The curated portfolio of film journalist Joe Lipsett
You know that it’s summer when you start getting emails about Fantasia Film Festival. The largest genre film festival in North America is celebrating its 23rd year in Montreal, QB this summer. 130 features from the globe will be playing the fest, which runs from July 11 – Aug 1, 2019. [Read more…]
Satanic Panic
“Cinepocalypse, Chicago’s premiere festival for electrifying and provocative genre cinema, returns to the Music Box Theatre June 13th for eight days of features, shorts, events and surprises, including eight fantastic break-out world premieres!”
Cinepocalypse is one of the hottest genre festivals in North America, so it’s always a delight when the screening schedule comes out. This year’s fest is already off to a great start with the announcement of a wide diversity of films, including a very welcome number of high profile projects from female directors including Gigi Saul Guerrer, Chelsea Stardust, Caryn Waecther, Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala and Pollyanna McIntosh. The buzz surrounding both Stardust’s Satanic Panic (a product of Fangoria Magazine’s film production wing) and The Lodge (a high profile Sundance acquisition from the directors behind cult classic Goodnight, Mommy) has been steadily building for several months.
Villains
The opening night feature is Verotika, the directorial debut from Misfits founder and punk/metal legend Glenn Danzig. Featuring a plot shrouded in secrecy, a soundtrack of new Danzig music, and based on the output of his comic book publishing company Verotik—a compound of “violence” and “erotic”—the feature film anthology is a realization of his lifelong love of comics and the dark arts that promises to “melt your face off” <gulp>.
Finally, in addition to new films from Lucky McKee and Joe Begos, one final film to keep an eye out for is Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s buzzy SXSW film Villains (which my partner-in-crime Trace Thurman raved about in his festival review). The film, which stars Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe, finds the tables turned on two wannabe criminals when thievery runs a foul and the prowlers soon become the prey.
Festival badges are available now, and individual tickets go on sale Friday at noon CT at cinepocalypsegenrefest.com
Here’s the full festival program:
Achoura, dir. Talal Selhami
Attack of the Demons, dir. Eric Power
Belzebuth, dir. Emilio Portes
Bliss, dir. Joe Begos
Culture Shock
Hulu’s Into The Dark: Culture Shock, dir. Gigi Saul Guerrero
Darlin’, dir. Pollyanna McIntosh
Deadcon, dir. Caryn Waechter
Falling Down, dir. Joel Schumacher
Flatliners, dir. Joel Schumacher
Ghost Killers Vs. Bloody Mary, dir. Fabrício Bittar
GWAR Showcase
Hot Dog… The Movie, dir. Peter Markle
Kindred Spirits, dir. Lucky McKee
The Lodge
The Lodge, dirs. Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
The Lurker, dir. Eric Liberacki
Mope, dir. Lucas Heyne
The Mute, dir. Bartosz Konopka
Punta Muerto (Dead End), dir. Daniel de la Vega
Rock N’ Roll Nightmare, dir. John Fasano
Satanic Panic, dir. Chelsea Stardust
The Swerve, dir. Dean Kapsalis
Tammy & the T-Rex, dir. Stewart Raffill
Total Recall, dir. Paul Verhoeven
Verotika
Verotika, dir. Glenn Danzig
Villains, dirs. Dan Berk & Robert Olsen
Why Don’t You Just Die, dir. Kirill Sokolov
What do you think of the line-up? What films are you most excited for?
Montréal Dead End is an adventurous anthology feature that is steeped in the geography of one of Canada’s most gorgeous cities. The self-proclaimed “no budget” horror film created by 18 different directors takes several different approaches that helps to set it apart from its anthology counterparts and while, like its peers, it’s not always successful, it’s worth checking out just to see how all of the pieces play together.
It’s traditional for anthologies to use a bracket storyline to link the various entries together or provide some kind of thematic through-line. Montréal Dead End opts more for the latter approach, but intriguingly chooses to intersperse the ongoing storyline throughout the film. The film’s opening introduces a noxious green gas escaping from a sinkhole in the middle of the city and the remainder of the film explores the endless stream of terrors and monsters that arise in the mist’s wake (zombies and cannibals, mostly) in different parts of the city.
