Hola all. Massawyrm here.
It’s finally here. Fantastic Fest, my very favorite 8 day stretch of the year. Non-stop genre goodness from around the globe to assault my senses for just over a week straight. Harry and the Alamo team have scoured the world over to find some real gems - some brilliant, some disturbing, some both. And every year I get the fortunate job of sifting through a stack of screeners to find some golden picks of the fest to help you make your schedule. And let me tell you – this year is INSANE. While there are plenty of big films and some very special guests (Silent Bob, Lone Star, Mutt Jones, and a few super secret folks I dare not divulge) when all is said and done, it is the small films you never saw coming that keeps you coming back for more. And this year there are scads of those.
After sifting through my stack, I’ve managed to find a handful that are real winners. The kind of films you’ll be talking about to friends and trying to track down later on dvd. But if you were to ask me for the three desert island films of Fantastic Fest this year, the three you should not, nay, MUST NOT MISS, the following three would be them. Having talked to several other folks that have also seen the films, I have found one thing in common with them all. They all love these films as much as I do. So if you’re attending this week, make sure you find time for these. Do not pencil them in – use a pen.
Let the Right One In (Sweden, 2008)
If a better movie plays this year, my head will explode and I will walk around with a fully erect geek-on for a day and a half. This movie isn’t just the best screener they handed me, it is one of the very best things I have seen all year. Everyone is going to be talking about this thing. I’ve simply been dying to write about it - its rich, crisp imagery still burnt into my brain weeks later, floating aloft on the warm feelings it left me with.
Let the Right One In is quite simply the single best vampire movie I’ve seen since Near Dark. And if there’s anyone around here burnt out on Vampire Movies, it is me. Man do these things tend to piss me off. Occasionally someone gets it right – you’ll run across a gem like Frostbiten (which played FF 2 years ago) – but more often than not they turn out to be live action Vampire the Masquerade LARPs (at worst) or Anne Rice knock offs (at best.) This is nothing of the kind. In fact, I can say with full conviction that you have never, ever, ever ever seen a movie like this. It is the story of a demented little 12 year old serial-killer-obsessed Swedish boy who has a pretty new girl move in next door. She’s Twelve. She’s precocious. And she drinks the warm blood of her victims while they’re still breathing.
This is a love story, a coming of age drama AND on top of that, a horrific vampire film that has an intense love of the mythology. They don’t play around here. There is nothing fast and loose about using the rules here. She is a classic vampire that has to deal with a lot of bullshit that normal people don’t. There isn’t a single hint or even a whiff of the “Whoa is me, how I long for the fiery, burning kiss of the sun as I walk alone in the darkness” whiny goth crap here. Being a vampire is not supposed to be cool. It isn’t about being an Emo kid or wearing trench coats and sunglasses at night. It is about being a monster – something that scares the shit out of anyone with an ounce of self-preservation within them. Vampire fans of all kind and type will fall head over heels for this. It gets it right in a way no other film has in decades.
But while they get the whole vampire angle right, it is the fact that this doesn’t quite scare the shit out of the little neighbor boy that makes this both intriguing and dangerous. It is a brilliant film, and a daring one. And you cannot miss this. This is exactly the kind of film that fantastic fest was started to show. No one in this country is going to have the huevos to pick up a film like this and put it in American theaters. It’s an instant classic that is destined to become the pass around film for geeks like us who simply love a perfectly woven, horrific tale of love, loss and sacrifice.
I swear to god, if you come up and talk to me this week and I find out you skipped this, I will beat you senseless with the nearest empty bottle of beer I can find until it breaks and then I will fucking cut you for real. It’s that good. Do not, no not, DO NOT miss this. I’ll fucking cut you.
Deadgirl (USA, 2008)
There’s nothing Tim League loves more than fucking with an audience, locking them into a cold, dark theater for an hour and a half and listening to the chairs creek while the audience squirms until they cry out at the utter wrongness of whatever tainted horrible thing he’s put on the screen. Every year he programs at least one film that does nothing more than offer a smorgasbord of grotesqueries in order to slam your head against the cinematic wall and utterly desensitize you to anything else you could possibly see at the festival. And at first glance, that would be this film.
Deadgirl is hands down one of the foulest, most gut churning, vile pieces of distasteful cinema you will ever see. The things that occur in this film are absolutely unnatural. It’s not just gross – it will make you want to shower repeatedly while watching it. Icky. Icky would be a good word if icky came close to describing getting skull fucked by someone’s syphilitic schvance. Was that image too much for you? Then stay the fuck away from this film. Seriously. It. Is. Not. Right.
