The summer movie season has officially begun, and as we’re seeing movies post these preposterous opening weekend numbers, it’s easy to feel like those megamovies are the only game in town.
That’s one reason I like to seek out smaller films this time of year... to cleanse the palette and to remind myself that there’s more going on in the world of film. Rcently, I’ve had people send me screeners for two small films that are absolutely worth your time and attention. One’s rolling out in limited release right now, and the other is still working out the issue of distribution. Both are fictional riffs on the documentary form, something that’s become popular these days, and both manage to wring new life out of what is already becoming a cliché.
The one that’s already playing LA and Austin is CHALK, a comedy about the lives of teachers. Director Mike Akel and his co-writer Chris Mass turn an affectionate eye on the staff of a high school over the course of one year, and by focusing on the teachers and not a bunch of wiseass students, they break from the convention of how we normally see high school portrayed on film. The film is overtly comedic, but it’s never anything less than honest in how it portrays these people. There’s a lot of subtle work done by the cast, and since everyone here is a fresh face I haven’t seen before, they come across as real people.
Mass plays Mr. Stroope, a complete meatball who is determined to win Teacher of the Year. It’s only his third year at the school, but he’s obviously settled into a rhythm. He likes being liked, and he is in no danger of ever challenging his students intellectually. Troy Schremmer plays Mr. Lowrey, a new teacher who is struggling to figure out how to survive the pressures of the job. The film starts with an onscreen statistic -- “50% of all teachers quit in the first three years” -- and as we watch Lowrey twitch and flounder, it’s pretty obvious why that might be true. Janelle Schremmer plays Coach Webb, a gym coach who confides to the camera that “not all P.E. teachers are gay.” She’s a compact little bulldog, abrasive and determined to stick to the letter of the rules even if it makes her unpopular with students and other teachers alike.
Webb’s one friend on the staff is Mrs. Reddell, played by Shannon Haragan, who sort of looks like Lauren Graham if she wasn’t getting enough sleep. Reddell used to be the choir teacher, but she got promoted to vice-principal, and now she’s learning just how little she enjoys administration. Her interactions with the principal are comic gems, and watching her struggle to redefine herself to the staff of the school is one of the film’s sly pleasures. In fact, that’s the best word to describe most of the film’s sense of humor... sly. This is not a gut-busting comedy, but it’s the sort of observational humor that gets progressively funnier the more invested you get in the situation and the characters. And no one plays any of these characters as simple one-note jokes. Take Webb, for example. That abrasiveness is just the surface. She’s also obviously dedicated to helping get the kids healthy, and she’s actually really good at it. Beyond that, we see that she’s harboring a wee crush on Mr. Lowrey, and the ways she reaches out to him and encourages him as he fights to figure out the trick of teaching are really nicely played. I found myself invested in Mr. Lowrey’s struggle, and when he finally connects with the kids during a “Spelling Hornet,” where the students force the teachers to compete in a contest where they spell slang words, there’s a genuine emotional punch. Even Stroope, the film’s broadest character, is given levels to play, and he ends up being a more complex character than you’d guess.
It’s a good-looking film, especially considering it was shot on DV, and Akel demonstrates a real knack for making the documentary form work. I’ve seen a lot of bad mockumentaries in the last ten years, and a good one like this is a potent reminder of just how illuminating the form can be. It’s not quite the brilliant home run of the original BBC version of THE OFFICE, but it deserves to be set on a shelf next to that show as an example of how to wring comedy out of reality with nuance and grace.
Here’s the official site for CHALK, where you can see stills from the film and find out when it’s opening near you.
When you’re talking about using the mockumentary form for horror, there’s one film that looms larger than any other in the genre: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.
