Tag Archives: 2022

SLASH Film Festival 2022: FANTASTIC SHORTS COMPETITION – CHAPTER 2

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SLASH Filmfestival is Austria’s largest event dedicated to fantastic cinema. Founded in 2010, it quickly grew in size and scope, attracting close to 15.000 visitors over its 11-day run. Each year’s program is comprised of 50+ Austrian, European or international premieres of highlights from the field of fantastic cinema, ranging from crowd-pleasers to hot docs, from fiercely independent films to heritage revivals.

FANTASTIC SHORTS COMPETITION – CHAPTER II: For all of mankind’s greatest achievements, humanity has also excelled at being complicit in some of history’s worst atrocities—quite often while denying culpability. SLASH takes you on a trip down the seedier corridors of memory lane to shed light on faded or hushed historical horrors and to unearth personal traumas or sinister secrets repressed from the conscious mind. On this inward journey that blurs the lines between humans and animals, unacknowledged grief and unresolved guilt, you’ll meet overworked dream censors fed up with disguising the truth and snail-like or headless office drones who have fallen prey to the mindlessness of modern society and the senseless violence it breeds. As our clock continues to wind down, we look up for answers and may discover a cure-all where we least expect it. Is the future written in the stars, and will life find a new way forward?

Letter to a Pig (2022): Directed and written by Tal Kantor, this incredibly animated film tells the story of Holocaust survivor writing a thank-you letter to a pig that saved his life. Then, after listening to the man discuss his life in a classroom, a young student dreams about what he has heard, but it comes to him as a nightmare. Remember when someone would come to your school and blow your mind with the tragedy they had endured and you were surrounded by your fellow classmates and you couldn’t believe they’d have kids listening to this? This film reminded me of those days and my sense memory kicked in, thinking of the smells and textures of the seats in my old high school auditorium.

Swept Under (2022): Ethan Soo has directed a film that yes, is about a cursed carpet given to a young Cambodian man by his sister that ends up murdering him, but I loved that this movie efficiently and effectively contains a message about the way America’s policing the world has a dark history that is never discussed. There are some horrific real and manufactured moments in this film that really could be an entire anthology, as long as it keeps the perfect closing shot that this has.

There’s a shot in here of all the faces trapped within the carpet that is just plain sinister. There are so many layers to this story, even down to the disappearance of the Cambodian man at the end, that tie so perfectly into the sad story we have written. A near-perfect analogy well-told. Soo is one to keep an eye on.

Last Seen (2021): Nathan Ginter directed and star Chris Jensen wrote this story of Devon, whose sister has gone missing, his relationship with his mother has deteriorated and struggles have started with his lifeguard job. However, the only good thing in his life are the sea monkeys that his sister left behind. As you can tell from the description, this is a dark movie about those left behind when others disappear.

Ginter and Jensen may not have done much yet, but this short points at their ability to do so much. This made me think about the people in my life and what their loss would feel like. This isn’t a feel good movie, other than to feel great about the talent that made it.

Censor of Dreams (2021): Night after night, the dream team — literally — of The Censor and his assistants turn Yoko’s memories into fantastical dreams. On one night, nothing happens as planned. This movie has the look of prime Michel Gondry, as co-director and writer Leo Berne and Raphaël Rodriguez take a story by author Yasutaka Tsutsui — which also was made as the anime Paprika — to show us the lengths that the censor within our head fights to protect us from moments in our subconscious that we must face or continue not understanding why we’re dreaming such strange dreams.

Headless (2022): A Korean short directed and written by Bason Baek, this takes place in a world where most people are headless. There’s one man with a head, a police officer named DuSeong. His latest case is a sexual assault in which the suspect and the victim both lost their heads. Then, his daughter loses her head. This feels like a music video and I have no issues with that. An interesting and surreal blast of cinema.

Phlegm (2021): Directed and written by Han-David Bolt, Phlegm reminds me of Jamie Thraves’ video for Radiohead’s “Just.” Pascal Ulli plays a man walking to work that ends up stepping on a snail, wiping off his shoe and then stepping directly onto another snail until the sticky material all over him just weighs him down and forces him into the ground. As the camera pulls back, it’s revealed that he is not the only person to have undergone this disgusting and horrible trial.

It feels as if this is every day when I had to walk to work, the feeling of not even wanting to enter the building, every step bringing me closer to a destructive experience that tore away at my soul, forced to be around fake faceless emotionless ciphers of not even human beings. No snails though.

From.Beyond (2022):  Through the use of found footage and genre mixing, From.Beyond documents several of mankind’s first encounters with life from other planets. Directed by Fredrik S. Hana, who wrote this movie with Jamie Turville — and directed one of my favorite videos for Kvelertak’s “Månelyst” which references tons of horror movies — this is one odd short.

