Welcome to the 10th annual Fantastic Fest film festival here in Austin, Texas. This is my daily recap which over the next week will primarily recap the film experiences I have had, as well as, touch on the mental and physical status of the festival-going folk, myself included. My entertainment is guaranteed but please, pray for my well being. Let chaos reign!
Things are cranking up nicely here at Fantastic Fest. Rain is subsiding (a good thing, as fire marshals have already been out to clear away the outdoor tents), beer is flowing. I spent the day catching 4 movies fueled by Marko Zaror’s energy drink and crammed into the lobby and corridors of the Alamo Drafthouse, and people are starting to debate cinema…when they’re not playing with their new iPhones of course.
REDEEMER
While Fantastic Fast tends to gravitate towards showing edgier fare, they usually serve up a slice of action that is a bit of a throwback, this year it was Marko Zoror’s Redeemer. I like to dabble in these films as they work as a palate cleanser for the mind- nothing too complex, some impressive practical work and usually some rousing message, or revenge theme, to get behind before the Fest hits you with more intense imagery and ideas. Redeemer pretty much hit those points, however, in a very uneven way.
Zaror plays the Redeemer, a Punisher-style vigilante working under guidance from God, so he presumes. Flashbacks reveal his past as the film progresses but essentially he is traveling Chile, protecting the weak and helping the helpless. Before he doles out justice (justice being offering a chance to ask for forgiveness before he smashes the face off the face of the bad guys) he has a ritual using a sole bullet and gun from when his life was spared. Survive the Russian roulette routine and God approves of him killing someone with a boat propeller…apparently. Cue a generic story about stolen money from a drug lord and a child with a pretty mum needing surgery, and the film is underway.
What works are the practical stunts, the fights are pretty well put together, if a little restrained and clean. Noah Segan as “Steve” raises a few laughs as a overly American drug lord trying to corner the Chilean market, but his personality is insufficient to save a film devoid of any real emotional content. Zaror does fine in the moody silent role, however when required to talk he adopts something of a Bale-Batman voice, only here instead of a cowl and cape he is wearing a lovely gray hoodie. The henchmen are as useless as the person who typed out the subtitles. More seriously, the film lacks any sense of scale, everything feels intensely confined and restricted, mundane even. The majority of the film hints through the aforementioned flashbacks at a far more interesting origin story for Redeemer that you wish you were being told instead of this mundane affair. Towards the end this story does unfold but by then it is far too late to save it. Underwhelming.
THE HIVE
The Hive is one of those films you don’t want to know too much about before watching. The basic premise involves a teenager awakening in a cabin. His memory is gone. The windows and doors are boarded up. Weird black pustules cover his body, writing has been chalked on the walls telling him to “Remember” to not let anybody inside. As the film progresses he starts to piece together events leading up to him being in the cabin, but soon he starts to recall memories that aren’t even his own.
The Hive could be a mess of a film, it has a lot to deliver, but it succeeds because of how well constructed and layered it is, as the pieces of the puzzle fit together nicely and reveal bit by bit how a young group of counselors at a Camp retreat became exposed to a substance that started to change them, leaving this sole survivor and his fragmented mind. It’s shot well, switching from the well lit pastel scenes in camp, to the dark, grimy present. It ramps up the threat well, all aided by a very solid young cast. David Yarovesky has turned in an interesting and ambitious film. It tried some new things, relies on some classic ideas, and pulls them together well.
Some dismissed the film after the screening, wanting more from the “horror” aspect, but I think that’s missing the point. Underneath the puzzle, the horror of a viral outbreak and a mysterious governmental scheme, it is a story about the maturation of young love, it just takes some pretty horrific hit to go down for a young guy to learn a few lessons. Well constructed, entertaining and to me, a benchmark of where young adult horror should shoot for.
JOHN WICK
Some action films go to great lengths to setup their protagonist, maybe a massive fight at the beginning to showoff their badassery, a terrifying monologue or more complex flashback or montage perhaps. John Wick is established perfectly as a terrifying force of destruction with the utterance of a single word…”oh”. This encapsulates the film perfectly. It is concise and clinical. There is no fat here, it is a stripped down film that does what it set out to do exceptionally well.