As the film progresses, it is revealed that the gas is tied to a forthcoming apocalypse that can only be prevented if the Guardian and the Archivist (Jérémie Earp-Lavergne) read from a powerful spell book within 24 hours of the gate opening. These segments tend to feature encounters between the Guardian and an agent of darkness with their own agenda (the Baron of Montréal North or the Priestess of Outremont, for example), but they’re rather repetitive and, most disappointingly, the resolution of the bracket storyline (ie: the climax of the film) occurs far too quickly and is resolved in an underwhelming fashion.
The other issue with Montréal Dead End is that the quality of the shorts vary dramatically. Because there are so many filmmakers involved, many of the 15 segments are quite short; at times this proves to be a minor blessing, but more often than not the need to cram in more ends up cutting off a promising story. Not unlike The ABCs of Death, the sheer number of shorts overwhelms the proceedings, so much so that they bleed together and become difficult to distinguish from one another. It also makes the 87 minute long film feel much longer than it actually is.
Thankfully there are several hidden gems. Many of the shorts that lean into comedy fare best (possibly because it’s easier to deliver a punchline than develop a mood, build tension and pay off a scare in the same amount of time). Among the strongest shorts are:
Several of the more horrific shorts are also enjoyable, but too many lean on familiar trappings: cannibals and/or zombies. One nearly silent short set in the The Village starts out promisingly: a pair of girlfriends fight about one’s wandering eye in a gorgeous purple neon-lit dance club. A strange man follows them home and lurks outside of the window as the envious philanderer first resists, then initiates sex, culminating in a physical attack. The association of carnal longing and food is subtle and effective, but the short has barely begun before it’s over. Contrast this with a meandering silent short about an old woman who is recruited for a bath by a group of feral children in the woods that is interminable.
Clearly not all of shorts are made equal.
Montréal Dead End plays the Blood in the Snow Film Festival Sat, Nov 24 at 9:30pm EST.
Opening this year’s Blood in the Snow film festival is director Lowell Dean’s Supergrid, a loving homage to dystopian road movies like George Miller’s Mad Max series:
SuperGrid is set in a near future where mining conglomerates have turned Canada into a wasteland. Two brothers must travel the same road that claimed their sister’s life in their quest to deliver mysterious cargo. En route they must contend with road pirates, rebel gangs, and each other.
Quick Review:
You know what you’re signing up for when you buy a ticket to SuperGrid. This is a film that dutifully checks all of the action movie checkboxes:
The fact that T.R. McCauley and Justin Ludwig’s script hews so closely to conventional tropes of the genre could be seen as disappointing, but Canadian action films remain a rarity so this Saskatchewan-shot production feels both ambitious and unique. Considering the minuscule $1.2M budget, Dean delivers some impressive visuals, particularly in regard to the futuristic dystopian world-building.
The actors are well-cast, particularly leads Leo Fafard (as older brother Jesse) and Marshall Williams (as impetuous younger brother Deke). Tough girl North (Natalie Krill) and Owl (Daniel Maslany, brother of Orphan Black star Tatiana) steal the show as Overwatch agents, while Fei Ren is enjoyably over the top (albeit a little broad) as hissable leather-clad hench woman, Guan Yin.
The Bottom Line: SuperGrid fails to offer anything new to the dystopian road movie subgenre, but it handles the expected tropes in a confident and enjoyable fashion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5XHdmQuSkk
SuperGrid screens Thursday, Nov 22 at 9:30pm at The Royal. The film opens in theatres Dec 14.
While Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven certainly didn’t invent the self-referential horror film, due to its pop culture footprint Scream has become a natural point of comparison for every post-1996 metatextual horror film. More than twenty years ago Sidney Prescott and Ghostface grossed $100M+ and, in the process, redefined the way that audiences — and filmmakers — considered how horror films are constructed. The proliferation of self-aware horror films in the 00s and 10s reflects this change (for better or worse) as it is now considered fair game to have characters acknowledge their predicament with a knowing wink to the audience, even while they run around screaming and dying.
