Harry here, nearly comatose... Given I've seen all these except DARK HOURS which I see today, if I wake up dammit! I was doing the NARNIA panel while this monkey was watching DARK HOURS. And while he fell in love with FEAST, I was loving WOLF CREEK. But more on that later. Here ya go...
Hola all. A very ecstatic Massawyrm here. Ho-ly Shit. You know, I’ve had good days at festivals before and I’ve had great days at festivals before. But never have I had a perfect cinematic viewing day like today. Every film was great and they just kept getting better and better, culminating in a perfect midnight movie that sent me out of the theatre in fits. But enough with the pre-review fluffing, let’s get into it.
Feast
Oh my god this movie rocks all sorts of awesome. The third in a string of Project Greenlight films, this is the first where they actually get it right and churn out one hell of a fun flick. Dumping gallons upon gallons of blood across the screen, Feast is the perfect example of “fun” horror. Right out of the gate it tells you that the filmmakers know it’s a horror movie and the audience knows it’s a horror movie, so they’re going to freely acknowledge it’s a horror movie by dissecting itself before you get a chance to – and it proves to be both funny and delightfully charming in its execution of the devices it uses to do so.
Feast is like a loose barfly of a woman, immediately dispensing with all the getting to know you bullshit and jumping straight into the fucking. It exchanges names with you, gives you a wink and a nod, and then just gets into it. No foreplay, no teases. Five minutes in the blood starts pumping out of severed limbs, splatters out of exploding heads and finds its way onto every character in the film – and it never, ever stops. Only pausing for brief moments to let you catch your breath, Feast is non-stop horror/comedy/action, that is either throwing blood, jokes or scares at the audience. It is Evil Dead 2 meets Assault on Precinct 13, chock full of witty/cheesy memorable horror movies lines delivered with all the gusto to make it knowingly funny rather than satire, and keeps the raw, seething tension going at all times. There are plenty of jump scares and plenty of gross outs, but it’s intent is quite clear – you are supposed to have fun at Feast, nothing else.
One of the things I truly love about this film is the monsters. Not only do they look cool, but they prove to be the most original pack of beasts to hit the screen in over a decade. They’re not killer bats or vampires or werewolves or zombies or aliens or even flying demons that look like bad Buffy villains. These are something new, something unexplained and terrifying that play by their own rules and just plain scare the living crap out of you. The creature effects are actually cool and John Gulager’s camera tricks to keep them fairly obfuscated (to hide the low budget) pays off in grand form. These nameless creatures simply kick ass.
Expertly crafted, the action is brutal, raw and chaotic. When the shit hits the fan, it really hits the fan. Characters drop so quickly and so painfully, and the pattern in which they die defies any sort of horror rules whatsoever. No one is safe, and Feast lets you know that right from the beginning. Who lives, who dies? You have no fucking clue. None whatsoever. All convention is thrown right out the window, yet somehow, the movie remains powerful and affecting, letting you know each character well enough to care about them before they bite it – unless you’re not supposed to, at which point Feast gets pretty fucking merciless. There wasn’t a single moment in this film that I wasn’t on the edge of my seat and it consistently maintained the ability to surprise me with how far they were willing to take it. It dropped my jaw and forced me to turn and look at my buddy no less than a half dozen times, uttering things like “No fucking way” accompanied by returned looks of shock.
Not having watched Project Greenlight this year, I can only imagine that most of you know more about the history of the film than I do – but what I can say is that whatever the tumultuous history, the end result is something that will no doubt become a cult fave for years to come. Certainly this film isn’t going to go down in the annuls of horror movie history with the likes of Nightmare on Elm Street, Psycho or Alien, rather it’s going to go down in cinema history next to such greats as Dead Alive, Tremors, and the aforementioned Evil Dead 2. This is a sharply written, amazing first effort. Dimension needs to get off their ass and release this film now – it’s the one truly solid thing they’ve put out in a long while. A must see for anyone who loves a good old-fashioned bloody horror romp or delights in an old school Midnight Monster Movie. Highly recommended.
Night of the Living Dorks (Die Nacht der lebenden Loser)
While Feast was one hell of a good time, I have to say that hands down my favorite film of the festival so far is a quirky little comedy called “Night of the Living Dorks.” Right off the bat this looks like a terrible film – if and when you read the description of it. Three high school dorks get turned into zombies – hilarity ensues. And oh yeah, it’s in German with English subtitles. “Oh god, shoot me now,” right? Wrong. Way wrong. Absoultely wrong. Night of the Living Dorks isn’t just my favorite film of the festival, it is hands down the funniest film I have seen all year. And yes, it’s German.
