Greetings, all. Ambush Bug here with another AICN HORROR: ZOMBIES & SHARKS column. Longtime AICN HORROR reviewer Dr. Charlie Oughton (@DrKCOughton on the Twitters) was able to check out some choice films from the UK’s Film4FrightFest. So away we go with the horror reviews!
(Click title to go directly to the feature)
HELLIONS (2015)
Steve Oram’s AAAAAAAAH! (2015)
WIND WALKERS (2015)
THE NIGHTMARE (2015)
HELLIONS (2015)
Directed by Bruce McDonaldDora the dead-eyed girl pushes the apparatus up towards the camera and allows her hand to rest on the invisible glass. She looks weary, possibly psychotic and this is really not surprising considering she spends most of the movie being chased and chased and chased and chased by her inner demon(s). As the weary tone suggests, director Bruce McDonald’s HELLIONS is a quaint, gothic film in which an exploration of fears about non-conformism in small town America is marred by the mother of all recurring but ultimately exhausting dreams about pregnancy.
Cinematography and art direction are the film’s main selling point. It takes some of the typical visions of American Halloweens and wields them as aspects of an otherworldly place. Even something as absurdly normal (yet typical of tropey horror) as a pumpkin takes on a curious appearance that demands the eye of the onlooker, particularly when said pumpkin has gained legs and started to squeak. They and the other terror tykes do have an eerie beauty though it’s a little cheaty, seeing as though they are clearly used as symbolic shorthand for the morality of Grimm fairytales. They manage to be utterly gross as well as incredibly cute. Herein lays the problem: the story’s layers are investigated in such a repetitive fashion that the narrative progression loses its thrust and it feels as though the filmmakers lost a few pages of the script just before the finale. This is partly a tonal issue as it seems to take influences from everything from THE WICKER MAN through to CRITTERS, as conceptually impossible as that sounds. Even the soundtrack is a weird mishmash of sincerely religious songs such as "Michael Row The Boat Ashore" and one of those minor key lullabies that appears in just about every demon kiddy caper you’d care to mention.
Chloe Rose as Dora Vogel does a reasonable job as the lead. She is perfectly adequate as a small town emo strop merchant who manages to convert that expression (there is only one) of teen boredom into a look of abjection and appears utterly rootless. At the same time, she maintains a decent level of intensity during the quiet moments, has a good set of lungs (and other things) on her and even manages to pull off one or two unbelievably hokey dream sequences. There are, naturally, other players, but while serviceable they don’t particularly leave a lasting impression regardless of how quirkily they’re scripted (by Pascal Trottier) and were probably directed. Serious drama is tackled here, but all too often the screen is hogged by images and ideas that just been used far too often to generate anything more than pre-manufactured, plastic disgust.
HELLIONS works best if considered as a whimsical mental noodle on the beats of Tim Burton with a few mental hiccups accidentally tossed in. The narrative does have a satisfactory (and very open-ended) conclusion, but it feels like it takes about nine months and our personal labour pains to get there. No wonder dear Dora had nightmares…
STEVE ORAM'S AAAAAAAH! (2015)
Directed by Steve OramAAAAAAAAH!
No really, AAAAAAAAH! This was my reaction to this pretentious pile of twaddle from director Steve Oram (of SIGHTSEERS fame). The film is admirable for its unswayable reason d’etre, but unfortunately it’s a bit of a one-trick war horse. The film starts with two men pissing on pictures in the pouring rain in the foliage of a gritty urban landscape (we’re in ‘GUL’ territory) and moves through the trials and tribulations of those left behind where consumerism, tribalism and empty ritual have robbed people of their ability to really connect properly – they basically ‘ape grunt’ throughout. Yep, it’s about throwing a tantrum because you don’t like the TV channel (just like all of Steve’s famous and cameo-tastic celebrity chums, as PR pack chirpily tells us).
It is a really strange film as it is actually rather well made and may appeal to cult film fans for featuring the likes of Toyah Wilcox (of JUBILEE) among its strong cast. The old punk is certainly game, and certainly it’s no mystery why she has taken part in this off the wall project. She adds a sense of both realism and gravitas – as much as she can considering what she does with a cookery program and a carvery at one point. Her role is vital as a contrast to the contributions others such as the likes of MIGHTY BOOSH star, Noel Fielding, whose appearance is to do little more than turn up for a cheap dick joke that is hammily directed to play for the camera, It breaks the reality of the piece just so the audience get a full frontal penis pic to show us how outré, daring and terribly clever the film (thinks it) is.
AAAAAAAAH! honestly and truly annoyed me for using a lot of artistic machination to make comparatively simple points about the nature of society and consumer culture (blah blah blah). The style is reminiscent of the recent (and far better) CANNIBAL FOG, but this felt like a classic case of the EMPORER'S NEW CLOTHES. That said, FrightFest should be applauded for taking on such non-standard fare as it may lead the way to more experimentation, which is after all the lifeblood of cinema.
Steve Oram’s AAAAAAAAH! is an extended, well-acted, occasionally amusing and undeniably peculiar attempt at social commentary. Just thank God it’s only a movie.
