The Wailing (South Korea, dir. Na Hong-jin)
Inept policeman Jong-Goo (Do Won Kwak) is awakened early one morning by an unusual call. There’s been a murder, possible multiple murders, the first in his small South Korean village in years. Worse, the suspect appears to be suffering from an inexplicable illness. As more strange incidents occur, whispers in the town point to the arrival of a strange Japanese man (Jun Kunimura) as the point when things started to go wrong. Jong-Goo bumbles into a dangerous supernatural mystery that threatens to consume everyone. The Wailing has already garnered a number of hugely enthusiastic reviews, and its appearance at Fantasia almost feels more like a victory lap than anything else. I know this puts me in a tiny majority, but I found The Wailing far too long and its opening half far too goofy for the wild shifts in tone in the latter half to work.
Fury of the Demon (France, dir. Fabien Delange)
In January of 2012, an esteemed collector of film prints held a secret screening of a film previously lost to time. Rumored to have been made by Georges Méliès himself, La Rage Du Demon supposedly drove audiences who saw it into a violent rage, and the 2012 screening was no different. Using a mix of filmmakers like Alexandre Aja and Christophe Gans, Rue Morgue editor-in-chief Dave Alexander, and even Pauline Méliès (great-great-granddaughter of Georges.) as talking heads, Fury of the Demon plays out as a documentary. The film is structured as a series of interviews discussing the mysterious lost film at the center of its story, and incidentally serves as a solid primer on the work of Georges Méliès. As the mystery unravels a bit, the film moves into more obviously fictional territory, but the film is at its best when it focuses on passionate cinephiles talking about the silent era and lost cinema. The event at the film’s center, however, is a major problem—it’s never remotely convincing that this event actually took place given the total lack of any supporting evidence other than the interviews. Still, hardcore film fans may find it worth a look just for the segments that are genuine and for the filmmakers interviewed.
July 19:
The Dark Side of the Moon (Germany, dir. Stephan Rick)
Urs (Moritz Bleibtreu) is a cutthroat corporate lawyer who has a crisis of conscience after the tragic fallout from a merger between pharmaceutical corporations which he orchestrated. He meets young hippie Lucille (Nora von Waldstätten) and goes with her on a group mushroom trip that convinces him to leave his wife and career behind. But before he can sever ties with his old life completely, he gets an offer he can’t refuse from pharma magnate Pius Ott (Jürgen Prochnow): one last merger that will help get a drug to the market that may save countless lives. Urs agrees to take the job as a form of penance, but his behavior is becoming increasingly unhinged and he fears the mushrooms have lasting effects that are turning him into a violent monster. The Dark Side of the Moon is a slick thriller with a strong central performance by veteran actor Bleibtreu and a typically menacing turn by Prochnow, but is a little too cold to be fully engaging. It’s an adaptation of a novel and very much feels like one—it’s a bit overstuffed with characters and incidents that all feel a little cramped in the film’s running time. It’s technically proficient and handsomely mounted, but overall it feels something like a typical Hollywood adaptation of a popular novel, for better or worse.
Fantasia 2016 Part 3: July 21-22
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse
July 21:
Aloys (Switzerland, dir. Tobias Nölle)
After the death of his elderly father, private investigator Aloys (Georg Friedrich) continues to work and interacts with his clients as though his father was still alive. He performs constant surveillance, but is unable to interact with anyone. After getting drunk and passing out on a public bus, he wakes to find his camera has been stolen and soon after he receives a phone call from Vera (Tilde von Overbeck). Vera offers to return the camera if Aloys will join her in a mysterious practice called “telephone walking,” in which Aloys and Vera are seemingly transported places by their telephone connection. Aloys is the feature directing debut from Tobias Nölle, and it occupies some of the same territory as whimsical films such as Amélie and Liza the Fox-Fairy. However, instead of the bright, cheerful tone of those films, deals with its characters’ neuroses in a much darker and more subdued fashion. There are moments of joy here, but they are bright spots punched through a thick layer of gray depression. The performances are great—especially Tilde von Overbeck, who is mostly represented as a voice on the phone—and the moments of magical realism are deployed expertly.
