Fantastic Fest 2007–Five Across The Eyes/The Girl Next Door/Spiral/The Cold Hour/Inside
“I am not afraid to be born.”
Just to show that women can be just as evil as men, today would seem to have been “Horribly Evil Bitch Female Antagonist Day” at Fantastic Fest.
And I’m done with horrible births/demon babies for the next year. Had my quota in the past week.
CRITICIZED (2006)
Directed by: Richard Gale
Written by: Richard Gale
The short that opened the day for me was actually really disturbing. It was about a director who kidnaps a critic who hated his movie. And paperclips no long look so safe anymore.
I love every movie I see. All of them. Never hated a single one of them.
This is a very good short from Richard Gale, who plans on expanding it into a feature with this just being one day in the life of this director. I’m very interested to see what else he does. For once, a long short doesn’t squander its time. It needs every minute to build the suspense and disturb us even more.
Directed by: Greg Swinson/Ryan Thiessen
Written by: Marshall Hicks/Greg Swinson
The festivities got off to a rollicking start today with a little horror movie about five high school girls who pull a hit and run on the wrong bitch. On their way back from a party, they get lost, knock out a headlight on someone else’s car and take off. The owner of the car happens to be Psycho Bitch From Hell No. 1.
Besides Southland Tales, this has been the most divisive film of the Festival. A lot of people think that the lack of production values and a certain choice that they made makes for great filmmaking. Others, however, feel exactly the opposite about that choice.
And here it is (drumroll):
The camera never leaves the girls’ van. Never. Not once. There’s a point where all five of the girls are running in the woods. The camera stays in the van. There’s a part where the psycho gets them all out of the van and makes them strip. The camera stays in the van so that all we see are backs.
Personally, I really liked The Blair Witch Project a lot. I think that because of what we DON’T see the movie is scary as hell.
While Five Across The Eyes isn’t quite as good as Blair Witch, this movie did a lot of the same stuff to me that the earlier movie did. (Hell, they even had one of the same scenes. “I’m so sorry! I never meant to…..!” Lots of tears and snot.) It made me wonder what the fuck was going on outside of the van. SHIT!! That’s a gunshot!! Who got killed!?!?
Actually, it didn’t make a whole lot of difference who got killed. The girls are almost all the same with only very subtle differences in their personalities. They’re teenage girls. That’s all you really need to know about them. They reveal some stuff along the way, but it doesn’t matter that much.
What matters is that they are being chased by an Evil Bitch who never lets up. And she is an Evil Bitch. I mean, we’re not just talking about a woman who wants to teach the girls a lesson in civility. No, we’re talkin’ Kurt Russell in Death Proof without the sense of humor…or the sanity.
I had heard from a few people that this was the worst movie of the Festival. I’m glad I didn’t listen to them and headed in. I definitely agree with the folks who liked it. And it’s always nice to see a woman be as fucked up as a dude. You don’t see that very often in this genre.
Unless, of course, you’re seeing movies at Fantastic Fest today.
THE DEMONOLOGY OF DESIRE (2007)
Directed by: Rodrigo Gudiño
Written by: Rodrigo Gudiño
Evil Bitch No. 2 comes in the form of a young girl who wants someone to love so badly that she’s willing to kill for him. When a boy professes his love to her, she makes him prove it…in bloody, awful ways.
I really liked this short, but mainly because it’s so fucking weird. It seems fairly plausible, if overly violent for real life…until the vagina monster makes its appearance. And that’s kind of when it loses me. I was still very interested, but I was also very confused. Where did this thing come from? And why are they just torturing it for no reason? Does this mean something? If so, why does the vagina monster have a penis?
Pretty interesting short, if very confusing.
Directed by: Gregory Wilson
Written by: Daniel Farrands/Philip Nutman
Based on book by: Jack Ketchum
This movie certainly sounds like something it’s not. It sounds like a light, happy coming of age story, maybe about a kid who falls in love with a porn star who moved in next door.
Well, it ain’t that movie at all. This is actually the darkest and most depressing movie I have seen at the Festival.
But it is a coming of age movie.
David (Daniel Manche) is 12 years old in 1958. That’s when he meets Meg (Blythe Auffarth), an older girl (maybe) who just moved in next door. She and her little sister were in a car accident that killed their parents, so now they’re living with their Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker from Sixteen Candles…MAN, I felt old when I found out who she was).
