It’s FRIDAY! (Friday, gotta get down on Friday!) and what was meant to start with a double attack of gritty never-trust-nice-strangers exploitation and genre-flipping serial slasher subversion instead, thanks to London traffic and the voracious quick sell of Discovery Screen tickets, began with world premiere of Brit-Flick farmhouse thriller: The Holding. Impressed I was not. On planning my festival line-up, The Holding was one of those I had flicked aside as being a catch-on-cable-in-two-years film and resided to the very very bottom of my Fright Fest pile. But alas there I was, Friday afternoon: grinning and bearing. And to say it was better than expected is both a good and bad thing. The feature length debut from Susan Jacobson, focuses on a mother and her two young girls who, thanks to a recently AWOL husband, have to strugglingly run the family farm on their ownsome. Enter friendly stranger who knows an inordinate amount about the family. Cue tension, dissension and sinister intentions. Its by-the-books thriller that felt somewhat out of place in a horror festival (but then again, so could some of my favourite films of the weekend), yet for what its worth it looked slick in its rain-soaked Derbyshire setting and carried some surprisingly intense emotional playoffs. Then it had some supernatural-ish curve-balls which went wholly undeveloped and instead stuck out worse than an amputee team in a relay race. What exactly was the Aden/Dean parallel? Why was the little girl (which, by the way, gave a younger Abigail Breslin a good run for her money) dogmatically obsessed with religion without any influence from the household? It was little things like this, plus the overall collapse into clichés that left me sighing and overall very ‘Meh’ about this British ‘effort’ (yes those quotation marks are entirely intentional). But if there’s one thing gained from The Holding, It’s who knew poop could burn that much? Energy crisis averted.
3/10
Breaking the silver-screen run; us, the Fright Fest audience was treated to actual human contact (iknowright?!) in the form of writer/director/producer/actor/horrorgenius Larry Fessenden. Taking the place of last year’s Tobe Hooper interview (lest said about that the better), Larry filled the room with opinion, astuteness and effervescence that Hooper lacked. While most people likely scoffed at his name following the Film 4 Icon moniker, 30 minutes later I’d be darned if this ethos wasn’t changed (if not least for the short showreel played at the beginning which demonstrated his knack for the nasty). He spoke of his awakening to horror in his youth where he used to listen to bootlegged audio cassettes of movies in order to get a grasp of their sound design; something that can be seen rife across much of his works (the howling creatures in The Last Winter, for example); and how the genre warped his own child hood aswell as his child’s (who Larry frequently tells that each day could be the last in the world!). With even more enthusiasm comes his vehemence against certain moves in both horror (the removal of pathos from the genre) and humanity (the destruction of ecology). Quelling Fessenden’s fervour, though a pleasure to watch, proved to be an ardour for the interviewer and only happened once the stage was engulfed by directorial genre giants for the American Horror panel discussion. Ti West, Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Lucky McKee and Andrew van den Houten; just say those names aloud a second, did you just wee a little? No; just me then. With equal zeal to Fessenden and more anecdotal stories to the slaying of studio exec’s than you could shake a machete at, Green and Lynch trade lynching for LOLs; expressing the negativity in American horror cinema at the moment, but all with a tongue-in-cheek take. Where the boiling vehemence to the state of the genre really came from was Mr West who, with knee-breaking truthfullness pointed to the very cause of the endless remake/reboot/refuckup machine: us the audience. Best get our act together then.
So, after a stark dressing down, it seems appropriate that the follow up film is not an American production. Climbing up the pillars of clichés laid before it, the German made Urban Explorer(s) showed that even an entirely original script can’t help but avoid comparisons. The obvious parallels will come from Creep, The Descent and possibly even Hostel, something that many people used to it’s downgrade but I, for one, thought lent in its favour. While lacking the sorrow of Creep or the gut wrenching tension of The Descent, it stands as a nice little film; and also, when considering its making, an amazing looking one. Director, Andy Fetscher, recalled in a post film Q&A how the entire movie was shot Guerrilla, illegally on location in Underground Berlin, and with minimal crew and equipment. Oh, and they faced gun wielding transients and criminal detainment. A Michael Bay production it was not; which only serves to make you like the film ever the more. Perhaps the thing I liked most about the movie turned out to be a mistake. The print we saw came – much to the director’s visible distress – without subtitles, something the audience only knew after watching. While many saw this as ingratiating, I liked how it helped the audience in empathising for and inhabiting the situation with the American girl who didn’t speak a word of German. Somewhat of a happy accident? Despite being formulaic to the max, and with a tendency for overdramatics (it took its story and concept, very *very* seriously), it was bolstered by great lead performances (serious kudos to the eye contact conversation between Nick Eversman and Nathalie Kellie) and sometimes gorgeous cinematography. Moreover the Eden-Lake-ending-esque set piece on the subway was truly both real and terrifying. Possibly the only problem I had with the film, and with the subgenre in general, was that even after explanation the antagonist seemed to have no reason for torturing the kids. Sort of like a Hobo Without A Cause (please let’s get Jimmy Dean raised from the dead to take on shotgun vigilantism , or Rutger Hauer as the 50’s rebel icon Jim Stark). Better script ideas aside, Urban Explorers is a great little film. Give it a chance and have a laugh in the dark. Unt schieze acht Mickey Mouse.