Hana creates a fake reality within this movie, a series of moments of various lives as they come to realization with the fact that we are no longer alone and never were. This is more art than commerce and I mean that with the greatest of meanings; I also believe that it’s the closest I’ve seen a movie get to what actual Disclosure will be like. This short feels occult; it is the hidden made true.

Halloween Ends (2022)

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One of the problems in today’s discourse — on anything, be it politics, pop culture or even what the best tasting fast food might be — is mired in the fact that not only does everyone have an opinion, but everyone now has a way to broadcast that opinion. So for the next few weeks, you’re going to see a wide variety of opinions on this movie, whether it’s from people who are assured that it’s the worst movie in the series — if not the worst movie ever, if you believe some people — to the best sequel to the series and a film that takes “big swings” to actually make a surprising entry in a series of films that has already hit 13 with this new release.

Watching this movie last night and then reading the social media discourse that resulted, I was left with several questions:

Is different better?

Is this arguably a good movie?

Building on that, is this a good Halloween movie?

Has anyone working on this movie — with the obvious people like those who were in the actual movie — ever seen the first Halloween?

Have they ever seen a movie before?

Is it a Halloween movie when Michael Myers basically has a cameo and that’s it? I mean, the only movie in the series he’s in less of is Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. 

Speaking of that movie, I am old enough to remember just how upset people were when it came out. Sure, it’s been critically reevaluated — something that others feel will happen someday with this movie — but at the time, it was beyond hated.

There are some that say that this movie will be much like the third installment, one that people will come around to liking, an acquired taste that eventually people will discover that they really do like.

The problem is that that takes us back to the argument that I started three hundred words ago: nobody changes their mind any longer. No one argues a position. That’s because positions are predetermined and no one debates. They just soapbox and refuse to listen to anyone from any other side.

Most critically: Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is a flawed film, but is an entertaining and interesting one.

Halloween Ends is not.

It’s a movie made by five writers, all of whom came to the first story session with their own ideas of what the story would be about, then got into a fight and their mothers had to be called in, who told them that they were all special but they needed to learn an important lesson in working together by trying to get all of their ideas to work in one idea.

Here are the many movies that make up Halloween Ends:

