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Fantastic Fest 2024: THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN: A Powerful Doc Reveals a Meaningful Life
Mats Steen meant something to many people.
The documentary sharing his remarkable life with a global audience (it comes to Netflix soon) will even further deepen the impact of his brief, bright time on this mortal coil. A potent documentary for our age, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin will likely be my favorite documentary of 2024. Mats was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy as a young child and increasingly lived his life online as his body progressively degenerated. Mats’ loving family’s great fear and sadness was that their son would not have the chance to love and be loved, to make a difference in the lives of the people around him. And when they announced his passing at the age of 25, they had no idea how impactful Mats had been – in a world that was just a little bit beyond their understanding and comprehension.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is a phenomenal, expertly crafted documentary from Norwegian director Benjamin Ree (The Painter and the Thief, Magnus). Immaculately structured, the doc first introduces us to Mats’ story through the eyes of grieving and loving parents. Upon the discovery of Mats’ online life and the outpouring of love for the man many knew as Ibelin through his participation in an online World of Warcraft community known as Starlight, the film rewinds to tell Mats’ story through some of his own writings, online musings, and even transcripts from the servers of the games he played. Our understanding and appreciation of Mats’ circumstances and life deepen and we once again change perspective as we begin to meet some of Ibelin’s friends and compatriots from Starlight, learning about the great impact, from romance to rage to reconciliation, he had on the lives of his community, his friends, his found family. Told through traditional “talking head” interviews and custom animations done in the style of the video game, even this component is inventive and intentional.
Not only does the editing and structure of the film make it eminently watchable, it also serves to more deeply humanize Mats as his life story plays out, and grounds his story in the modern miracles of technology that made his connections possible. Everything from online relationships to accessible gaming is touched on and serves to give tools to Mats he could use to build a richness of life experience and also serves as a wake up call to the world the difference alternate expressions in online spaces and accessibility technology can make in peoples’ lives. Mats’ story may not be yours or mine, but as often happens when a family allows a gifted filmmaker honest access to a remarkable life, the highly specific nature of Mats’ illness and struggles morphs into a universal understanding of the human need to be loved and to love. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is one of 2024’s most powerful documentaries because it celebrates a beautiful life and simultaneously challenges us all to fight for deeper connections and elevate accessibility to enrich not just the lives of the differently abled, but all of us.
One need not understand what World Of Warcraft is (I don’t), nor have a close family member with significant physical disability (I don’t) in order to be challenged, touched, and convicted by The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. Mats struggled in his life to connect with his family, and wrestled with revealing his physical limitations to his loves and friends on the internet, where he went to be free of his limitations. But he eventually chose to trust, to share, to be vulnerable. He blogged, and at some point revealed the terminal nature of his illness with his online friends. His vulnerability was met with compassion and understanding and it seems the team behind this documentary has also honored his vulnerability with a potent film that will reach many far past his brief 25 years with us and well beyond the digital borders of Azeroth.
And I’m Out.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin hits US Netflix October 25th, 2024
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Fantastic Fest 2024: CLOUD Exposes the Artifice of Ambition
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest dissection of human rot pushes the Japanese auteur into provocative, action-driven new places
While auteurs like Bong Joon-Ho and Takashi Miike have gained international attention with their bold, crowd-pleasing genre experiments, legendary Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has quietly made a profound impact over decades with films that defy easy categorization through their unique blend of genres. From the voyeuristic suspense of Creepy and the disorienting travelogue drama of To the Ends of the Earth to the wartime romantic espionage of Wife of a Spy and his cold-blooded, abstract return to horror in the 45-minute Chime, Kurosawa has forged his universally unsettling sense of dread into a key foundation that he can build any film upon, pulling material from all sorts of films to create something completely new.
His latest, Cloud, dives into the niche yet lucrative world of online resellers. Under the alias Ratel (also a pun on “retail”), Ryosuke (Masaki Suda) trolls Tokyo for troubled businesses, snaps up overstock or failing product, and resells them online with flashy marketing for insanely high markups. Kurosawa quickly shows how Ryosuke’s dispassionate, aggressively forward-thinking approach makes him preternaturally perfect to succeed in this industry–no matter how much scorched earth he leaves behind him along the way. However, those burned by Ryosuke’s actions have begun assembling in the dark corners of the Internet, and plan to bring their violent wishes out of virtual chatrooms and into reality itself.