I stand behind my original review of the film back in ’99. I think it’s enormously accomplished, and I think removed of all hype and the expectations that were placed on it by the time it opened, it’s a damn scary film. In fact, that is the last time a movie genuinely scared me. The viewing I had may have helped, of course. It was before Sundance, before the word had gotten out about it. Harry had the film on videotape, and I was in Austin with some friends for QT III. On the night we were going to leave to drive back to LA, Harry told us we needed to come by Tom Joad’s apartment before we left town. When we got there, he said he had something to show us. “It’s this documentary that’s supposed to play Sundance. They sent it to me unfinished. I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s really weird. They cut it together from all this found footage. You just have to see it.” That’s it. That’s all the preamble we got. We sat down at 1:00 in the morning, about nine of us huddled around a TV, watching this low-quality video copy, and little by little, we became convinced we were watching a fucking snuff film. At the end, Harry turned it off before there were any credits, so we just had that image of Mike in the corner burned into our brains as we hopped on the road to drive through miles and miles of big empty Texas chainsaw country, scared witless.
I think part of the reason so many people got so violently angry about THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT when they finally saw it was because they felt duped. They felt like they had been promised something real instead of a fictional film. For that reason, the makers of THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES are being very honest about the fact that their movie is not a documentary. It looks like one. It feels like one. But that’s just because the material plays best when put into this particular format. They’re not trying to trick anybody into believing in the Water Street Butcher...
... but god help me, as I was watching it, I fell for it anyway. Because THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is a deeply creepy, very upsetting film, skillfully directed by John Erick Dowdle from a script he co-wrote with his brother Drew Dowdle, who also produced the film. This is the first horror film since BLAIR WITCH that actually stuck with me after it ended, that made me turn on the lights in my office to try and dispel the heebie-jeebies. Considering the volume of horror I watch, that’s no easy trick.
It’s a deceptively simple premise. The “documentary” is constructed largely from videotapes that were found in the house of a serial killer when police raided the place. They found literally thousands of tapes, all numbered sequentially. We see footage of a profiling class at Quantico where the tapes are used in educating future agents. We see interviews with friends and family of the various victims. We see new footage of the places where these terrible things happened.
And, yes, we see the tapes.
Not all of them, of course. One of the great things that the Dowdles did in putting the film together is force you to imagine the very worst things that happen. This is a suggestive film, not a graphic one, and that’s where the real power comes from. There are truly godawful ideas in this film, scenes that build to places of absolute amoral horror, but you see almost nothing explicit in the entire running time. One of the most nauseatingly tense moments in the movie comes when two Girl Scouts come to the front door of the killer’s home to try and sell him cookies, and he invites them in and interviews them on tape. The entire time, you’re waiting for something to happen, and the scene becomes almost unbearably tense.
There was one victim in particular who was more important than any other, and there are more tapes devoted to her than any other. We learn that before we see any footage of her, so you’re waiting for the introduction of Cheryl Dempsey (Stacy Chbosky), and when she does finally show up, the film pays off all that anticipation. I guess some people may lump this into the subgenre of “torture porn,” but if that’s true, then this is the masterpiece of the subgenre so far. The relationship between Cheryl and her captor is disturbing and deep, and it goes places you won’t expect when the film begins. Chbosky deserves special credit for her work in the movie, and she is forced to cover a fairly wide spectrum of experience in her time in the movie.
Technically, the film is remarkably well-made. The home video footage is degraded and deteriorated, but the current interview stuff is crisp and colorful, so you never get worn out by any one visual scheme. The sound design is effective and surprisingly strong. I watched this at 2:30 in the morning with my headphones on, and there were several instances where subtle work in the mix made my skin crawl. It’s obvious that the Dowlings have studied an abundance of real-life serial killer material. You’ll catch references to any number of actual cases. But they’ve created a killer here who defies any attempt at profiling, and despite being incredibly smart and calculating, he never comes across as a Hannibal Lecter-like supervillain. Instead, he’s just good at what he does, skilled at being sick, and the film’s resolution should leave viewers off-balance in all the right ways.
Both of these films deserve your attention whenever you get a chance, and I hope some smart distributor picks up THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES and builds it into the theatrical experience it deserves to be. It’s played festivals, and we got a wildly enthusiastic review in from Tribeca. I can see why, and I hope you get a chance to see it with an audience, because I’ll bet it’s even creepier as a shared experience.
The Poughkeepsie Tapes Trailer
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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