This is Cant Hardly Wait with zombies, a perfect teen sex comedy that plays upon every single teen comedy cliché ever conceived – from the cute best friend/next door neighbor love interest, to the blond rich girl obsession, the rich brutish jocks, the stoner buddy, the hyper nerd buddy, the desire to lose one’s virginity, the overzealous gym coach, geek revenge, high school class warfare and humor, the sexy lusty teacher, and even the big drunken party. Night of the Living Dorks has it all, leaving no cliché unturned. But it does it right, every step of the way. Despite being utterly predictable from frame one, despite seeming like something you’ve seen done to death, this film makes you laugh out loud consistently. And yes. It’s German.
This film is a work of comic genius, bringing an air of freshness to two sub-genres that seem positively stale. What simply astounds me is that this has been done before, repeatedly, and has been met only with failure or sub-par results. Injecting horror themes into the teen sex comedy was a popular attempt in the 80’s, but it never really worked. It never created something lasting. But Night of the Living Dorks, despite having one of the worst titles in human history, works magnificently. This is immediately relegated to cult classic status. If you ever get a chance to see this, do so immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. See it. This film needs to get picked up in a big way. While I loved G.O.R.A (which I reviewed yesterday) for being able to transcend the language barrier, Night of the Living Dorks takes it behind the woodshed and whoops the living shit out of it, completely smashing the language barrier altogether. I have never had a foreign film make me laugh so hard, so consistently and so infectiously. A perfect mix of physical comedy and classic teen comedy bits, this film never resorts to spoof of references for laughs. It’s all genuine, honest to god, good old-fashioned comedy. And yes, it’s German. I CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS ENOUGH.
Wild Blue Yonder
Werner Herzog is back and crazy as ever, this time with a surreal, oddly beautiful science fiction film assembled almost entirely out of stock footage. Telling the story of an alternate Earth’s history of space flight, Wild Blue Yonder is narrated by classic cult favorite Brad Dourif playing an Alien who’s settled on Earth after the death of his own planet. There’s just one hitch, after centuries of space travel, and many generation of Aliens removed from the original space travels, inbreeding and complete removal from solid ground has led to the Aliens, in their own words, sucking.
An occasionally funny and fascinating film, Wild Blue Yonder proves to be a film made for such a small segment of the population that it’s simply unfathomable. It is poetry, an 81 minute film designed to hypnotize the audience, lulling them into a relaxed state to meditate upon the realities of intergalactic space flight. And I loved it. Absolutely brilliant – for me. However, for anyone who doesn’t think sitting down for an hour and a half and contemplating astrophysics is exciting time well spent, well, those people are going to be bored to fucking tears. This is a movie for Nerds, not Geeks. It’s a movie that will easily be called pretentious and as dull as an hour in a waiting room. And it will be loathed. Slow, methodical and melancholic, saying this moves at a snails pace would be a tragic understatement.
But I loved it. I consider it a masterpiece. But then again, pondering the realities of space flight is one of my favorite mental exercises – give me an opportunity and I’ll discuss it with you for hours. But most people aren’t as sad and pathetic in the way that myself, Harry or Robogeek are. We live for those kinds of discussions. Most people don’t. Seriously, this is a great festival film, the perfect type of film to open interesting discourse, but it won’t ever open on screens in this country and certainly won’t make a dime. If you love astrophysics, and delight in strange, hypnotic filmmaking, by all means, see this at your earliest convenience. Otherwise, stay as far away from this as possible. This is one of those films I will never, ever hold against anyone for not liking. It’s simply a film made for way too narrow an audience – armchair aerospace engineers. There were like 3 of us at a packed screening in a genre film festival, and frankly, I think those statistics are WAY skewed.
The Dark Hours
Perfect. Just perfect. The Dark Hours is a cool, gritty psychodrama that treads upon a lot of ground that’s been tread before, but does so without missing a step. The story of a psychiatrist trapped in a cabin with her sister and husband, forced to play deranged games of torture by a demented madman, The Dark Hours manages to do something totally fumbled over and over again in recent years and this time makes me love a convention I’ve come to hate. I really can’t say much more about this plotwise, because this is really one of those great films that needs to be taken in with as little information as possible. Consistently full of surprises and turns, this is a taut, beautifully realized thriller that goes to the places you least expect.
My only real complaint isn’t about the film at all, but rather the buzz surrounding it. People are hyping this as the film that’s making people faint, leading people to believe that the torture scenes are so graphic and disturbing that it will leave you forever changed. They’re not. There is one scene that will curl your toes and make you beg out loud for mercy, but this is by no means a graphic film – it’s a psychological one, one that will fuck with your mind at how perfectly things fall into place and how well versed in psychological torture the villain is. This, not Wolf Creek, is the film that breathes new life into the deranged, psycho killer thriller. This one’s gotta be getting distribution, there’s no way a film this smart, this creepy and this perfectly conceived gets ignored. Highly Recommended.
Well, until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