In 2001, Kurosawa’s Pulse channeled the J-Horror boom into an apprehensive eye towards the early days of the Internet, wary that this connective platform may fester deepening isolation between humans. Cloud seems to suggest that Kurosawa was half-right: instead, the Internet has become a violently effective tool of late-stage capitalism, whose relentless pursuit of profit has led to the commodification of people and relationships as much as products themselves. When Ryosuke’s success allows him to quit his dry-cleaning day job, Ryosuke’s boss Takimoto (a wonderfully bemused yet menacing Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) suggests his employee isn’t thinking straight; to him, no right-minded person would pursue “some random desire to be happier than others.” Ryosuke’s mentor Muraoka (Masataka Kubota) is equally shocked at his underling’s rapid ascent, coupled with Ryosuke’s proposal to girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa)–believing Ryosuke wasn’t capable of pursuing “conventional happiness.” But in nearly every respect, all of Ryosuke’s actions are self-serving and transactional. Ryosuke’s relationship with Akiko feels ornamental, another prize to win to affirm his status. He says whatever he needs to to get struggling business owners to accept his meager cash offerings. The seeming benevolence of hiring a local boy, Sano (Daiken Okudaira) is only meant to free up Ryosuke to hoard even more cheap and useless products. There’s no rhyme or reason to whatever Ryosuke snaps up–“real or fake doesn’t matter,” he intones–he’s following pure instinct, addicted to the possibility of opportunity. The gambling nature of Ryosuke’s games are distilled to a chessboard-like marketing grid as products turn red one-by-one to mark them as sold, while Ryosuke watches with subtle yet pavlovian glee. While those who led Ryosuke to this path see him following his “passions,” this constant hustle and complete disregard for humanity is both rewarding to Ryosuke as it is rewarded by society. It’s a sense of base, impulsive happiness at the cost of everything else that makes people “human.”
It’s a bleak subject matter from the start, well in keeping with Kurosawa’s latest output like Before We Vanish or Creepy, examining societal collapse alongside a collapse of individual social behavior. But much like those films, Kurosawa infuses the terrorizing tedium of Ryosuke’s life with as much grim humor as he does gut-churning existential malaise. So much of Cloud’s laughs come from the natural absurdity of how capitalist greed becomes wholly alien to compassionate social interaction–as Masaki Suda’s Ryosuke fumbles through conversations fishing for whatever angle can get him what he wants. Even in Kurosawa’s still frames, Suda is always vibrating, searching for the next step forward in ways that are both mindless and incredibly purposeful–embodying the animalistic instinct of the honey badger that Ryosuke draws his online namesake from, or a dead-eyed shark searching the waters for blood. Arakawa’s Takimoto is a hilarious mouthpiece as well for tone-deaf corporate slogans about perseverance and working hard to one’s detriment, even as Takimoto’s own desires take on a murderous streak. It’s a fascinating continuation of Kurosawa’s studies of human contradictions, reveling in how eager we seem to place ourselves in fragile, artificial prisons of our own making. For those in the West, it’s hard not to compare Cloud to Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, which equally questioned Jake Gyllenhaal’s sociopathic crime-scene documentarian as much as the obsessive success-driven society that gave birth to a monster like him. We laugh at the absurdity of both Gyllenhaal and Suda’s relentless ambition–and recoil as their actions help deliver exactly what they want, no matter the larger cost.
More so than Kurosawa’s past genre films, though, is how eager he is to shift between disparate tones and genres over the course of Cloud’s two hours. As Ryosuke expands his potential, moving to a palatial lakeside house in a small, suspicious village, he quickly realizes how much deeper he seems to be digging his own grave. Random attacks become a regular occurrence, and his paranoia skyrockets. Throughout this section, Kurosawa brings the horror movie tension of Pulse and Seance to a story about deeply corrupt individuals, eventually building to a breaking point reminiscent of his early crime thrillers like Cure or Eyes of the Spider. The third act even sees the director move away from quiet, brooding nuance into the violent realm of The Strangers or a Sam Peckinpah shootout, delivering one of the most surprisingly action-driven set pieces of Kurosawa’s career. While such explosions of violence have been brief yet impactful–see Cure or the imagined self-immolation of Seance–it’s fascinating to see how Kurosawa chooses to tackle an extended shootout like the one that closes out Cloud. It’s not quite John Wick–yet Kurosawa frames Ryosuke’s cat-and-mouse escape from his aggressors as a methodical feeding frenzy, a brutal outlet for beasts who to this point have confined their showdowns to a wholly virtual arena.