July 22:
Shelley (Denmark, dir. Ali Abbasi)
Romanian immigrant Elena (Cosmina Stratan) takes a job as a maid for a couple living mostly off the land in a remote lake house in hopes of making money to take back home to find a nice home for her and her son Nicu. As she settles in, she becomes close with Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) and Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and discovers Louise is distraught that she cannot have a child. Kasper and Louise offer Elena a large sum of money to carry a child for them as a surrogate from Louise’s eggs, and she agrees. But as the baby grows inside her, Elena begins to experience dangerous physical symptoms of illness and becomes convinced the baby is killing her. Shelley has some obvious references in its title and poster (which openly borrows from the iconic poster for Rosemary’s Baby) that give the viewer a good idea of what they’re getting themselves into. The first part of the film lulls the audience in with a quiet, meditative rhythm that becomes increasingly sinister. The glacial pace may put off viewers looking for more immediate thrills, but this is a slow-burning familial nightmare that deserves a look from any horror fan looking for something different.
Embers (USA, dir. Claire Carré)
In the aftermath of a neurological plague that has wiped out most of humanity, the last few remaining people wander without memory. Embers follows several characters in this world, including a Guy (Jason Ritter) and Girl (Iva Gocheva) who may or may not be married; a Father (Roberto Cots) and his daughter Miranda (Greta Fernández) in an underground bunker; a Boy (Silvan Friedman) who crosses paths with a number of different people; and “Chaos” (Karl Glusman), a young man who roams around as an impulsive Id, attacking and stealing from anyone who gets in his way. Debut feature director Claire Carré has created a fascinating world here, a truly unique take on the post-kind of independent apocalyptic sci-fi film that has become ubiquitous over the last several years. There’s not much of a traditional narrative here, just impressions and observations of these characters struggling to survive and make sense of the world and the other people around them. It doesn’t shy away from the darker side of human nature, though, and while it seems slight it actually puts forth a lot to think about and a melancholy that lingers long after it’s over.
Man Underground (USA, dir. Michael Morowiec & Sam Marine)
Conspiracy theorist Willem Koda (George Basil) is having a tough time getting his message out into the world. His speaking gigs are getting smaller, and he’s growing increasingly frustrated. His friend Todd (Andy Rocco) suggests they make a movie together of Willem’s story with Todd’s home movie camera. Willem balks, but then he discovers later that Flossie (Pamela Fila), the cheerful new waitress at the diner he frequents, is an aspiring actress. He impulsively asks her to be in his movie, and after she agrees they start shooting soon after. But Willem and his collaborators don’t exactly have the same view of what it is they’re working on, and it’s possible Willem’s crazy story about encountering aliens underground may be less crazy than it seems. Anchored by three fantastic lead performances, Man Underground walks a tricky line between oddball comedy and darker psychological terrain. It’s frequently laugh-out-loud funny, but it also endears its characters to the audience to the point that it’s genuinely uncomfortable to watch when there is inevitable conflict between them.
Seoul Station (South Korea, dir. Yeon Sang-ho)
An injured, elderly homeless man stumbles into the Seoul train station and collapses. Hours
later, he dies and immediately comes back as a shambling, flesh-hungry zombie. Seoul Station follows characters on parallel paths through this burgeoning zombie apocalypse as they try to make their way across the city to each other, but the twist here is that this is an animated film instead of live action. Unfortunately that’s the only twist here, aside from some deeply unpleasant revelations near the end of the film that only serve to make its one-dimensional characters even less sympathetic. It’s a shame that more wasn’t done here, as an animated film would seem to open up this kind of story to interesting possibilities. Instead Seoul Station is a standard “zombie apocalypse” movie distinguished only by its medium, and that novelty wears off quickly.
