elicit much more than wry smiles or tired giggles.. Where the film ultimately stalls for me is in its male lead; my God can Guy Pearce suck all the charisma from a role. What the heck happened to the dude from Memento? No one liked him, no one empathised with him and no one got why the heck he was in this film. Saying that, he made Bailee Madison look all the more amazing than she already did. That girl is adorable and my God does she break hearts in this. BUT she isn’t the greatest thing of this movie (and this goes to her credit); that accolade goes to the insane and I mean INSANE sound design of the movie. When it thunders: you duck; when those creatures are a-scampering around Sally’s room: you’re turning in your chair to see whats behind you. In short, the Dolby is stunning and, if your local has a solid sound system, worth the price of admission in itself. Oh and its bleak-ish ending is very brave considering the nature of its release and came as a stark shock to the audience. In writing it has a lot more going for it than I first lay claim, but considering Del Toro has been working on this for going on 20 years now and with a nice budget behind it, it just felt there should have been more. One more note, though the cinematography is beautiful if not leaning a little on the CG side, heck, the movie was BRIGHT; maybe the DP should take the title as note: dude, don’t be afraid of the dark
6/10
Following a short intermission the crowd was hit with a surprise between the eyes- applauded by some, sighed at by others. Cockneys VS Zombies. Spewed from pen of the wonderful James Moran the test footage shown (3 scenes in all) looks simply genius. British zombedy as it should be *coughShaunoftheDeadcough* done! However thought to have a pensioner suntan and sleep their way through an undead apocalypse deserves a medal or a pot o’ jam or something. All I have to say is (as a southerner) WHY IS IT PLAYING GLASGOW?!
7 meals-on-wheels /10
And the award for biggest surprise over the festival/year/genre/historyoffilm? Final Destination 5 kicks all kinda butt, pulls all the right punches and manages to be a hell of a well put together movie too boot. Belying both the title and atrocity of The Final Destination (2009), FD5 (as the kids are calling it these days), is quite simply genius. Opening with a monumental bridge collapse that features THE most fantastic use of 3D I’ve ever seen (the aerial-shot impaling) and some tidy CGI then wait-whats going on? we’re zooming out of the eye of a guy that just got physically discombobulated and its old ground from here on out. Each kid will die in a spectacular mêlée of domino effect coincidence and red herrings, wrought with actual tension and –in the case of poor Candice who isn’t as bendy as she thinks she is- actual shock. Each of these murder set pieces elicited football game cheers. And lets not even get started on the racial spews of the massage scene. If ‘Yum Yum Dim Sum’ (said not in reference to food) didn’t get a laugh, nothing will.
Both gimmicky and self aware, it really is the best of what it could be. And possibly, some may say (though I still love the first) the best of the bunch. And then the end comes around. When that final reveal kicks in with some brilliant ‘Forest Gump’-esque insertion editing, the reaction was utter mindblowness. A simple yet genius punch to the gut that follows perfectly from the series’ homages littered throughout (the TV on the bus being tuned to Channel 180, or the placement of the exact logging truck from FD2). Its these touches, big or small, that shows the film makers really set to make FD5 as a calling siren to the fans. And boy, do we hear the call loud and clear.
8/10
So what better way to follow a golden Buddha turning someones head into a cherry slushee? Bleak (and I mean bleak) Spanish infanticide of course. Without any prior fanfare or even announcement, Holy Gloria crept onto the screen then persisted to hold the audiences’ throat with fanatical, rosary ensnared hands. 8 minutes later and the auditorium (previously raucous with laughter) is deathly deathly silent; a grim mirror to the stark and austere film that had just played out. ‘Por Gloria Divina’ is a sublime piece of short film-making that will likely go criminally unnoticed and/or be massacred into a feature length American remake. Here’s hoping both of these are untrue.
9/10
**For the sake of those that didn’t catch it, find it online here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLLiTXfLKU4
You will not regret it.
So there’s been a nominal trend going on thus forth, it begins with 6 and ends with 9, a legit linear sequence that can be summed up by the D:Ream song “Things Can Only Get Better”. If only such was true. The figurative spanner in the works, the third Back To The Future, the crappy too-frozen bit in the icecream; The Theatre Bizarre- a portmanteau whose potential awesomeness before watching set a stratosphere of expectations- royally screws with this linear trend. A 10 it is not. A 6 it is not.