Enter Brett Simmons‘ new horror-comedy, You Might Be The Killer, a film that gleefully comments on the tropes of the first cycle of 80s slasher films, even as it aims to replicate them, all while adopting an intriguing non-linear narrative structure that jumps back and forth in time. Although the film fails to stand on its own two feet by offering something new and unexpected, writers Simmons, Thomas P. Vitale and Covis Berzoyne do a good job of constructing a film that honours the conventions of the subgenre while simultaneously referencing and abiding by them.
You Might Be The Killer begins in media res as camp director Sam (Fran Kranz) calls his best friend Chuck (Alyson Hannigan) in the middle of a massacre. He quickly explains that the majority of the camp counsellors have been murdered by a bone-machete wielding masked man and that he has barricaded himself inside a cabin in the hopes of staying alive. Chuck is a video store employee and Sam’s go-to horror movie expert so he enlists her help in figuring out how best to survive. Thus begins a loose sort of bracketing device in which Chuck asks Sam questions to uncover the events that unfolded, which prompts the narrative to double back on itself (often using a title card indicating the number of dead counsellors to help audiences keep track of the timeline).
Although the film initially plays up the mystery of the killer’s identity, the film’s title a dead giveaway as to who is responsible. After a brief period, Simmons, Vitale and Berzoyne lay their cards on the table and acknowledge that Sam has been murdering his employees in a kind of fugue state; at this point the focus of You Might Be The Killer shifts from the mystery of “who” is the killer to the “why” the murders are happening, as well as “how” Sam can survive his situation. Throughout this process, Chuck reiterates the rules of the slasher genre according to its most popular entries (all while impressively manning the register and sassing customers who eavesdrop of the phone call).
Despite its meta elements, I would argue that the closest comparable film is not Scream, but 2015’s The Final Girls. Both films gently mock and play with the conventions of the slasher film while stringently adhering to them. Admittedly The Final Girls has a great deal more heart (and gender politics) working in its favour, but both films are fun, spirited endeavours that have a breezy vibe to them, thanks to a winsome cast.
The success of You Might Be The Killer is 100% thanks to Kranz and Hannigan. The two actors bring a great deal of audience goodwill from their various Joss Whedon projects to the production and their warm, empathetic screen presence helps engender audience investment. Even after it is revealed that Sam is the killer, Kranz manages to make him sympathetic and likeable. Hannigan arguably has the more challenging role of the two, given that she is divorced from all of the action; even stranded in a single video store set and forced to act all of her scenes on the phone, she’s a sheer delight. She infuses Chuck’s know-it-all, chipper, informative exposition with charm, easily making Chuck one of the highlights of the film.
Alas, despite the two strong performances anchoring the film, You Might Be The Killer peters out around the one hour mark. After a while it becomes clear that the film is using the self-referential material to prop itself up, and doesn’t have much else to offer. Little work is done to invest the other counsellors with distinct personalities, so watching the nearly dozen murders proves to be a rote exercise (even if the gore and the direction is ably and enthusiastically executed).
Ultimately You Might Be The Killers overstays its welcome and sputters to a (foregone) conclusion that relies too much on unearned audience investment in secondary characters who are little more than types. No matter how amusing the callbacks to 80s slashers are or how strong the two lead performances are, You Might Be The Killer still winds up feeling a little empty.
3.5/5
Ray Xue’s feature directorial debut, Extracurricular has a solid hook: the film is about a group of sociopathic teens who casually plan and execute murders in between College applications, book reports and dance recitals. Following in the footsteps of last year’s festival hit Tragedy Girls (albeit in less satirical fashion), Extracurricular aims to be shocking and topical but winds up missing the mark, despite confident direction by Xue and dedicated performances by the young cast.