  1. The town of Haddonfield has been haunted by the murders that have happened there over the years and as a result, people have started killing one another and themselves. This idea stops after the montage that introduces it.
  2. Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) accidentally kills a kid he’s babysitting and stays within his small town, dealing with the anger and resentment of the people who live there. He finds love — doomed, tragic love — with someone who might understand his pain, Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), who survived the death of her parents at the hands of Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle).
  3. After stating that the sequels were all horrible movies, a team of filmmakers take a whole bunch of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and have Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) hiding out in a storm sewer along with some homeless folks, not to mention the black convertible that comes directly from that movie. Despite never being related to Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), he still recovers and hunts her down, even though she has moved to a new house that is not his childhood home, nor is it near the magical window that was suggested to be why he killed in the last movie.
  4. An evil radio tower has beamed the messages that has caused Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) to be a killer for forty years begins to influence a teenager who hangs out at the radio station, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), and he takes on the powers and abilities of the killer. According to leaked scripts, this was actually where the movie really was going, as the radio tower was added to Halloween Kills via CGI and spoken about in the commentary track as integral to the mythology of Haddonfield. Supposedly, this movie was going to have Michael killed by being impaled on the tower twenty minutes into the movie and his powers going into Corey.
  5. A confused young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is unsure of his sexuality and expresses his uncertainty through violence. Despite a potential relationship with Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), he keeps heading to the cruise spot on town, bringing other men to watch Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) have their way with them, then bringing him to the outside world where his impotence keeps him from having sex with a nurse (Michele Dawson), leaving him pawing at a glass window while The Shape easily penetrates her. Also at times it seems that through poor filmmaking that Michael is riding on the back of his motorcycle. Also also he lives with a mother (Joanne Baron) who belittles and slaps him when she isn’t kissing him full on the lips and works for his junkyard-owning father (Rick Moose) who just wants to watch Hard Target and is given to saying things like, “I hope you find love, son.” PS: When this line was said, I laughed like Max Cady for a full minute. A loud, joyous, braying laugh at one of the absolute worst lines in the history of movies that I have seen, one so poorly placed that it had to be satire if intended and sheer ineptitude if not.
  6. A soap opera about the town of Haddonfield, a place that unlike any of the other versions of the story only has one convenience store, one bar and one restaurant. There, everyone will come into conflict with one another:
    • Mrs. Allen (Candice Rose), the mother of Jeremy, who accidentally died when Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) kicked him off a stairwell while babysitting him. She has never changed her clothes for at least two years, still dressing in the same flapper costume she was wearing that same Halloween. Or worse, she still celebrates Halloween and still wears the same costume that she wore the night her son died and both ideas are both very dark and also very dumb.
    • Mr. Allen (Jack William Marshall) who is trying to forgive Corey for the death of his son and keeps trying to pick him up on the way from work and worries that he has no idea what to say.
    • Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) — note not Lindsay Wallace as the initial credits misspelled — the survivor of the Michael Myers murders when she was a kid, which made her lifelong friends with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) when she isn’t working her two jobs: door to door Tarot reader and owner of the only bar in town.
    • Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), the survivor of a series of murders that killed her parents, boyfriend and friends, but who now works at Haddonfield Memorial — man, is Fright Rags going to make a million bucks selling those scrubs or what? — and is vying for a promotion that instead goes to a nurse (Michele Dawson) who is sleeping with their boss Dr. Mathis (Michael O’Leary), who has his whole home wired for Alexa and plays “Tell Me with Your Eyes (Just Be You)” by Rob Galbraith before he does some horizontal mambo with the much younger redhead nurse. She also might be in love with Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) despite meeting him once yet she shares that she has always had a psychic connection with him. She kind of wants to leave town but feels responsible for her grandmother.
    • Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is an older women who has finally moved on from the death of her friends forty years ago and the death of her daughter by embracing therapy, getting sober and working to become a positive influence in the life of her granddaughter Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), which includes setting her up with a young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell). She also is in love with Deputy Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), a police officer who has also been impacted by the events of the past and now studies Japanese and yearns to see cherry blossoms. However, she’s haunted by people in the town who have not forgiven her, like Sondra (Diva Tyler), who was put in a wheelchair by Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle), who also killed her husband when they were just trying to eat cheese, drink wine and fly a drone inside their house.
    • A gang of miscreants led by Terry (Michael Barbieri), whose father does not love him. They are all members of the toughest kids in town, the Haddonfield Marching Band, as we have already learned through all of the now non-canon sequels that the children of Haddonfield are the absolute worst human beings who will remind you that your uncle was the boogeyman and smash your pumpkin. He is joined by Billy (Marteen), who looks like Ninja from Die Antwoord, Stacy (Destiny Mone) and Margo (Joey Harris).
    • WURQ The Verge, is the only radio station in town. It’s run by Willy the Kid (Keraun Harris), who not only owns the property but is mean to anyone who stands on its grounds and is given to incite paranoia in the town by talking loudly all day long. He enjoys eating Chinese food and has a secretary who looks like a mail lady.

Anyways.

All of those movies have been thrown into a film that has basically a Michael Myers cameo, strobing moments that nearly broke my brain, sleepovers in an abandoned house between a meet cute couple where one of them killed a kid, a decent scene in the junkyard between Corey and his tormentors, a supposed extended role for Kyle Richards that lasts as long as Michael is in this movie and a plot that’s more Christine than Halloween (Corey’s name comes directly from that movie, he works in a junkyard and he has the exact same outfit on as Arnie when you first see him in that film).

Jamie Lee Curtis claimed that this movie would be “shocking” and “make people very angry.”

I mean, that seems like a reason to make a movie. That said, I’ve always loved Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 because the audience expected more of the same and got exactly what Tobe Hooper and L. M. Kit Carson wanted to unleash upon filmgoers. The difference, again, is that that movie is actually well-made and has some things to say.

This is the third movie in a trilogy that has no right being a trilogy. The first tries to erase the sequels while having moments from all of them. The second turns Michael into Jason, starting with him killing an entire brigade of firefighters. And then there was this, which again, is a whole bunch of movies fighting to figure out what they want to be.

There are so many people saying this is brilliant because it subverts what should be expected. Now, for those that want Laurie Strode’s story to end on her own terms, this movie is a success. To me, the series is not about her, but about the darkness that exists within small town America exemplified by a masked killer that has no emotion and no reason for what it does.

The idea that one mistake sends Corey stumbling down the left hand path to evil is a good one. It’s an idea better given to another film and perhaps not one associated with this franchise. Actually, the John  Carpenter and Debra Hill idea of ending the franchise with the second movie and having each new installment be self-contained was a very good one.

Green claimed he was done with horror and then Blumhouse asked if he wanted to remake The Exorcist, which is the real horror here.

Look, I get it. After making thirteen of these movies, what do you do? But this one — there’s no suspense. There’s no stalking. There’s no simplicity, as the first movie is a very basic thrill ride that keeps delivering watch after watch. This learns no lessons from that film.