Divided into 6 shorts, its best to look at Theatre Bizarre’s fragments each in turn before commenting any more on the product as a whole. Things kick of the opener and all purpose wrap-around “Theatre Guignol” which is based around a little girl venturing into an abandoned movie theatre and triggering an old human puppet show to burst to life, led by flaking ring master Udo Kier. Sounds like an episode of To Catch A Predator right? If only. While it carries a great concept and some nifty FX- it never really leaves the confines of these benefits, grounding it as nothing better than a tableaux opening much like the Creep in Creepshow (only, half as cool).
Pulling out the gates as the first real short in the anthology, Richard Stanley’s “Mother of Toads” redefines how crapola a film can be. ‘Why?’ doesn’t cover it. Heck even ‘Whathefuuuu’ doesn’t cover it. To say it was abysmal even falls short. Let this cover it: to anyone in the festival, all you had to do was say the words “Mother of Toads” and it would trigger instant cringed laughter... Mother of Toads *sniggers*.
NEXT! Buddy Giovinazzo’s “I Love You” takes a totally different angle, coming from the slow burn drama aspect of horror shorts. Its all black comedy and quizzical tension until things step into fifth gear in the last 30 seconds, paying off which is truly gut wrenching and stunning final long shot. Gloriously shocking and brutally emotional. This is what should have kicked off the anthology.
The most well known name on the bill steps up to the plate next. Tom Savini’s “Wet Dreams” pulls some Diet-Inception strings and plays around with the dream within a dream concept that constantly juggles the protagonist/antagonist conundrum. While the insectoid vagina was a surprising touch and the paraplegic reveal was nasty, overall it falls a little flat. A revenge tale at its core without any real morals to bounce off of.
Douglas Buck takes to the helm yet, and steers the ship seemingly back to film school in what is the anthologies most restrained and stylish affair: “The Accident”. An epistemological ode to the meaning of death, all taken from a child’s eyes is endearing in a harsh and honest way that stuns with earnest dialogue (Mummy, will that man ever get up?) and stark imagery (the mercy killing of a paralysed deer) in equal measures. It may feel out of place in the mix of that which comes before and after it., but it. Is. Good. Richard Stanley sat over there in the corner. WATCH and LEARN!
What The Accident pushed in subtlety, Vision Stains rains home in intravenous retinal injections and cheesier than Cheetohs voice over. Vision Stains carries the epistemological ideals to what is the meaning and worth of anothers’ life story. A clever tale of addiction loses its merit unfortunately quick given what it has to play with through no real fault of the lead actress of the directorial style. It just... fizzles out. A shame really, given how nasty both the premise and effects are.
By this point, despite some enjoyable segments, the omnipresent and utterly pointless wraparound insidiously butts its head in and doesn’t help the audience in their awareness of its running time. Never a good thing. So when Udo’s monologue seems to wrap to a conclusion and the inference of the little girls transformation is alluded I felt myself smiling at this sinister resolution. Then the title card for Sweets came up. And I realised there was a whole other 15 minutes to go. Crap.
David Gregory, I have a bone of contention to pick with you. I have what could be considered the opposite of a food fetish. When there’s a ‘cute’ food fight on a sitcom, I’ll swiftly find another programme. Food is food. Food is not clothes. Food is not moisturiser. And food is not sexy. So when Sweets opened with feeding and a room a-gulf with old food I pretty much curled up and found my happy place. Sit me through A Serbian Film or Gini Pigu any day over this please. If repulsion is the aim, then Sweets is the game. I, personally, loathed it. But maybe that’s an issue of mine not Gregory’s. The one good thing about my revulsion was that I did not see the Hansel & Gretel feeding-up-for-feeding twist coming. So I guess that’s something.
And then Udo’s back but now he’s lost all inhibitions he’s making Michael Jackson look like a picture perfect babysitter, he’s only bailing a little girl into a box. What did I say about the sexual offenders register check, Udo? No wonder he wasn’t in town supporting the film!
And that was it, the end of the movie and the end of the first night. A somewhat disappointing piece of potential genius, that if made 20 years ago could be a cult favourite. Yet being what it is, such a happening is unlikely... hopefully. If in 2040 my kids come to me and say ‘Dad, we’ve found this bitchin flick’ (because yes, they will talk they were from the 80’s) ‘from the olden days called Theatre Bizarre’ I will lose faith in the genre. Watch Theatre by all means, it’s got some bubbling genius hidden in there. But afterwards go stick on Creepshow.
1-whotheheckknows/10
... “Mother of Toads”...
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