The film opens solidly with a double murder right off the top. After a brief introduction, a pair of twenty-something lovebirds are awoken by the sound of their car alarm in the middle of the night. The man goes to investigate and never returns, leaving his girlfriend to discover his mutilated body outside and a group of neon-masked villains lining the driveway. After a brief chase, the woman is also dispatched by The Purge-like killers.
There’s no mystery about the identity of the murderers: the very next scene finds a foursome of teens chatting animatedly in a diner about what they felt worked and what didn’t. Aggressive leader Ian Gordon (Spencer Macpherson) is a nihilist, while his long haired brother Derek (Keenan Tracey) is flippant and casual. Derek’s girlfriend Jenny (Brittany Teo) initially presents as a little princess-y (she complains about the outdoor murder location), but is quickly revealed to be the most ambitious and murder-focused member of the group. Circling the periphery is defacto protagonist (or is it anti-hero?) Miriam (Brittany Raymond), who is detail-oriented but cautious.
Following the murders, writers Matthew Abrams and Padgett Arango slow things down. We see the foursome at school, where they’re revealed to be popular, scholastic, and involved in social activities. They just so happen to also use study period to plan future murders and survey social media for news of their extracurricular exploits. Abrams and Arango never quite nail the tone of the film, so it is unclear if audiences are meant to cheer for these murderous teens or condemn their psychopathic tendencies. There’s a suggestion that their boredom, the small town they live in and a lack of parental supervision has contributed to their development, but these ideas are never fully explored.
And therein lies Extracurricular‘s greatest problem. The script is poorly constructed, which hampers the film to such a degree that even its strengths can overcome the writing deficiencies.
While there are no hard and fast screenwriting rules that must be obeyed, there are several near-universal screenwriting techniques that successful writers use. And for a good reason: they work.
Abrams and Arango adhere to a fairly traditional structure for the first hour or so of the film, and then they make the ill-advised decision to abandon their course of action in favour of a series of unexpected – and unsatisfying – narrative developments. This proves to be their — and the film’s — undoing.
The most grievous mistake they make is asking the audience to invest in characters without paying that investment off. If, for example, the vast majority of the film is centered around one character, the audience is likely going to assume that individual is your protagonist. If this character is given a love interest and a promising story arc, the audience will expect these elements to amount to something. If other characters are given backstories about absent or fractured relationships with their parents, this information might be seen by audiences as relevant to the story’s outcome.
Unfortunately this is not the case with Extracurricular, which introduces all of these components, then fails to address them or pay them off. And while this may seem like a daring or risqué inversion of audience expectations in an attempt to do something unique and out of the box, the reality is that most of the climax feels out of the blue, undercooked and, unfortunately, quite unsatisfying.
This is a shame because Xue’s direction is solid. He has a good understanding of how to light and shoot kill sequences, alternating between jerky handheld action and steadicam long shots. There’s also a sense of experimentation in the way he uses the camera, such as his slow 360 degree pan around the room in a scene when the group discusses which mask to wear for a Halloween kill. Traditional cutting would have sufficed, but the circular motion is more engaging and reinforces the meandering nature of their conversation.
The young cast is also extremely game, particularly Teo and Raymond. As the not-so-secret sadist, Teo is frighteningly efficient — what may be a strange hobby for the others comes off as a vocation to Jenny. Raymond, meanwhile, has the most meaty material to work with; Miriam is not only the most apprehensive member of the group, she is negotiating her burgeoning feelings for a classmate, videographer Layla (Shanel Maida). The chemistry between the pair is appropriately romantic, particularly in the dreamy sequences when Layla films Miriam dancing for her College application. Miriam’s slow drift away from her homicidal friends is Extracurricular‘s most engaging storyline, which only makes it all the more frustrating when Abrams and Arango abandon it in favour of a series of twist endings.
Sadly, despite strong direction and dedicated performances by the cast, the film is undone by poor scripting decisions. There’s a kernel of something great here, but Extracurricular ultimately fails the written.
2/5