This is the story of what happens when two burnout high school students find something they were never meant to find. These are not your typical movie dweebs, but the real hardcase losers that are five years away from getting their permanent position at the local gas station…where they’ll never make manager. You know the guys I’m talking about. Well, this is about what happens when those guys find a beautiful, naked woman strapped to a gurney in a place she shouldn’t be. Barely alive, emaciated and stuck in a basement for god knows how long, I want you to ponder something for a moment – what do you think two dateless, pathetic lowlifes would do with a find like that?
Okay, now think of something worse than that. Now, think of something worse than even THAT. Good. Now you’re starting to play in the same ballpark as Deadgirl. This movie had my wife constantly remarking at the sheer, unabashed awfulness of it. And then there came a scene that had me cry out in disgust something along the lines of “SWEET MOTHER OF CHRIST”, leading to my wife’s cross armed admonishment asking “Really? That’s what got you? You weren’t disgusted before this? Now, I want you to think VERY CAREFULLY before you answer…”
Now here’s the kicker. The thing’s pretty much fucking brilliant. I have never seen a film that so absolutely captured the sheer horror of peer pressure. Of wanting to be accepted. Of finally finding your own little piece of the world and what you’d do to protect it. A truly great horror film does two things: 1) it creates a memorable and scary monster with which to put our characters (and the audience) in a state of true panic and 2) It shows us how humans can be even worse than the monster presented. Conceptually, this thing is playing with the kind of material that Carpenter, Romero and Craven were all playing around with early in their careers. It is a film with something to say. And a filthy, grimy, semen encrusted way of going about saying it.
What is most surprising about Deadgirl however, is just how much production value they get out of what is clearly very little money. Through competent acting, sharp writing and clever storytelling, the film pulls your focus out of how little they’re showing you by going over the top on the things they can actually afford to show. It is the perfect example of how you take no money and make a movie that is nothing but talent and potential. And balls. Big, hairy, manly balls. This movie goes so far at times, it would be a bit of a stretch to use the word audacity. I cannot both recommend nor caution you against this movie enough. This is a film that may well cause walk outs. But those that make it all the way through it will have something to talk about. For better or for worse. And it is clearly going to become one of the centerpieces of this year’s festival.
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (Australia, 2008)
This is one of those documentaries that I never knew that I was waiting all my life to see. But then I saw it and new that I had been missing it all along. If you’re anything like us writers here at AICN, then you spent an unnatural amount of your misspent youth watching anything and everything that you could get your hands on that was genre. Invariably you would run across a film or two that was set in some entirely unrecognizable local, populated with actors you were familiar with, but a cast of smaller players who all…had Australian accents. Now there was nothing wrong with that – but it was always a bit surprising. Maybe you though they were hiring cheap Australian actors. Maybe you realized that they were low budget Australian films. But what you probably never thought was that it was OZSPLOITATION.
Unknown to most of us here in the states, governmental programs in the late sixties changed the way Australians made movies, and once they realized there was a hungry genre market of here that would simply devour every bit of genre they could deliver, it became an industry. Not Quite Hollywood is the history of that movement, of that industry. It is a reflection by the men who were there and the filmmakers they influenced upon two decades of filmmaking that will connect the dots of a substantial portion of your childhood. All of a sudden you will find yourself realizing how that obscure sci-fi crapper you love so much ties directly into a number of much more prominent genre classics and vice versa.
Not Quite Hollywood will take you through a series of cult classics, from genius gems to purely exploitive pieces of drek – showing you the evolution of the film scene down under and illustrating how it influenced a number of this generation’s cult films and blockbusters. It’s paced rather well, positively flying through the history of the scene without ever getting boring, and the graphics are pretty cool. As a documentary it is not particularly unique or a singular vision or a “film you will never forget” kind of experience. But the subject matter is positively riveting.
If you are a film history buff on any level, this is required viewing this week, your homework if you will, that will open up a whole new world of films to you. Already I’ve been making lists of films mentioned here or in the filmographies of the guys that made the ones I have seen, scouring local video stores for elusive copies of their work. It is a film that has added a new word to my vocabulary. Ozsploitation. And it is a word that will not be leaving anytime soon.
Well, those are my three must sees, but by no means the only great things worth seeing. I’ll have a few more pre-coverage pieces springing up in the next two days, as well reviews all week. Can’t wait to see you guys there.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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