Some other notes:

  • At the end of the movie, everyone in Haddonfield has a big procession with The Shape’s body tied to a car, then dumps him in an industrial grinder like one of those YouTube shredder videos. If you just moved to this town, wouldn’t you be like, “What is going on? Why are these people driving a body to a junkyard? Who said this was OK?”
  • The black sheriff and little mouthy kid from the first one all came back and only I clapped.
  • Blah blah they used something close to the Halloween 3: Season of the Witch font.
  • Laurie’s book has the worst title ever: Stalkers, Savior and Samhain. Except that, you know, that scene where Samhain is on the chalkboard is no longer canon.
  • Laurie is still learning how to use that microwave, huh?
  • This movie is seriously the most fan service sledgehammer BS ever. That awkward grocery store scene with the Muzak version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” was embarrassing filmmaking.
  • That “Love lives today” graffiti on the bridge was dumb too.
  • You can stab an angry young man in the throat and he won’t die, but a seventy-year-old man can still kill him.
  • This movie flirts with the supernatural nature of the mask and never decides to explain it.
  • Seriously, why does everyone in town blame Laurie for Michael?
  • Activia mist give you superpowers because Laurie somehow survives a knitting needle in the neck.

In conclusion:

John Carpenter gets more money to buy weed and video games.

David Gordon Green gets to keep making movies.

Jason Blum confirmed there will be more films, because Malek Akkad has a clause prohibiting Michael Myers to be killed. You know, despite him getting shredded like documents not headed for Mur-A-Lago.

As for me, I have to write an apology letter to Rob Zombie and Busta Rhymes.

SLASH Film Festival 2022: FANTASTIC SHORTS COMPETITION – CHAPTER I

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SLASH Filmfestival is Austria’s largest event dedicated to fantastic cinema. Founded in 2010, it quickly grew in size and scope, attracting close to 15.000 visitors over its 11-day run. Each year’s program is comprised of 50+ Austrian, European or international premieres of highlights from the field of fantastic cinema, ranging from crowd-pleasers to hot docs, from fiercely independent films to heritage revivals.

FANTASTIC SHORTS COMPETITION – CHAPTER I: “Being true to yourself can be tricky, especially if the powers that be love telling you how you should act. With the disruptive wave of a Q-tip that could be a magic wand, SLASH conjures fresh and feral perspectives in which young girls and women quickly grow wise to the fact that they don’t need anyone to figure themselves out. Join us for a walk on the wild side where supportive sisterhood, secret covens and pack hunting are all on the spectrum of self-reliance that fuels the fire of self-empowerment. Enter the feminocentric space of these wickedly modern works and experience a rite of passage in which reconnecting with one’s roots triggers an ancestral rebirth that transcends limitations and expectations. As roaring women reclaim the dinosauric ferocity of their voices and nourish their bodies—with nonconforming warts and unplucked feathers!—however they see fit, men will learn the consequences of not zipping their lips. Marakachi…”

Huella (2021): Directed and written by Gabriela Ortega, this gorgeous short has Daniela (Shakila Barrera) escaping from the drudgery of her work-from-home customer service agent job when the ghost of her grandmother (Denise Blasor) who makes her consider if the fleeting moments of dancing she does upon her rooftop are enough.

Generally, ghosts come to us in films to shock or attempt to hurt us. Not so here, in a movie whose name means “fingerprint.” Ghosts can hopefully shock us from our set lives and help us change the path of our lives. This movie only has fourteen minutes and yet does so much with them.

Spell on You (2021): Salomé is ten years old and has a wart on her nose. This — and the way her father treats her — leads to her being disgusted by her own reflection. At night, she spies on her parents through the keyhole. And there’s weirdness all around her. I was surprised — I should have studied that English title as this was originally called La Verrue which means the wart and doesn’t spell it out — to discover that Salomé is destined to be a witch and escape the pain of her childhood, the ways that her father treats her — shoving her from his embrace and screaming that she’s infectious with her wart — and embracing who she is truly meant to be. Director Sarah Lasry has created a gorgeous looking film that stands between our real world and the world of the occult.

Blood Rites (2021): Directed by Helena Coan and written by Polly Stenham (The Neon Demon) based on the story by Daisy Johnson from her book Fen Stories, this is all about Arabella (Ellis George), Rose (Mirren Mack) and Great (Ella-Rae Smith), three vampiric women losing control as they hide in a house in the English Fens. This seems like a first version of a longer and more complex film, but for what exists now, it’s really well made and has some moments of true horror as you watch these young women feed. All three leads are quite talented and really embody their roles.