We Are The Flesh (Mexico, dir. Emiliano Rocha Minter)
A lone man lives in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse where he trades junk items he scavenges from inside for eggs from someone on the outside. How long he’s lived here in isolation is unclear, but when a young man and woman appear seeking shelter he takes them in no questions asked. In exchange for letting them stay with him, the man asks them to join him on a mental and sexual odyssey. We Are The Flesh straddles the line between narrative and explicit performance art, documenting the process of turning the warehouse into a labyrinth of womblike chambers and presenting explicit sex acts that appear to be at least partially unsimulated. The performances are fearless and the filmmaking undeniably artful, but anyone who finds explicit sex presented without a clearly defined purpose problematic will probably want to give this a hard pass.
Fantasia 2016 Part 4: July 23-25
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse
July 23:
Psychonauts, the Forgotten Children (Spain, dir. Alberto Vázquez and Pedro Rivero)
After an apocalyptic struggle, a community of anthropomorphic animals live isolated on a small island. Dinky, a young mouse, wants to escape the island but wants her secret boyfriend Birdboy to come with her. Birdboy is deeply troubled and damaged by the terrible events of his childhood. While Dinky and her friends attempt to make their way across the island to a boat that will take them away, Birdboy is tracked by the vicious police dogs who want to kill him. Psychonauts, adapted from a graphic novel by its co-directors, is a dark animated feature starring a roster of very cute characters in very bad situations. However, while that could have been played easily for shock value, Vázquez and Rivero use this as a jumping-off point for a melancholy portrait of its young characters. While the film is unquestionably dark, it’s also quite touching in its portrayal of friendship and doomed young love. Thankfully there is also some weird humor to keep things from becoming oppressively sad, and those moments grow out of the strange world Vázquez and Rivero) have created so it never feels out of place. This is a beautiful, fascinating animated film for older audiences—again, despite its characters and design, it deals with some tough issues—which is an exceptionally rare thing in modern cinema.
Realive (Spain, dir. Mateo Gil)
In the year 2015, successful artist Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes) learns he has terminal cancer. In the year 2084, he becomes the first cryogenically frozen person to be reanimated. Realive follows the two parallel tracks of Marc’s lives that have distinctive tones: the 2015 segments are a romantic drama, and the 2084 scenes approach cryogenic reanimation as quasi-hard science fiction. The early parts of this, leading up to and immediately following the reanimation process, are especially interesting in the film’s nuts-and-bolts way of looking at this speculative process turns it into a sort of twist on Frankenstein. Writer/director Mateo Gil deftly balances the tone of the stories, and the result is a film that is reminiscent of Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca. It’s a smart, touching film that very slowly evolves into something quite different than it is at the beginning and ends with a gut-punch that throws everything that came before into a new light.
Red Christmas (Australia, dir. Craig Anderson)
Diane (Dee Wallace) and her brother Joe (Geoff Morrell) are getting their family together for one last Christmas before Diane sells the family home following the death of her husband. Her adult kids are almost uniformly awful people, and more than happy to bicker and taunt each other into screaming fights. One such interaction is interrupted at the dinner table with the arrival of mysterious cloaked figure Cletus (Sam Campbell) at the door. Diane invites Cletus in, but he refers to a dark secret from her past and her chipper demeanor suddenly changes to panicked anger. They kick Cletus out, but after dark he returns to exact vengeance on Diane’s family. Red Christmas has a spectacular performance by Dee Wallace and very little else to recommend it. Opening with a gruesome pre-credits sequence depicting the bombing of an abortion clinic, the film seems to want to be a gleefully offensive comedy but its confused tone never quite lands there. The credits may have a hint as to why the film seems to be constantly conflicted between splatstick murders and drama—there’s a list of recommended viewing of films about abortion that includes Obvious Child, the documentary After Tiller, and the explicitly pro-life Christian film October Baby. By refusing to pick an approach to the material, debut feature writer/director Craig Anderson dooms Red Christmas to be a gory curiosity rather than an enjoyable horror film.