7/10
Next up saw us make a geographic shift both physically and cinematically. Over in the Discovery Screen, ultra-low budget Swedish beyond-the-grave slasher Blood Runs Cold opened to an audience that was likely less than jumping at the opportunity to see it. To say I was would be a lie, but I chose to see it over The Glass Man, and gladly so. Everyone, and I mean everyone in that auditorium thought at some point this movie was crap, the less-than-stifled inappropriate laughter was exhibit a). But here are few things I love about Blood Runs Cold:
- Its world premiere had an audience of 26.
- The monster villain woar leather loafers.
- The director knew not of continuity or the difference between night and day.
- The final-girl was a stealth ninja.
- The film was Swedish, trying to be American, yet the actors spoke in Irish accents.
- It made me both laugh and cry (though the latter was due to the former).
- It was shot for $5000 on a still camera.
- It. Kicks. Ass.
Sure, this movie is kinda sucky. It is. But it also somewhat rocks, and not just in that so-bad-its-good way. It takes the house of 20-somethings stalked by a masked monster ethos and plays it as straight as it was played in 1978. There’s no exposition, no explanation and no reason. Why does the monster look like a cross between something from Watchmen and a gimp? Who knows. Why is there an ice cave under the house (thats supposedly in North Carolina)? No idea. And the point is, with this kind of film, you don’t need to. I cant put my finger on why, but this is a really enjoyable watch-with-buds-and-buds movie. Will it sit with Let The Right One In and Cold Prey as Scandinavian horror gems? Probably not. But who cares? Stick on some snow covered loafers and appreciate indie cinema.
6(callmecrazy)/10
What was next? I can’t seem to... oh yeah. TUCKER AND FREAKIN DALE!
To say I have been looking forward to this film for a while is an understatement. When the trailer first hit Youtube over a year ago (temp visual effects and all) I was seriously stoked for this movie. I mean who wouldn’t be, its got sweet gore, hilarious subversions of a classic and loved subgenre AND killer (no pun intended) lead characters. It was a cult film before it ever hit any theatre, let alone Britain’s biggest genre festival. Now; to say I loved it after the credits rolled off screen would also be a massive understatement. Taking the backwoods horror premise and flipping it on its head, T&DvsEvil pits two rough-around-the-edges best friends moving into their Evil Dead-esque cabin against a coral of horny teens looking for sex and booze. Through pitfalls and contrivances Tucker and Dale think the kids have a suicide pact and the teens think the rednecks are psycho killers. Cue genius send ups of everything from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to in-car happy endings. Uproaring laugh alongs, sick splatterfest and genuine pulled heart strings. I can’t think of anything Tucker & Dale doesn’t do to excellence. There’s not much I can say about it that isn’t simply reiterating superlatives and textual smiles, so I’ll keep this one short. I loved it. Everyone in the theatre loved it. Quite simply: This. Film. Is. Awesome. Defined.
8/10
When I was a kid my Gran always used to say not to expect things to much, bear this in mind...Pulling us into our final film of the night was the world premiere of medical torture porn (for lack of better nom-de-plume), the directorial first from Taylor Sheridan, and what Paul McEvoy optimistically posited as the last in this dying subgenre. With the synopsis reading like a cross between Hostel and a behind the scenes expose on NHS pharmaceutical beta testing one would expect something a little different, a little more than the run of the mill. My Gran was right. Vile sets up somewhat promisingly, a group of individuals are abducted by a doctor and are used for harvesting a particular neurotransmitter, one that is only secreted when undergoing extreme pain. Sounds a contrived way to engage pointless torture for 70 minutes? It is. The ethics or corporation behind the drug, something that could have made this film interesting and different, are never explored; instead 5(or 6, or 10, I can’t remember) inflict pain and hurt ruthlessly upon each other. When it comes to movies like this, you thing you really rate them on are the torture set ups; it sounds grim and sadistic but it’s true. For a film that’s called Vile, they’re really not so much. You’ve got hands in boiling water, asses on hot plates and arms in cupboard doors. Nothing really to write home about. But also of common sense questioning, these people are told they must inflict pain to blah de blah blah. Why don’t they try a pinch or a bite or a hair pull first? Is it me or wouldn’t you test the parameters before snapping your femur. Nonsensical, not so grim and a little bit pointless, all hampered by the fact it put me to sleep (and for this reason, please do question my review to the hills); Vile left a decidedly bitter taste in my mouth. I liked the credits though.
4/10
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