The novel that this was based on never explains if the girls are vampires, cannibals or just insane; hanging out a pub called the Fox and Hound, luring men back to their home to surround and devour. Johnson sets up the women quite starkly: “When we were younger we learnt men the way other people learnt languages or the violin. We cared only for what they wanted so much it ruined them. Men could pretend they were otherwise, could enact the illusion of self-control, but we knew the running stress of their minds.”

This is quick, dark and makes you want to drink more.

Fledge (2021): Directed by Tom Kouris and Hani Dombe, who also wrote this movie, Fledge is all about a young girl who is part of the Russian immigration to Israel in the 90’s named Elina. As she tries to fit into her new country, meet friends and overcome her mother leaving her behind, she also starts to grow feathers, painfully plucking them from her body every day before anyone else can see her. Created in a stop-motion animation style, Fledge has a unique look and a good story to tell as well. It really struck me with its art direction and how its unreal look and concept created genuine characters and authentic emotions.

Chicks (2022): Geena Marie Hernandez directed and wrote this tale of a “girly, cotton-candy colored slumber party” that transforms into an occult ritual when Polly (Nikole Davis) is invited to join the popular upper echelon of high school royalty for a sleepover. Yet Lizzie (Jena Brooks), Kelly (Maddie Moore) and Jazz (Lilliana Simms) have plans for her and honestly, I could see the witch elements rolling in but I had no idea where this was going, nor did I get the pun of the title until the end of the film. I’ll let you go in as blind as I was, but man, this looks great, like a pink candy nightmare and the end is wonderful. Well done.

The Coupon (2021): Wendy (director Laura Seay) gave her husband (writer Micah Cohen) a silly coupon book for his birthday, including a get one oral favor free offer. You never cash in these coupons. But when he runs over a man (Adam J. Harrington) and doesn’t want to report it to insurance, he ends up giving him all the money in his wallet, as well as the coupon and a ride to the hospital. Now, the coupon has come back to be collected.

This is a movie that takes a simple idea and delivers it flawlessly. I had a blast with this one, as even though you can see the punchline coming, it’s still so well told.

A NIGHT OF HORROR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: logger (2022)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

In the mood for a highly visual, mind-twisting horror film that is short on dialogue and leaves viewers plenty on which to mull over? Then look no further than writer/director Steffen Geypen’s Belgian shocker logger.

Based on Jean de la Fontaine’s 1668 fable “Death and the Logger,” Geypen’s film opens with a logger (Pieter Piron) stumbling across a mutilated body in the forest, which makes him catatonic on the spot. A forester (Jurgen Delnaet) and doctor (Maya Sannen) investigate, a jogger (Mil Sinaeve) crosses their path, and Death (Mona Lahousse) comes calling.

Geypen shows the unfolding events from different perspectives, some of them free of or short on dialogue, leaving viewers to chew on the surreal occurrences and piece together what’s happening. The visuals range from gorgeous to graphic and unsettling — the latter includes some extreme close-ups of bloodletting — all captured marvelously by cinematographer Jens Vanysacker.

Aficionados of strange cinema — including those with a fondness for the work of David Lynch, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, and the like — and other adventurous viewers will find plenty to be keen on here. logger is a dark fable that unsettles and mystifies, and it is bound to stick with viewers long after it finishes.

logger screens as part of A Night of Horror International Film Festival, which takes place at Dendy Cinemas Newtown, Sydney, Australia, from October 17th until October 23rd, 2022. For more information, visit https://www.anightofhorror.com.

FANTASTIC FEST: Unidentified Objects (2022) and interview with director Juan Felipe Zuleta and musician Sebastian Zuleta

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Peter (Matthew Jeffers) is an alien in so many worlds based on how people see both his dwarfism and sexual identity as a gay man. Therefore, he avoids nearly everyone. But his neighbor Winona (Sarah Hay, The Mortuary Collection) pushes past that and asks him for a ride to Canada to meet up with the aliens that abducted her in her teens and go back home with them. The money she offers helps.

Director Juan Felipe Zuleta and writer Leland Frankel have put together a film that defies expectations. Sure, it’s a road trip where two mismatched people come together and learn from each other, yet it’s so good as works its way to its conclusion, with strange moments out of reality as Peter meets an alien cop or how he comes to understand Winona’s sex work career.

Neither character is presented as perfect and that’s what’s perfect about this movie. And the audio atmosphere created by Zuleta’s brother Sebastian gives this a sound all its own in the same way that the film looks like nothing else. Jeffers and Hay are such a perfect match as two people who should not be. I wish I had more time to spend with their characters, which is the mark of a great movie.