Ruth is every kid’s favorite neighbor. She imparts wisdom and beer on them like a slightly older buddy. Her three kids are friends with everybody and share their mom and house with the whole neighborhood.
But when the girls move in, things change. Ruth starts to show just how much she hates being a woman…and how much she hates the younger, prettier Meg. She punishes Meg for no reason, eventually allowing all of the neighborhood kids join in her cruel reindeer games. Things get worse and more sickly sexual as time goes on.
David is forced to go along with everything. If he didn’t, he would be targeted just as Meg was. But he’s also kind of in love with Meg. She’s his first real crush, so seeing her like this hurts him almost as much as it hurts her.
Wow. And all of this is true. It’s based on a Jack Ketchum novel that’s based on a real case. (Another film, An American Crime, was recently released to festivals. It was based on the court transcripts and, apparently, was pretty terrible.) It actually took place in 1966, but Ketchum changed it to be pre-JFK assassination. How could things be that bad before then? Oh, they were. We just didn’t hear about it as much.
This was a very good movie. Director Gregory Wilson layered the story with subtext and levels of inhumanity and humanity rarely seen at Fantastic Fest. And he got some pretty amazing performances out of these kids. (He went into a long speech about how well taken care of these kids were. They were never exposed to anything that they weren’t comfortable with and they had a therapist nearby just in case. I can see why. This was a tough movie for ME to deal with. I can’t imagine being 12 years old on the set.) Daniel was VERY good as a kid who is just trying to grow up, but is so torn up about who he can go to with the horror that he’s subjected to almost daily. Blanche is also very good as a woman who seems like the friendliest woman in the world…until her true colors start to show. Then she becomes Evil Bitch No. 3.
This movie isn’t for everybody, of course. But maybe it should be. It’s the kind of movie that could really start a dialogue with older kids and what they can do in cases like this. Tell them that they should NEVER keep this kind of thing to themselves.
My only problem with the movie is where the fuck did all of the malevolence come from in the neighborhood kids? Why were they all just sitting there watching and occasionally joining in? Wouldn’t someone besides David want to stop the torture? Were they all evil kids? That doesn’t make sense.
Still a very good movie, though. Should be seen by a wide audience…but it won’t.
Directed by: Adam Green/Ryan Schifrin
Written by: Adam Green/Ryan Schifrin
Directed by Adam Green and Ryan Schifrin (Hatchet and Abominable, respectively), this was supposedly mainly made so that Ryan could write off his pass to Fantastic Fest. (Although, I find that hard to believe since the copyright dates was 2006.)
It’s the story of Jack when he finds out that Jack In The Box just made 8 million dollars and is slowly putting Burger King out of business.
But The King has other ideas.
It’s kind of a horror spoof that’s kind of funny, but isn’t nearly as good as it seems like it should be. Still worth a laugh, though.
Directed by: Adam Green/Joel Moore
Written by: Joel Moore/Jeremy Danial Boreing
Last year, Adam Green won the Audience Award winner at Fantastic Fest with Hatchet. This year, he and Joel David Moore bring Spiral, the story of Mason (Moore taking on acting duties, too), a telemarketer who really doesn’t like other people very much. But he loves jazz and painting. He paints girls. But he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who has “painted” many girls.
Then he meets Amber (Amber Tamblyn), an open-minded and free girl who works with him at the telemarketing company. Eventually, they start hanging out a lot and he starts painting her. His buddy, Berkeley (Zachary Levi), warns him to keep her at a distance so he doesn’t get his hopes up, but things are good now.
But Mason keeps having flashbacks to his last girlfriend. What happened to her? Why did he take all of her portraits off the walls? And what was in that big garbage bag that he struggled down the stairs?
Spiral is a Hitchcockian mystery/romance that reminded me a little bit of Vertigo. It’s a very good movie with a lead character that you like, but are still pretty creeped out by. He just wants to be loved….sort of.
Adam has done a complete 180 from Hatchet here. There is nothing in this film that would say that it was directed by the same guy who did that blood-fest. It’s closer to last year’s Roman than Hatchet. Hopefully, his next movie will be just as good.