WIND WALKERS (2015)
Directed by Russell FriedenbergWIND WALKERS is what happens when you get a buddy movie crossed with a monster flick crossed with a war film that ultimately comes out as confused as a squaddie after a dead-of night ambush. Russell Friedenberg’s film follows the exploits of a group of friends who become prey to a mysterious force that begins to pick them off in the wilderness after one of their number returns traumatised from a secret mission during active service. It is up to them to work out what that force is before they are all beaten.
The film starts interestingly, with an old Native American man discussing how the stories (religions) we’ve told each other to maintain a sense of social identity are vanishing and how that leads to myths and men that will protect their ancestral land. This seems proven during the establishing sequences in which the good level of acting from the ensemble cast helps to define the sense of community as well as the continuity on which war films thrive. The acting is generally good, with particular kudos to Kiowa Gordon and J. LaRose as a son and father whose scenes cross the dramatic range. We watch these people attempt to reform their relationships with each other in the high pressure family environment and use their own stereotypes to be what they think each other needs. It’s cannibalistic, but as the film says “You take no pleasure in eating yourself – you just have to”. That this works is primarily down to the actors as the direction often misses tricks, with ritualised sections lacking a sheer sense of the meanings of the passages themselves and camera framing often undermining the relativity of the actors’ positions in the stylised group shots.
However, even the acting becomes repetitive despite the drip-drip of new strands that are introduced into the plot. Is it a governmental conspiracy? The End Of The World? Someone playing a trippy trick? A trooper out for revenge? Or a story that wants to point vague fingers at multiple and confusing social ills without really finding a solution? The film then degenerates into a series of sections where our heroes are running in and out of the flora, fauna and floorboards shooting at each other and having mysterious flashbacks backdropped by didgeridoo soundtracks. This is quite aside from the supernatural aspects of the film, which largely consist of someone (or something) in what seems to be high street fashion contact lenses periodically glowering at people. It actually seems oddly racist because it feels less in service of the story’s concerns about ethnic cleansings and cultural meddling, more about an easy visual signifier for foreignness = wild/dangerous.
WIND WALKERS has a lot of material if you are into intrigue or conspiracy theories and the Doors-esque soundtrack suits the war film feel with its woozy languidity. However, these aren’t enough to hold the strands together as each character appears to be given their own separate ending. It’s a good buddy movie with some interesting side sequences but is perhaps not to be taken too seriously. Demon, government department or disease, WIND WALKERS sets a decoy too many.
THE NIGHTMARE (2015)
Directed by Rodney AscherThe problem with documentary films about bodily experiences is that they tend not to convey what something actually feels like. In the press screening of Rodney Ascher’s THE NIGHTMARE, men were yelling out in fright. THE NIGHTMARE is a terrifying film precisely because it’s based on a reality suffered by many living otherwise ordinary lives: sleep paralysis. It is a condition caused by a melatonin imbalance in the body that results in temporary physical paralysis while the mind thinks it is awake but is actually asleep and dreaming. The film does a great job of showing just how disturbing this can be.
THE NIGHTMARE takes the form of a number of interviews with sleep paralysis sufferers. They come from multiple countries and backgrounds and detail their lives and how the condition effects them, from the standard ‘man in the room’ scenario of a mentally fabricated presence stalking the sleeper through to details of out of body experiences. Discussions with the sufferers about their experiences are then interwoven with recreations of the incidents themselves. These vary from cute comic sequences showing the participants as children through to some extremely eerie camerawork that brings home how unsettling things can get in the case of fears of what appear to be potential paedophilia. It is easy to suspect that these action sequences, basic as they are, are also terrifying because they are a reflection of the mind (rather than having been fashioned to reflect a fancy) and because of that the world view they contain invokes the empathy that gains our initial interest.
The strongest point of the film is the participants, from the strange conspiracy theorist to the laid back lad who, with a jovial melancholy, tells the camera that he feels sorry for his potential partner as he is convinced the condition will someday kill him. The tone is light and raises a laugh, but the underscore is desperate and non-comprehending. Some of these people, after all, have been so profoundly affected by their experiences as to question their own sanity. It has been said that sleep paralysis is the reality of incidents from incubus/succubus stories through to alien abduction.
Scientific exploration is one area where the documentary perhaps misses a trick. In one sense it takes on the somewhat illusory quality of a sleep paralysis itself, providing more and more stories that escalate as the audiences’ nerves get rawer yet more accustomed to the hum of their jangle. On the other side, this is at the expense of any formal discussion of the scientific aspects of the phenomenon, which does feel somewhat neglected as a result.
THE NIGHTMARE is terrifying. This is not just because the experiences documented are true and varied. It’s not just because the re-enactments are a well-judged mixture of irony, assault fears and sickly childhood feverishness and it’s not just because a huge number of people experience sleep paralysis throughout their lives. It’s terrifying because focusing on sleep paralysis actually induces attacks on those predisposed to them and can transfer those images into the brain of the viewer.
Goodnight, kids, you’ll need it.
Look for our bi-weekly rambling about random horror films on Poptards and Ain’t It Cool on AICN HORROR’s CANNIBAL HORRORCAST Podcast every other Thursday!