I had the opportunity to speak to director andco-writer Juan Felipe Zuleta and Sebastian Zuleta, who scored the film. It really added a lot to my enjoyment of this film.

B&S About Movies: One of the things that was really striking in youyr film was that there’s a lot of ways to look at aliens, whether it’s people that are outsiders within their culture because of their bodies or their choices. Was that intentional?

Juan Felipe Zuleta: Yes, absolutely. It’s funny that you say that because Sebastian and I are from born and raised in Colombia and we both had green cards for some time that had a number that identified us as aliens. Official aliens of the United States. (laughs)

Since then, I’ve been incredibly interested in the word alien as away to categorize outsiders, misfits, people who don’t belong. People who are alien to a territory or a place and yet, there’s so many of them. Unidentified Objects is a about those aliens in the world, those on Earth and those out of Earth. It’s kind of like an exploration of that what that means.

B&S: There’s a real feeling of the other here. Some things are real or maybe not real. Like when the alien cop pulls them over, you wonder, did it happen?

Juan: That’s definitely a language that was initiated from the script. I wanted that ambiguity to reinforce the way we filmed it and also come through the music escape that my brother Sebastian created. It was the tone in general. I do feel I tend to love movies that have ambiguity and that manage to keep that tone throughout.

B&S: The music is perfect.

Sebastian Zuleta: It was all tailor made. The process was by far — I’ve worked with my brother on many, many projects since like his very first short film — and this is by far the best collaboration I’ve had with with with him. Just seeing him grow as a director, making a feature but also just the process. Since from the onset from when I got the script, I read it and I started already talking to my brother and brainstorming about sounds and where do we want to go. And then aliens!

I’ve never really worked with analog synthesizers so I just dove in and started getting a few. I was sending sounds to Juan and getting feedback during production. By the time they finished, we had a sizeable library of original sounds for the film. We had themes and ideas and figured out where they should go. This allowed my brother while he was working with the editor to place some things and have anchors throughout.

Then, I got some cuts and started writing to picture.

One of the things I enjoyed most was finding out whenever you’d use an adjective to describe music, everyone still intrerpreted it differently. Even though I’ve known my brother all my life, like how we see and hear music is different. Hwo can we fine tune and understand one anotehr better? So if he says,  I want it to be dark or emotional, what does that mean in music? What does cold mean? What chord progressions can do that?

It was fun to keep digging deeper into our relationship not only as brothers but as filmmakers.

B&S: You also have a famous song in the bar scene.

Juan: The surreal elements are inspired by David Lynch, like how he used music in Blue Velvet. I knew from the script that I wanted to use Roy Orbison, just as Lynch did in his films. “Crying” was actually the song we used on set. It’s just an emotion and yes, that’s the name of the song, but there are so many laters behind it. It was perfect for the tone we were trying to accomplish.

There are other songs that are alien-like. I wish we could have had some David Bowie in the film, but there is some Electric Light Orchestra.

B&S: Other than Lynch, who influences you?

Juan: So particularly in this film, I think Lynch obvious. A little bit of Luis Buñuel. There are a lot of movies in the road trip genre but I love Little Miss Sunshine and Y tu mamá también. They are two of my favorite movies ever, especially Y tu mamá también because it isn’t overdesigned or overedited.

To get an alien point of view or an elevated state, I decided to shoot with anamorphic lenses so then I started to stylize it a little bit more. That comes from influences like the Coen Brothers. If you look at The Big Lebowski there’s some sequences there that inspired me.

What I like about Lynch is the little messages, the dark comedy, the dry humor. The characters seem to be super self-conscious and self-aware about. their own circumstances. So it’s not always funny, but his movies seem to be more tragedies that just happen to be funny. (laughs)

Last, but not least, the ambiguity that we spoke about earlier, includingthe tone of the music there’s a lot of inspiration there from Jóhann Jóhannsson, like how you can allow the audience’s imagination to play detective and make the music part of the storytelling.

My brother went to the NASA library as well, so there are times in this movie when you are hearing what it sounds like to be in space. He processed the sounds of what it sounds like on Mars and they’re in the movie.

B&S: Have you guys ever taken a road trip together?

Juan: I was probably like seven. Our parents had a 1994 Toyota and we drove from our hometown to the Colombian coast to a city called Santa Marta which is a fourteen hour frive. It was very much Y tu mamá también. (laughs)

Sebastian: All our luggage was on the top with the surfboards. (laughs)

Juan: I want to say that my brother is a genius. He would go off in his little world and then he would email me sounds at night and I would be like like a little kid opening a gift and Christmas.