Directed by: No info on this one
A little two minute animated short that mainly just involves a guy in a spacesuit sitting in a chair and getting hit by a nuclear bomb. Then creatures come out of nowhere to eat the mushroom clouds.
Very strange, but kind of cool, especially since it’s so short.
THE COLD HOUR (LA HORA FRIA) (2006)
Directed by: Elio Quiroga
Written by: Elio Quiroga
Based on book by:
In a post-apocalyptic world, people can’t go outside not because of radiation, but because of the Strangers, people who have been infected with chemical warfare. They’re kind of like zombies, but they die more slowly. And they infect with just a touch.
Nine people (two of them children) are stuck in this world. They live their lives in a small base, but occasionally have to leave to get supplies. Then they have to deal with the Strangers. And some nights they have Cold Hours. These are times when the temperature drops to sub-zero very quickly and the Invisibles come out.
Young Jesus (Omar Munoz) has been documenting his life for a little while with a movie camera he found. Will he live long enough to finish the movie?
Great sci-fi movie that really indicts the whole war system. How can we destroy the planet that we love so much when that just means that we all die? It’s an obvious target, but it hits a bullseye with a great script, interesting story and characters that we care about. It’s just one more example of great Spanish cinema.
My only problem is the “guy is jealous of another guy and throws him to the wolves, lying about it later” plot-line. It was too obvious. I’m kind of over that story.
Other than that, this is definitely a must-see. Check it out if you can find it.
Directed by: Julien Lecat/Sylvain Pioutaz
Written by: Julien Lecat/Sylvain Pioutaz
A man living in a world that moves backwards runs into a forward running man. It changes his life. And just might change the world.
This 1984-ish story is pretty ingenious. The whole world seems to be devolving into the Dark Ages and forward thinkers are punished. I love it!
It’s so well made, too, that I could hardly see the seams. It didn’t look like it had been shot forwards and then reversed. Everything was very fluid. And the main character moving forwards while everyone else moved backwards looked great. (Check out the guys running after him backwards. Gotta be the only chase scene in film history where people chase backwards.)
My favorite short of the day.
Directed by: Alexandre Bustillo/Julien Maury
Written by: Alexandre Bustillo
When Matt Dentler introduced this movie he said, “Remember seeing Haute Tension and thinking, ‘Man! I wish this movie was good!’ Or, ‘I wish this movie had a good ending!’”
YES, I remember thinking that. I really liked that movie until the very end. Then it was lame.
Well, Inside is actually MUCH gorier and has a better ending. It’s still not for everyone. Even some gore-hounds will be turned off of it because it’s SO over the top. So much as as to be completely unbelievable.
(The two films actually share an editor and composer, so there is a little bit of the same style going on.)
Sarah (Alysson Paradis) lost her husband (and nearly herself and their unborn baby) in a car accident. Now, four months later, she’s about to pop. The baby is due on Christmas Day and they’re going to induce if it doesn’t happen by nightfall.
So, of course, she spends Christmas Eve by herself.
That’s when Evil Bitch No. 4 shows up. Beatrice Dalle (Betty Blue) plays the nameless woman who wants Sarah’s baby. And she’ll kill anyone who gets in her way…including Sarah.
This is one of the goriest semi-mainstream films I’ve ever seen. There is so much blood in this movie that I swear it had to come from about 50 different people. There’s not an ounce of plausibility to it (no one can give themselves a tracheotomy…especially without a tube), but that didn’t really matter to me. I was with it from beginning to end. SURE, an extremely pregnant woman can run around the house like that! Of COURSE, she could lose that much blood without dying! (She fucking bled like a stuck Energizer bunny! I guess you can chalk it up to a mother’s will to protect her baby. But, DAMN!)
This movie basically exploits every pregnant woman’s nightmare. And it’s damned entertaining, too. (At least, to a gore-hound like me it is.) It’s highly disturbing and made me cringe just about every 10 minutes, but it’s so worth it.
And, of course, the end is just absolutely out of control. (But I’m not sure that I really get the last punch. I mean…seriously?!)
This is all part of a new wave of French horror films that are out to out-gore Italy. And I think they may have done it with this one.
I think Matt beat Teenage Mother for squirms on this one. Good for you, Matt.
I owe you one. Heh……heh……..heheh…..