Fittingly, Cloud also comes to an apocalyptically-tinged finale–one that suggests that our commodification of people will continue to blindly metastasize without any end but The End. It’s an ending well familiar to Kurosawa fans–yet it’s one deliciously presented as reflecting that things stay the same the more we imagine we’ve changed things.
This bitter self-reflection, coupled with such bold experimentation with action, tone, and genre, makes Cloud’s brooding, brutal tale of resellers wreaking havoc on humanity one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best films to date, capping off a banner year for the Godfather of modern Japanese existential dread.
Cloud had its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024, and was recently announced as the Japanese Entry for the Best International Film Oscar at the Academy Awards. It is currently seeking U.S. Distribution.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: STRANGE HARVEST, an Underdeveloped Take on True Crime
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire is a fictional spin on the now commonplace true crime doc, which premiered at Fantastic Fest last night. The film is directed by Stuart Ortiz , one half of the The Vicious Brothers (the first and second GRAVE ENCOUNTERS and EXTRATERRESTRIAL) and looks to document a serial killer who operated in California for nearly two decades. While the film has an interesting premise, it’s going to be a frustrating watch for most fans of the genre. The film stumbles through an underdeveloped mystery, with flourishes of distracting AI generated images and a lack of attention to detail, which can make or break the suspension of disbelief with period pieces.
The film chronicles the Mr. Shiny Murders, a case that started in 1993 and then after three murders, the killer took a 15 year hiatus, coming back in the aughts, resurfacing in 2010 with the ritualistic murder of a family. This had the family drained of their blood and a mysterious giant symbol painted on the ceiling. It’s an intriguing setup, that while flirting with the supernatural just doesn’t feel completely realized, when it comes to just how far some of these rabbit holes can go or do go in these docs. I mean it’s fictional so the sky is the limit. The film presents itself as a doc on the murders utilizing found footage and photos; it feels like sometimes they understood the assignment, while other times, they didn’t even try.
I had the problem with this film most subgenre veterans are going to have, by this point you’ve seen enough real true crime docs that were probably better edited and more unbelievable than this. That’s the thing with these kinds of stories, it’s not in the gimmick, but how the story is told and how the director deals out those bread crumbs that makes some of these docs so good. They usually start off a vague first act laying the foundation of the characters and stories, but as they focus in on act two, there’s usually a twist that recontextualizes that first act making the viewer unsure what’s going to happen in the third and final big reveal act.
Strange Harvest feels more like your standard narrative setup and sadly it’s not enough when courting this particular subgenre. The story is probably there, it just shows its cards too soon and some of the performances really suffer from feeling like parodies of archetypes, rather than the real deal. Oftentimes it’s more like the dramatic reenactment of the crime, than the actual footage, which really had me really scrutinizing the doc more and more. The problem with making something like Strange Harvest is it has to bring something completely new, or a reinvention to the subgenre, but sadly that’s not what this is.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: Found Footage Meets Family Folklore in WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL?
Danny Villanueva Jr. hooks you from the start with a plunge into the past, courtesy of an old VHS tape. A yellow tinged, glitchy image that starts with a rather sweet depiction of a daddy/daughter relationship, and then veers into a truly unsettling game of hide and seek between this child and something that seems to be assuming the form of her grandmother. Years later and Ozzie Gray (Asya Meadows) is dealing not only with a fragmented memory of the past, but actively seeking to uncover the trauma connected to it, and piece together the memories of a childhood that is increasingly tinged with mystery. Her Grandmother, the titular Dorothy Bell, was a seminal figure in her upbringing. Her disappearance several years earlier has never been solved, and might be key to many of the answers they seek. An aspiring videographer, Ozzie sets out with their camera to document her investigation and healing by chronicling her own therapy sessions. In interviews with townspeople, local news clippings, and online blogs, they gain a growing awareness of a local folklore that has build up around Dorothy implicating her as a witch, exposure to such practices as a child might explain the memory loss and trauma that plagues Ozzie into adulthood.
Ozzie is a wounded soul, with Meadows performing with not only a scar on their face, but a clear conveyance of internalized pain. The film authentically leans into a process of resolving trauma, largely through a investigative effort to dig into the past. Ozzie moves back into the family home, hoping relics of the past trigger recollection. They visit Dorothy’s old place of work, the town library, and interview her old coworkers. A study of home videos for clues shows their Grandma’s progression of cognitive decline, and also a growing void between Ozzie and their father. The pair that we see so close in that old footage at the start of the film are now are so clearly estranged. Events in Ozzie’s past have driven a wedge between them. A subtly worked in element of gender identity could in itself be a clue toward answering this, and some of the issues Ozzie reckons with.