Tank 432 (UK, dir. Nick Gillespie)
After an operation goes south, a group of mercenaries discover a pile of bodies at an abandoned depot. Injured and unsettled, they move on leaving one of their number behind, and end up hiding out in an abandoned Bulldog tank from their unseen enemy. Once inside, the situation deteriorates rapidly, and once they discover they’re trapped in the tiny space, it’s only a matter of time before panic takes hold. Although that may still be preferable to whatever it is waiting for them outside. Tank 432 is an intensely claustrophobic film, taking place largely inside the titular tank. That claustrophobic feeling is the film’s greatest asset in its first half, as otherwise it feels very similar to other “locked room” siege films. As the story progresses and things get weirder, the film moves into more overtly surreal and horrific territory culminating in a finale that leaves open exponentially more questions than it answers. It’s not a new horror classic by any means, but it’s a solid and well-acted piece of tense horror that’s well worth a look.
July 24:
Sori: Voice from the Heart (South Korea, dir. Lee Ho-jae)
Hae-Gwan (Sung-min Lee) is a desperate father who has been searching for his daughter for over a decade after she went missing after a fire in an underground train station and her body was never recovered. He follows a hint that sends him to a remote island where someone claims to have seen her. His visit serendipitously occurs at the same time an American Echelon surveillance satellite hears the voice of a child just before the bombing of an Afghan elementary school and decides it must help her, sending itself out of orbit and crashing into the ocean near where Hae-Gwan is searching. The satellite can identify anyone by their voice, prompting Hae-Gwan to use it to help search for his missing daughter while American authorities and the South Korean government are in a race to track it down before the other can recover it. Sori’s setup immediately recalls Short Circuit, as does its adorable robot protagonist, but this is much sweeter and less of a throwback than it may initially seem. The interaction between lead Sung-min Lee and the robot is convincing and endearing, giving the audience a genuine relationship and thoughtfully drawn characters to invest in.
Superpowerless (USA, dir. Duane Andersen)
Bob (Josiah Polhemus) used to be San Francisco-based superhero Captain Truth, but as he’s aged into his 40s he finds he’s lost his powers. He spends his days wandering around the city, drinking and avoiding his former sidekick Liberty Boy (H.P. Mendoza), who’s just published a memoir. Bob’s girlfriend Mimi (Amy Prosser) suggests maybe Bob should write his own book, so he buys a handheld sound recorder and starts dictating stories. When his Craigslist ad looking for an editor reels in Danniell (Natalie Lander), a beautiful young woman obviously attracted to him, Bob finds himself in uncharted territory. Superpow
erless is a showcase for Polhemus as Bob, and he’s good, but the real standout is Amy Prosser as his long-suffering girlfriend who is navigating some tricky terrain in her professional life and trying to support sad-sack Bob. There are a few sharp gags on superhero tropes, but mostly this is an adult comedy/drama about a man struggling to find his purpose and other than the superhero angle there’s not a lot to differentiate it from similar films of this type.
July 25:
The Show of Shows (UK, dir. Benedikt Erlingsson)
Filmmaker Benedikt Erlingsson collaborated with members of Sigur Rós on this experimental documentary, in which he trawled through a century’s worth of footage from circuses and sideshows. The result is a collage of evocative moments grouped into themed categories and set to musical pieces. The often ambient, ethereal tone of the music is frequently at odds with the footage other than the opening segment which sort of sets the stage for the rest of the film. That segment feels appropriately melancholic and nostalgic set to the delicate arrangement, but The Show of Shows rarely reaches that kind of moment of synergy between music and image again. It’s an intriguing concept and the footage Erlingsson chose for the film is all fascinating, but at 74 minutes it gets tiresome in its second half. Note: This may also be a completely different viewing experience seen on a big screen in a theater with a nice sound system!
Atmo HorroX (Canada, dir. Pat Tremblay)
The Unrepentant Cinephile Page 115
