Nordling here.
Every year there's a movie that plays at Sundance that gets everyone all in a tizzy. Last year it was Lucky McKee's THE WOMAN, when a Sundance attendee went in full-on rant mode after the screening and during the Q&A, calling the film reprehensible and evil. Here's a clip of it here:
This year, we have another movie that could be getting some buzz coming out of the festival.- V/H/S, reviewed by Quint here. Drew McWeeny at HitFix called it "one of the scariest movies I've seen in recent memory," and Drew knows his horror films. I can't wait to see it myself - I'm not too keen on "found footage" horror but everything, when done right, has the potential to be amazing and V/H/S follows a long tradition of horror anthologies with 21st century technology, and the result is... well, one of the moviegoers in last night's screening fainted during the film's first horrific sequence. He later got to meet the directors of the anthology - Ti West, David Bruckner, Adam Wingard, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence, who have to be ecstatic at the reaction from audiences so far. I hope V/H/S plays SXSW, because I'm really anxious to see it. I love hearing about films like this that come out of nowhere and deliver a solid asskicking. I especially love to be proven wrong about a type of movie like a found footage film, which I've been critical of in the past but I'm always open to new movie experiences and I'll happily eat crow if that's the case here.
So is V/H/S the one to get all of the Sundance midnight excitement? THE RAID also played to tremendous reaction, but since that's played Toronto most people knew going in that they were in for an aamzing movie. I'm also really curious to see BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD and THE SURROGATE. In other words, I reeeeeeally wish I was at Sundance this year.
Stay tuned for further coverage from Quint at the festival - it sounds like it's a particularly good year at Sundance. Next year, baby.