Meadows delivers nuanced work as they reckon with their internalized issues, notably in Zoom sessions with a therapist, Dr. Robin Connelly (Lisa Wilcox). Scenes that are later harnessed to deliver some cracking (no pun intended) horror. The real strength in this regard are these old home videos. Grainy glimpses into something of a netherworld, all of it is so incisively staged and potently executed. By comparison, the footage in modern day feels somewhat sanitized, lacking both the ominous look and feel of the dated footage. It’s not as simple as grain or color grading, its just rather hokey and less considered fare. This is most apparent in the final act where the film fails to deliver the cathartic denouement of it’s themes, instead veering into something more generic. The trauma is set aside for a rather generic battle with evil. t’s a shame as the idea of entwinning a family secret entwinned with local folklore is a great way to approach both the past and the present, using the medium of found footage. Despite this, there are impressive elements within What Happened to Dorothy Bell?, certainly enough to suggest Villanueva has a hell of an eye, and some legit horror chops .
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Fantastic Fest 2024: GAZER is a Daring Neo Noir
Gazer, is a film that feels like it’s not of this time. The directorial debut by Ryan J Sloan, an electrician turned director from New Jersey (Across the river from me), made the distinct choices to not only shoot on film, but in his home state of New Jersey, rather than taking the tunnel to New York, where most directors would have probably shot their film. Filming in New Jersey however, delivers a gritty and unforgiving landscape for our story of a disturbed and somewhat troubled woman to transpire. It brings to mind genre cinema of the late late 70s early 80s New York, pre the Disneyfication, harkening to a much more dangerous time with its Hitchcock meets Nolan premise.
Gazer follows Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni) who spends her evenings, peering into other people’s open windows, and summarizing her thoughts on their lives into a cassette tape recorder. She does this, because suffers from dyschronometria, a condition that impacts her ability to accurately estimate the amount of time that has passed. The condition has been slowly eroding her mind, to the point when the film begins she is being advised to move into an assisted living facility. To further remove anything that could date the film, she is forced to use antiquated tech because the digital screens are a trigger for the young woman’s condition. Its at a support group for people who have lost someone to suicide that she sees Paige, a young woman she’s been spying on, who offers to pay her to help her get away from her abusive brother, which triggers the mystery.
While Gazer’s first act is a focused slow burn exercise in world building as director Ryan J Sloan sets the grounded foundation, he slowly begins to erode it away with more surreal and Cronenbergian elements thanks to Frankie’s mental condition. The narrative is very much from Frankie’s perspective, so at times we’re wondering if what we are experiencing, is in fact how it’s transpiring. While it could of course be compared to Nolan’s Memento, that film doesn’t trap us in the protagonist’s head like we are here. This element adds a level of uncertainty that had me continually rethinking just where we stood.
The thing that makes Gazer effective is actor Ariella Mastroianni’s raw nerve of a performance, she’s completely unguarded here, and oftentimes it’s to her character’s detriment. It’s something that as she’s trying to put the pieces together of just what’s going on – because of her condition, we’re watching it negatively impacting everything else in her life. She is opposite a rogues gallery of characters that populate her world, where she’s constantly teetering on the edge. It’s something I think Ryan J Sloan captured perfectly, these people on the fringes who could lose it all by simply missing a day of work, or not being able to get transportation to an appointment.
Gazer is a daring neo noir that flirts with so many sub-genres, as its story slowly unravels on screen. Ryan J Sloan effectively leverages a well honed and measured narrative, along with every tool on his belt as a director to craft a world captured on celluloid that feels real as it does dangerous.At its center is Ariella Mastroianni who is trapped in this barren urban hellscape populated by office parks and Jersey gas stations. She’s charged with a role that has her bearing the damaged soul of a woman who after two hours, you’re never sure you ever really knew. Gazer is an impressive debut, that alludes to an exciting new auteur, who I hope will continue to tell more tales further exploring the darker reaches of the Garden State.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: HEADS OR FAILS – Chaos Reigns!
Heads or Fails, which just premiered at Fantastic Fest is the sophomore effort by the Guit Brothers, Lenny & Harpo, and their follow up to the insane and very hilarious Mother Schmuckers, one of the funniest things to hit the festival circuit back in 2021. This time the Belgium pair are back and tackle an equally flawed female protagonist in an anxiety inducing slice of life black comedy, that feels like Frances Ha meets Uncut Gems. If you loved Mother Schmuckers, you’re definitely going to enjoy Heads of Fails, as the film cements the duo from Brussels as a force to be reckoned with in the black comedic space.