(To Sebastian) Every time you send me stuff and that was so special.

We poured our hearts into it and I hope it comes through.

Sebastian: My brother is the best brother in the world. It really is a blessing to have such a talented brother. He’s a serious filmmaker and I get to work with him. I feel lucky.

FANTASTIC FEST 2022: Unidentified (2022)

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Thirty years ago, a spherical UFO appeared in the sky above several cities on Earth and then remained there, just floating. Some believe that the aliens that piloted them now live amongst us, which leads to unrest and outright violence among the inhabitants of Earth.

Directed and writer Jude Chun has created a series of vignettes that all add up to show us what this would be like and how it would feel to live on this version of our world. It seems like in this reality, everyone, no matter there they come from, has become an alien. Anyone younger than 29 is immediately considered by many to be an alien, even if they are from here all along.

Not all of the parts of this add up, but for those that do, it’s an incredible experience. Just the sight of those ships floating above cities is unnerving. I can’t imagine living in their shadow.

 

Sawed Off (2022)

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Marjorie (Eva Hamilton, Ruin Me) was once with Jon (Jody Barton, Ugly Sweater Party) and maybe even had a thing with his hunting partner Frank (Trae Ireland). Now, they find themselves on cursed land and end up killing one another again and again.

Written by director Hunter Johnson, Barton and Chuck Wagner, who originally published this story in the comic book Tales of Terror in 1986 as “Bag Limit,” Sawed Off is a cabin in the woods movie in debt to best of the form, The Evil Dead, but for its budget it looks good and has some fun practical gore.

There’s a great idea in the script, as often friends for life wish they could kill one another at times. Throw in the wrong — or right — girl and a curse and the woods and things can’t help but get messy.

I don’t know who wants to hunt. You have to get up early, spend all morning in the freezing woods and from what I’ve learned in this movie, you have to see your ex and then get shot and stabbed by your best friend while trees attack you. I think I’ll just stay under the covers and watch more movies.

That said, this one is pretty fun.

Sawed Off is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

They Crawl Beneath (2022)

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Police officer Danny (Joseph Almani) is working on an antique car at his uncle’s remote ranch when an earthquake traps him under the vehicle and leaves him hurt and unable to get any help. But then, something worse happens: something crawls out of the cracks.

Michael Paré plays the uncle and honestly, that’s what got me into this. What also helped was that director Dale Fabrigar also made Reed’s Point with writer Tricia Aurand and also made D-Railed, a movie that combined a train crash with aquatic monsters. This time, he’s making a movie all about killer worms that make you hallucinate. I mean, at this point, I would totally buy one of those worms. What’s the street value of those worms?

This movie is inspired by 50s monster movies yet it has all of the gore you need. That said, it has a lead who may be amongst the dumbest I’ve ever seen in a film, someone who knows an earthquake may happen and then throws a car up on a jack. You can’t be mad when said jalopy lands on you after that. When his girlfriend leaves him in the beginning, you totally get it and you barely know him.

They Crawl Beneath is available on digital, blu ray and DVD from Well Go USA Entertainment.

FANTASTIC FEST 2022: Drawn and Quartered

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The animated shorts from Fantastic Fest that I got to see are here.

Drone (2022): In this film by Sean Buckelew, a malfunction at a CIA press event pushes a drone installed with an ethical AI personality to go off its mission as it attempts to understand its purpose. The animation in this short is astounding, rooted in reality yet having a cartoon look that’s really appealing. I loved how we saw not only the actions of the drone, but also the way it impacts the lives of the many people who were part of it. The world starts to follow the drone on its mission, but the government learns nothing, putting a smiley face on weapons of death even after the only machine — or soldier — with a heart is long gone. A sobering, realistic ending for a movie filled with sheer fantasy.

Goodbye Jerome! (2022): Directed and written by Chloé Farr, Gabrielle Selnet and Adam Sillard, Goodbye Jerome!, the protagonist tries to find his wife Maryline. In the course of his search, he gets lost within a surreal and colorful world in which no one seems to be able to help him.

With the voices of William Lebghil and Alma Jodorowsky, as well as a gorgeous art style that just guides you into a simple yet complicated and rewarding otherworld, this is a film that will stay in my brain for some time.

This film looked like the posters in Spencer’s in the 70s when I was too young to smoke marijuana. Ah, a wistful simpler time and man, I wish we still had Wicks ‘n Sticks.

The Grannies (2022): Director Marie Foulston relies on the imagery of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 and the voices and experiences of players Marigold Bartlett, Andrew Brophy, Ian MacLarty and Kalonica Quigley as they explain what happened when they decided to go beyond the borders of the online version of the game and found places where reality broke, where they dropped for hours in endless chasms and were able to create shared moments despite not being actually together.

