Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another Fantastic Fest 2014 review for you folks.
When you're a real deal horror fan you find that your passion for the genre becomes segmented. There are certain subgenres that tickle your fancy more than others. Some people like cannibal movies a little more than the rest, some like vampire movies, some like zombie movies, etc. Those truly hardcore will find they watch so much that even further breakdowns are necessary to pinpoint their interests, like Christmas horror or killer car movies.
Two of my personal favorite super horror nerd sub-sub-genres are camp slashers (on average way more interesting/fun than the typical suburban slashers) and kids-in-peril horror, so naturally when I heard about a Belgian camp slasher focused on a group of Cub Scouts it became an immediate top priority at this year's Fantastic Fest.
The word out of Toronto was mixed, but promised a film with crazy Rube Goldberg wilderness traps, a murderous feral child and an unlikely preteen scout hero, which is all that I needed to know going in.
First thing that struck me was just how beautiful the cinematography by Nicolas Karakatsanis (DP of Bullhead, by the way) was. Coming off of some very low budget films that had to focus on story more than any sort of production value, it was shocking to see old school filmmaking and photography. Dolly shots, nice widescreen framing, good depth of field... all things I associate with the look and feel of cinema.
The story is likewise very simple and straight-forward. There's a kid named Sam in a scout troop who gets picked on a little bit. We know he's had some trouble in the past and is a bit withdrawn. The poor little guy seems to get it from all angles. The scout leader kid and his husky ginger bodyguard bully him and one of the adult leaders seems to perpetually have him in his sights, singling the kid out for every misstep.
It doesn't really start out abusive, more like low key shit-shoveling. There's no malice, it's seemingly just Sam's place in the pecking order.
I said he is withdrawn, but he's not the weird kid at camp. Sam has his own friends and all that, he just seems to always be late and his minor fuck ups usually result in the troop getting punished for the shits and giggles of the more dickish of the three adults overseeing this woodland retreat.
This group dynamic is going on as the troop decides to make camp in a new location not too far off from their usual campsite. The place is a little creepy, as it's close to an old school bus factory that was shut down, but it'll make do. What they don't know is that these woods are patrolled by a psychotic ex-factory worker and a creepy feral child, neither one take kindly to trespassers.
The photography is great, the filmmaking (from first time feature director Jonas Govaerts) is confident, the iconography is solid (the wood mask the feral child wears is a great addition to the horror imagery lexicon) and the characterization is well done.
There is a moment about 2/3rds of the way through the movie that will keep it from connecting to most people involving the death of an animal and while it didn't throw me off of the movie as a whole, I can see why it would with most people. It's not the fact that an animal dies, it's how it dies and who takes part in its death.
It's a strangely mean moment that is in there for a very distinct reason, but it's still overkill and an easy shorthand to make the audience uncomfortable.
That moment is also an indicator of a problem with the direction they chose for the finale. Having read some thoughts on the movie from Toronto, I think some misread the ending. It's not a twist ending in the way I think it's being seen as. I'm being vague here on purpose, but I will say I feel there was a more satisfying capper to this story that was obvious to most watching. Maybe they chose to divert from that course precisely because it was the obvious choice, but they ended up going with something that is at best muddled and not very satisfying and at worst downright confusing.
But even that doesn't keep me from really digging this film. Cub is still heads and tails better than most American studio genre product and I suspect it's good enough to catch some smart producer's eye for an American remake. In this case, I'd actually be all for that. There's a redo of this movie that can take it to the next level, but if we live in a world where horror fans just get to keep this weird little Belgian movie as is that's good, too.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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