Heads or Fails follows Armande Pigeon (Maria Cavalier-Bazan) an early 20-something woman who moved to Brussels to find love, and has so far been as unlucky as you can get. She’s basically a terrible person too, she doesn’t have a job and sleeps on a fold up cot in the living room of an old woman, whom she owes 3 months back rent. She lies and steals from her friends, will ask out anything with a pulse, and is a degenerate gambler. When we first meet her she loses her shoes in a bet, and we are forced to watch her just go from one terrible wager to another, all while being a pestilence on those around her.
The big question here is, when will what’s left of her luck run out as she is hedging her bets on a big score.
What makes the fllm infinitely watchable is how Maria Cavalier-Bazan’s engaging and fearless take on the actor, thief, gambler, and completely irredeemable human being. Hidden in her performance amidst all this chaos, Cavalier-Bazan is able to find the humanity in Armande and highlight these moments, it’s here we bear witness to what those around her might have seen when they met her. It’s also how the Guit Brothers portray her that’s a breath of fresh air, Armande is gross, she’s unfeminine at times and her character feels fleshed out and multidimensional in such a way that even though her sexuality is portrayed here, its feels completely organic to the character and her life.
Whether you like it or not at its core, Heads or Fails forces the audience to watch someone too young to know better make terrible choices, and it’s because of those earlier glimmers we’re still secretly rooting for her. I mean I was. Sometimes it’s hilarious, sometimes it’s upsetting, but it never feels cheap or manipulative in its choices and as a character study it just cooks. It takes a while as an audience, but we soon realize Armande HAS found love in Brussels after all, with chaos, as her world comes crashing down around her. It’s a sight to behold as the credits roll as she finally realizes this. Heads or Fails isn’t for everyone, but if you thought Frances Ha may not have been chaotic enough for your liking, Armande is your girl.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: PÁRVULOS Finds Humanity In Horror
A coming of age dramedy, exploring the bonds between humans and inhumans
A post apocalyptic movie set after a zombie outbreak is nothing new., so you have to find an original angle to set yourself apart in this sandbox. Translating roughly as “Preschoolers”, Párvulos actually achieves this feat, not just in serving up original fare, but in pulling off the tonal balancing act needed to achieve it.
A coming of age tale, with a trio of young brothers Salvador (Felix Farid Escalante), Oliver (Leonardo Cervantes) and Benjamin (Mateo Ortega), eking out an existence after the end of civilization. A virus and a ill-prepared vaccine contributing to humanity’s fall, and turn to zombification. Despite having lost one leg, the eldest Salvador cares for his younger brothers Oliver and Benjamin. Instilling into them not just a routine, but also rules to aid their survival. They forage and farm around their isolated cabin in the woods, supplementing their needs with the occasional success at hunting. At night, they tales, play games of their own creation, listen to music, watch movies, to distract them from the land dying around them, and the threats out in the wild. But, there is a danger far closer to home. Salvador and Oliver have kept their undead parents chained up in their basement. Unable to let go, and with an intention of holding out for a cure, or rekindling that spark of humanity within them. As their efforts get underway, dangers from without and within that throw the rehabilitation efforts off course. Beyond the dwindling supplies, there’s survivors entering their area, notably a young girl named Valeria (Clara Adell) who manages to manipulate her way into the home. The biggest threat is hinted at during a scavenging expeditions, a fanatical gang that seeks to control the region and are on a collision course with this family, such as it is.
We’ve seen zombie films in the past where that spark of humanity is explored for comedic or dramatic purposes, the ending of Shaun of the Dead, Romero’s Land of the Dead, or even recently Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead spring to mind. Here its the focus of a more intimate tale, not a means to escalate the threat or just provide a means of entertainment. These kids are faced with a need to grown up, and also just don’t want to let go, unconvinced their parents are beyond salvation. Cue a series of moments and montages as these bickering brothers in arms work to adapt to the new world, and reconnect with their parents trapped within these decaying shells. Family dinners and walks in the countryside in lesser hands could come across as silly, here they feel sincere. The script from director Isaac Ezban, alongside Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes, handles this tonal balance well, adding just the right tinge of farce to lighten the mood in the face of such grim fare. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, it’s certainly the only other zombie film I’ve seen where the undead copulate. It doesn’t embrace the wacky, over the top nature, but like Jackson’s feature, there is a tinge of humor, sadness and poignancy that permeates the gnarly fare. A glimmer of an anti-vaxxer remark aside, the one real failing in the film is it’s pace and length. It it does feel drawn out, lingering too long in moments or retreading themes to drive home a point already conveyed. A cut to, and more confidence in the film’s core would only add to it’s impact.