It’s a straight up revenge film. there is nothing new here, nothing revelatory, but it is a project that is incredibly aware of what it wants to do and achieves it with panache. The action choreography is exquisite. Gun fights and hand to hand combat delivered in clear long takes that are thrilling and joyous to watch. Wick is a clinical killing machine, there is a style about his kills, but a ruthlessness too. The “double tap” from Zombieland kept popping into my head, this is a man who puts people down for good. The film makers actually joked about using the term “Gun-Fu” and it really fits.
In the Q&A much was made of striking the right level of violence and how in test screenings women seemed to really dig it. I think in actuality they just crafted one of the most sympathetic characters in years, granted he’s a trained killer, but there is not one who will root against a man who having just lost his wife to illness fights back against a greater evil who deprives him of his last ounce of hope. I won’t say what, but it is effective enough to allow for 84 kills, most of them headshots. SUCH headshots.
Where John Wick surprised me is in how successfully it builds its world. Retired assassin Wick reenters a seedy underground to exact revenge. Honor among thieves (and killers) comes across, with something akin to a society, with its own code, currency (Bitcoin?) all based out of a hotel which serves as neutral ground for them to meet and recuperate. This fleshed out world is aided by recognizable faces such as Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, and Willem Defoe. It just reinforces how solid and considered the project is.
My colleague Ed has written a full review that expands on my sentiments. American action cinema needs a John Wick franchise. Make it happen people. Utterly gleeful violence that I cannot recommend highly enough.
IT FOLLOWS
It Follows opens with a Lynchian scene conjuring up thoughts of Laura Palmer, a terrified girl flees through her neighborhood, gets in a car and drives, she hits the coast and sits, car headlights illuminating her on the beach as she makes a tearful phone call to her father. A cut to the morning shows her dead, her body horrifically contorted. We move on to another young girl, Jay (Maika Monroe). After a sexual encounter with her boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary), she is drugged and woken up tied to a wheelchair. He proceeds to explain that he has transferred a curse to her, an entity that was pursuing him. It will assume the appearance of someone she may or may not know, you cannot run, it always knows where you are, and will pursue you relentlessly. If it gets you, you will die. You can pass on the curse by sleeping with another, but if that person dies, the curse will return back along the chain. A naked woman appears, makes its way towards Jay, having shown her what he said is true, Hugh returns her to her home and abandons her to her fate.
It’s a pretty simple premise and one that could have been churned out by any number of companies or filmmakers as a cheap teen-horror but instead is a remarkably well composed, tender, and chilling tale. The rules are set and never bent or broken for cheap scares. This is an exercise in remorseless terror. It takes the old horror movie trope that if you have sex you will die and makes that the central plot device. The slight inversion is that here you can pass on the curse by sleeping with someone else. Sex equals survival, unless the person you pass it on to dies, in which case, you’re in trouble again.
The idea of a sexually transmitted curse could be seen as a look at STDs, but the film has deeper things to say about blossoming teenage sexuality. The young cast all embodies some typical stereotypes for this type of film but some really genuine interactions and natural performances renders that fact pretty redundant. For the second time today a younger cast really impresses. David Robert Mitchell has made a film that has a great aesthetic and feel, like a slice of 70’s Americana. It harkens back to the 80s, clearly the John Carpenter Halloween era from looking at issues of adolescence and even draws heavily on the synth/electronic nature of his scores. The cranking up of the tension is to be applauded, it gives the film a great rhythm. It’s not perfect, pacing meanders towards the climax (pun intended) of the film but nothing to really detract from a really accomplished piece of film making. While it has many echos of Lynch, Carpenter, and Asian cinema (Ringu for example), It Follows feels exceptionally fresh. Once of the most well executed and chilling horror films I have seen in years.
Tomorrow I take in a journey to Mondo Con before screenings of Babadook, The Order of Disappearance and Bros Before Hos all before the jewel in the crown of Fantastic Fest…yes, its the Fantastic Debates.