I also enjoyed that this group played as old women, as whenever they encountered other players, they found that others reacted strongly to how odd it was to have four old women attack them.

A Guitar in the Bucket (2021): Created by Boyoung Kim, this feels like the big problems with our world and the world that is to come, a place where push buttons and machines decide what we want and what’s good for us. Machines have everything that anyone could want, but when a young girl wants to be a guitar player — something that no one else wants but her — the world keeps that from happening. It reminds me of the fact that we can get any movie we want at any time and people choose to not challenge themselves with cinema but instead keep watching the same movies or worse, refuse to explore the films of other countries.

Happy New Year, Jim (2022): Morten Hakke and Jim Muzungu are playing video games all day just like every single day but today is New Year’s Eve and things feel different in this animated film by Andrea Gatopoulos. I feel this, as I sit here all night and try and fill my site with content that maybe nine people will read. Then again, if you can reach nine people, that’s more than you just experiencing things for yourself. So even if all you have is one friend playing video games with you, that’s something. I have to confess, I have spent hours in video games earning achievements and getting new clothes for a character that in days I won’t need or think of, but at the time, it feels like it means so much more than it eventually does. Also: are we all just in a video game instead of life?

Krasue (2022): The krasue may be best known to film fans from Mystics In Bali and Demonic Beauty.  This animated film by Ryo Hirano has a Yakuza encounter one of the creatures, which looks like a woman’s head with all of her organs hanging out as she flies around.

Everything in this movie is absolutely stunning, a neon-colored and blood-strewn romance that also looks like River City Ransom and I’m here for all of that. This whole thing would be pretty frightening if it were live action but seeing as how it’s animated, it’s really pretty whimsical.

More movies should have flying heads with guts hanging out floating all over the place.

Magnified City (2022): This movie makes me consider the fact that my love for cinema is often trapped in the past sometime around 1981. Those are the kind of thoughts that come into your head when you think over a movie about a human magnifying glass being kidnapped by a secret society of projector humans who want to use his lens to recapture the city’s greatness. Do I find too much joy in nostalgia? Am I doing enough to expand my influences?

Perfect City: The Mother (2022): A stop-motion story all about a wood monster giving birth to a child covered in ugly roots. A liquid with the brand name of Perfect is able to sculpt the wooden baby into a perfect human child, but should it? How wonderful that the child is CGI and it’s up against the real tactile traditional animation. This looks absolutely fantastic, a movie that blew my mind and that would make a great zone out movie if it wasn’t so sinister in parts, because I could see this taking me into some strange trips. It also makes me worried about having children any time soon. You can see more of this at official site of Shengwei Zhou, its creator.

Trichotillomania (2021): Trichotillomania is a disorder that is known to cause irresistible urges to pull out hair from the scalp, eyebrows or other areas of the body. Kate is someone suffering from it and she isn’t finding any of the answers as to why on the Internet. Man, I used to get so mad at myself in my thirties that I would just grab fistfuls of hair and yank them out. Just like cutting, the feeling of adrenaline would make me forget the mental pain that I was in, but then it gets really obvious when you have large chunks of hair missing. This short, directed and written by Anotai Pichayapatarakul, explores how this impacts people and how there are no simple solutions.

FANTASTIC FEST 2022: The Elderly (2022)

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Directed by Fernando González Gómez and Raúl Cerezo, who wrote the script with Rubén Sánchez Trigos and Javier Trigales, The Elderly starts with an older woman falling off a balcony to her death and then deals with dementia, aging and the elderly telling their children that they plan on killing them.

Yeah. Get ready.

Manuel (Zorion Eguileor) is the grandfather who faces life without his wife of fifty years. His son Mario (Gustavo Salmerón) would rather his father stay with him than a home, no matter what his wife  Lena (Irene Anula) wants. Meanwhile, his teenage daughter Naia (Paula Gallego) starts to see the spirit of her grandmother. It starts slow, but by the time things increase in tension and the temperate increases in Madrid, every old person could be a threat.

What is it with everyone doing the Ari Aster thing where old people get naked and we’re supposed to be creeped out by it? Let me screw your head up. Your once supple skin and gorgeous looks will one day face aging and if you’re turned off now, you’ll be turned off then. Get over it. We are our souls, not this whole fiction suit we wear in this reality.

That said — this movie is gorgeous and freaked me out with its ever rising tides of fascism and high temperatures. It hits a lot close to home, as my father is currently suffering from early dementia, at times thinking he is sixteen and wondering how he has a son so old.