The film has a hauntingly desaturated look, making it akin to a distant memory of life. Monochromatic aesthetic gives way to occasional pops of color. The production looks organic, like an reclaiming by nature after humanity lost its place. In all, it’s an appropriately ruinous looking picture, aided by some impressive blood and gore focused practical effects. Despite the family vibe, there are some truly gnarly visuals here and impactful visceral moments. Some of these offer glimpses within the kids of a the primal, instinctive nature that comes to the fore as their lives, and those of their family are threatened. Physical encounters, violent and sexual, that speak to a loss of innocence. These emotional beats of the film ground the horror elements and tie back to the moral struggles these kids are facing. Survival can bring out the best or the worst in us, and for a young child plunged into desperate times, that can have a long lasting imprint. Párvulos is set in a world where living another day might mean sacrificing a piece of your own humanity. Despite the grim nature of circumstance, its story locks in on finding humanity, and indeed hope, amidst the horror.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL Finds Rich Potential in Found-Footage Horror
With her documentary, What Happened to Dorothy Bell?, Ozzie Gray (Asya Meadows) is on a journey to unlock their hidden trauma. Once their town’s beloved librarian, the spiraling of Ozzie’s grandmother has taken on urban-legend status–and while they can’t remember why, the impact on young Ozzie has become its own buried secret among their family. Using a litany of available cameras, they’re determined to use camcorder tapes from their childhood and newly captured digital footage to unearth secrets from their grandmother’s mysterious disappearance and get to the root of one of the most traumatic experiences of their life.
Danny Villanueva Jr.’s film opens with succinctly spooky evidence that they’re a horror creative to watch–as we see how young Ozzie plays hide-and-seek with their grandmother, ostensibly the focus of a widespread missing person’s search. With our perspective literally controlled by a child, they eagerly accept what would otherwise be a terrifying situation; the innocence and terror goes hand in hand, made even more compelling as the present-day Ozzie exerts an unseen influence rewinding and fast-forwarding this footage for answers they’ve spent years searching for.
It’s a vital combination of medium and subject that forges a crucial foundation for any found-footage horror film to work–and in that respect, Dorothy Bell taps into a riveting, truly scary subject matter that genre trappings can only augment. Breaking the cycle of generational trauma will put anyone through harrowing emotional territory–and like the best horror films, notably Australia’s Lake Mungo in this case, What Happened to Dorothy Bell grants heartfelt heft to Ozzie’s process of doing so. Navigating years of evolving physical media is such an apt metaphor for Ozzie’s quest to explain just what happened to their grandmother–and why their parents won’t say much about what happened–an act of documentary that’s pointedly just as much an act of therapy for the filmmaker.
Asya Meadows’ lead performance is remarkable throughout, in this regard, committing wholeheartedly to their character’s exploration of their mental health and trauma. It’s something they portray with equal determination and resistance–as they reluctantly explore their own flaws and trauma responses via Zoom sessions with their therapist, Dr. Robin Connelly (Nightmare on Elm Street 4 & 5’s Lisa Wilcox). While not directly referred to in the film, it’s also fascinating that Meadows and Villanueva incorporate themes of evolving gender identity in Ozzie’s journey via the gender performance of the younger and older versions of the character. There’s a constant tension between Ozzie and their parents rooted in their shared past–and it speaks to Dorothy Bell’s mature unpacking of generational trauma that Ozzie’s identity remains an ambiguous factor rather than bearing a direct undeserved weight of parental resentment.
Villanueva’s direction is assured in this regard–as are many of his strengths as a horror filmmaker. Several creepy sequences stand out in Ozzie’s exploration of Dorothy’s old library, cutting between Ozzie’s camera(s) and a more omniscient security camera out of Ozzie’s perspective reach. Sequences involving Dr. Connelly are also quite spine-tingling, with some innovative usage of Zoom not seen since Pandemic-era Host.
What’s disappointing, though, is when Dorothy Bell’s brisk 80-minute runtime works against its slow burn approach, backing Villanueva’s well-developed themes into a corner of resolution. The third-act approach unfortunately forces the film into too-familiar territory, shoehorning in a dime-store demonic influence plot that is as rushed as it is familiar. More drawn-out terrors become obtrusive, evoking sighs rather than scares. One can’t help but feel like with more development, such elements could find a more organic set-up over the rest of the film, allowing the supernatural elements to work more in tandem with Villanueva’s themes of trauma akin to Hereditary or Relic. As it stands, though, the film fizzles out rather than burns bright.
However, Dorothy Bell’s divisive finale doesn’t detract from the spark of possibility Villanueva has as a horror storyteller or Asya Meadows’ incredible strengths as a horror lead. While aspects of Danny Villanueva’s feature may feel beholden to more generic horror elements by its conclusion, What Happened to Dorothy Bell makes for an intriguing found-footage film, with a clever mind for upending genre expectations and unpacking the rich and complex emotions at its core.
What Happened to Dorothy Bell had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024 on September 22, 2024. It is currently seeking distribution.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: MADS is a One-Take Roller-Coaster Ride into Hell
French auteur David Moreau delivers one of the year’s most disturbing and awe-inspiring horror vehicles
Young Romain (Milton Riche) is living his best life–it’s his birthday, celebrating with best friends, no parents, and plenty of drugs. Gifted a new drug from his usual dealer, Romain gets sky-high before speeding off in his father’s Mustang–until he’s flagged down by a bandaged woman in a hospital gown. Drenching him in blood, Romain is caught in the moral quandary of being arrested by whoever answers his calls for help. He tries to sit the situation out at home–until girlfriend Anaïs (Lucille Guillaume) appears to whisk him off to a house party. This chance encounter kicks off the nonstop apocalyptic fury set within a small French suburb in MadS, a delicious real-time, one-take horror that David Moreau directs with an effortless flourish and unsparing bleakness.
Following in the tradition of Gaspar Noe’s Climax or Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria as well as his own paranoid thriller Ils, David Moreau’s zombie apocalypse unfolds with mounting dread, turning its main characters’ bloodstreams into ticking time bombs before they succumb to the mysterious plague taking hold of them. Steeped in Euphoria-like French party culture, the gruesome tension spills out amid nonstop flashing lights and booming house music, effectively fusing their transformation with the chilling paralysis of an overstimulating anxiety attack. Trapped within the immediacy of its single-take format, information comes at a trickle and terrors come from nowhere, rooting us feverishly within our leads’ tenuous mental state.
Because of the central drug’s hallucinatory properties–we’re quickly telegraphed that we can’t trust anything of what we see. Is Romain caught in the crossfire of some sinister medical experiment, or is he just having the worst trip of his life? Are their sharp, snarling tics and glowing eyes the early signs of catastrophic infection, or the consequence of some severely tainted stuff? It’s MadS’ bleak selling point to be removed from nearly all context or comfort, delivering a visceral, real-time primal scream of a thrill ride. It’s a conceit that proves infectious as various characters succumb to the madness, and is a gruesome evolution of Ils’ moment-to-moment suspense, as well as the experimental in-the-moment horror of Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [REC].
It’s also an approach that’s clearly demanding of leads Milton Riche, fellow partier Laurie Pavy, and especially Lucille Guillaume, which all three meet with disturbing determination. Under Moreau’s beautifully choreographed chaos, Riche, Pavy, and Guillaume carefully translate each of their character’s descent into depravity through gradual shifts in body language and mental acuity until they reach a very bloody breaking point. While Riche’s hapless teen effectively introduces us to a world slowly going Mad(S), Lucille Guillaume gives an astonishing breakout performance. Reminiscent of Garance Marillier in fellow French gorefest Raw, Guillaume’s Anaïs reels from betrayal and bemusement before realizing the disturbing scope of what this night has in store for her. Moreau and Guillaume are more than eager to trap us within Anaïs’ thrilling subsequent rampage, pivoting between earnest terror and girlish glee on a dime. The characters’ self-revulsion as they indulge in their disturbing impulses is wrenching to witness, infusing such pandemonium with gripping emotional clarity.
Equally fascinating is how Moreau’s apocalypse never compromises this laser-focus on character, instead remaining very much a background element. As characters flee down empty city streets, the sounds of distant explosions and gunfire from mysterious law enforcement draw closer and closer to home, blurring the line between a chaotic party night and the terror of a domestic war zone. It’s hard here not to think of the inspiring bleakness of George Romero’s The Crazies or Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, both of which effectively channeled the shambling, blank slates of traditional Zombies into an all-too-human menace and rage. This new, one-take context takes this to new heights, as we helplessly see just how these vivacious teens slip away into the depths of monstrousness. In a France plagued with social instability, ruled by forces shifting on unpredictable yet powerful whims, there’s a brooding power to MadS’ imagery. These youths’ entire world seems destined to be swallowed by chaos one way or another. Understandably, the only thing they can do is rave to the grave and lose themselves to whatever madness the night has in store.
MadS had its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024, with a streaming debut on Shudder coming October 18th.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: In THE WILD ROBOT, Kindness is a Survival Skill
(from left) Roz (Lupita N’yongo) and Brightbill (Kit Connor) in DreamWorks Animation’s Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders. The Wild Robot will almost certainly be my favorite animated film of 2024, not to mention one of my favorite films to play Fantastic Fest 2024.
Both broadly entertaining for kids and families, and a nuanced and sweeping sci-fi epic, The Wild Robot evokes comparisons to such masterful work as Wall-E on the one hand or Silent Running or Blade Runner on the other.
Roz (Lupita Nyong’o continues to prove limitless) is already crash landed on a lush island that feels Pacific Northwest-ish when we meet her. She is activated and begins wandering the wilderness attempting to establish a directive, as is her wont as a service robot created by mega corporation Universal Dynamics. In glorious “show not tell” fashion, we come to learn about Roz’s situation, her setting, and who she is right alongside her. Endearing, smart, and silly from the outset, The Wild Robot quickly introduces us to the primary forest creatures that will become central to the story and Roz’s quest for purpose and meaning via the completion of service tasks. Pedro Pascal’s outcast and wily Fink The Fox initially looks to take advantage of Roz as a meal ticket but soon becomes entangled in the raising of little Brightbill (Kit Conner), a runt goose that Roz becomes a mother figure for after she accidentally crushes the nest of his family when he’s still just an egg. With Brightbill acquired, Roz has a programmed task to complete, and we’re off to the races to get Brightbill learning how to swim and fly in time for migration.
Incredibly blunt about the stakes in the wilderness, The Wild Robot is a kids film that isn’t afraid to address life’s fragility, and the miracle of survival against all odds. It’s clear in writer/director Chris Sanders’ script (adapted from Peter Brown’s book series) that Brightbill’s very life is at stake and no bones are made about the animal kingdom’s cutthroat nature. The Wild Robot is also a story of outcasts, with a friendless fox, a feared robot, and a runt unlike any of his fellow geese, the forged family of our trio of leads know deeply the feelings of rejection and isolation that can come when community turns its back on you. They’ll have ups and downs, but they’ll work together to survive, and it’ll be their differences and disabilities that ultimately make them the only heroes who can save the forest when the threats of unsurvivable winters and nefarious future tech threaten their habitat and their survival.
Initially limited exclusively to the (absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeously rendered in wildly colorful animation) island at first, eventually the film pulls back to show us the wider world and this is when The Wild Robot begins to sell itself as a powerful work of science fiction that has something to say not only about family, parenthood, and adolescence, but also about society and technology and how we steward our world. It’s subtle for a kids movie, but The Wild Robot does imply a future for humankind that we may be careening towards rather than swerving away from. And it helps that the stately and magnificent Bill Nighy shows up as Longneck, the goose leader who will offer Brightbill the chance to fly or die.
I spend a lot of time watching, writing about, and pursuing cinema that celebrates empathy and The Wild Robot will no doubt be one of my favorite films of 2024 not only because it is a deeply compassionate and kind film, but because it’s not afraid to lay bare the stakes for not embracing kindness. Indeed, a central premise of the film is that kindness is a survival skill and it does a fantastic job of subtly reminding us viewers that this skill isn’t only key to our characters’ survival, but for society as well. It’s bizarre to live in a time where simple kindness and self-sacrificial love are revolutionary concepts that feel antithetical to the societal norm, but nevertheless here we are, and The Wild Robot offers somewhat of a countercultural narrative to the masses as a result. Roz, Brightbill, and Fink are a loveable family of misfits that I would gladly follow across multiple stories, though Wild Robot succeeds entirely on its own as a standalone film if future entries don’t manifest. It’s heartwarming and heart rending in equal measure as parents and children will both find much to relate to in that endless cycle of preparing our next generations to fly the nest and build something better than what has come before. In Roz, Brightbill, Fink, and Chris Sanders I trust.
And I’m Out.
