Top 10 Creepiest Kids

When you think of children you may typically associate them with toys, play, laughter or at worst, crying and tantrums; as a parent your only fear may be that they could get hurt and your only worry might be that they grow up to somehow disapprove of you. But these associations of innocence and the concerns and panics that naturally follow only come to mind for the lucky parents. For some however, the intense fear of their own kids makes them wish they had never encountered them; makes them wish they had never been born…

As Halloween draws nearer we revisit the creepiest kids in horror film history. From girly ghouls to terrorsome toddlers, we present a countdown of our top ten children that give us the chills.

 

 

10. Eli- Let The Right One In (2006)

 

Girl-next-door Eli may appear to be a blossom of purity and youthful beauty, enchanting bully-victim Oskar as the pair share a unique bond and develop a touching, innocent relationship. But beneath the childlike complexion and curly locks lies a ravenous vampiress who will do anything to satisfy her hunger for blood; whose appetite for survival means lurking in the shadows in tunnels and trees, ready to pounce on her helpless victims. Where Eli is concerned, be sure to befriend or be food!

 

 
9. Tomas– The Orphanage (2007)

It’s bad enough when your son claims to have an imaginary friend; but when that friend comes out of nowhere wearing a potato sack on his head to hide his disfigured face, it doesn’t get much creepier than that. When her son Simon mysteriously goes missing in the orphanage, Laura must seek out his dead friends- the orphan boy ghosts of the past- for answers. But a revengeful Tomas wants to play and Laura must go to extremes to battle the ex-resident of the orphanage and explore the truth about his death. With the potato sack orphan roaming the corridors, Del Toro really tests the lengths a parent would go to find their missing child.

 

8. Nel- The Last Exorcism (2010)

Twisting and cracking into shapes only a stretch armstrong should be capable of, this visually terrifying possession of country girl Nel displays the cringiest deformations and disfigurements of the decade. In Roth’s admirably unique take on an exorcism movie, the question of Nel’s condition wavers; is she experiencing a supernatural possession or in fact suffering from a deep psychological trauma? Either way, scrambling up the walls and lurching inhumane attacks on the camera crew is enough evidence of a devilish transformation nonetheless. It’s hard to decide what’s more troubling- the artificial demonisation of Nel or the fact that actress Ashley Bell can actually manipulate her body to that degree!

 

 

7. Isaac- Children of the Corn (1984)

 

Take your child to church and he’ll be sure to grow up into a fine, young, law-abiding man, right? ...Not necessarily. 12-year-old boy preacher Isaac comes to Gatlin, Nebraska and unleashes his twisted religious fervour, turning the youths of the small town sour. Having been converted to charismatic Isaac’s way of thinking, the children of Gatlin form a cult and wilfully murder their own parents in a malicious countryside calamity. In a now adult-free world, they worship a mysterious, demonic entity - “he who walks behind the rows” – who lurks in the Nebraska cornfields. Any unwanted trespassers are easy bate to Isaac’s peril and the perfect victims for the menacing orphans to sacrifice to the evil godly presence.

 

6. Take your Pick!- The Children (2008)


As if one killer kid isn’t bad enough, try grounding a whole bunch of them. Christmas vacation turns unrelentingly dark for one family when one-by-one the children start to inhabit malicious defects. As they turn on their parents, the child-centric chaos unravels and the cliché kid vs parent battle comes alive in a terrifying fight for survival. And it’s true what they say - strength certainly does come in numbers!

 

 

 

5. Ralphie Glick- Salems Lot (1979)

‘The boy at the window’ still features as one of horror’s most beloved scariest scenes, and one of the most memorable moments from Tobe Hooper’s cinematic catalogue. Appearing through the fog, undead Ralphie hovers at his brother Danny’s bedroom window, luring him into his reach. Wearing a devilish smile and knocking and scratching at the pane, we wish Danny had closed the curtains before bed!

 

4. Gage- Pet Sematary (1989)

When little blonde boy Gage is hit by a truck outside his family home, his desperate and distraught parents bury their beloved son in the menacing Pet Sematary in the hope to return him to life. But the bright-eyed, dungareed boy returns not as a he once had been, but as a scarred and revengeful toddler terror. Evil and hatred replaces innocence and affection as Gage is out to murder anyone he comes across- until he is stopped. “The ground has turned sour…There’s something wrong with Gage.”

 

 

3. Sadako- Ringu (1998)

The nightmare literally comes out of the screen as Sadako detracts from within the footage of the cassette tape and crawls jaggedly out of the TV set into the homes of her cursed victims. Hideo Nakata’s teenage character certainly started a popular boom of the now well-known pale girl figure, as it crossed borders and became transnational in international remakes and later Asian horror films. When we see a figure clothed in white garments with a dishevelled, draping black mass of hair covering its face, we know it can only mean one thing - authentic and truly terrifying J-horror.

 

2. Damien- The Omen (1976)

 

The child of the devil himself, Damien Thorn is the antichrist incarnate. With a ‘666’ birth mark etched onto his head, this wicked child beams frantically as he rides around on his trike, leaving a blood trail behind him wherever he goes and causing death to whomever heavenly soul tries to get in his way. The legacy of the sinful child born on the sixth hour of the sixth day of the sixth month is a lasting one, and still, only the mere uttering of the name ‘Damien’ is enough to send a shudder down any parent’s spine.

 

1. Regan- The Exorcist (1979)

It’s been over 30 years since we first saw head-spinning Regan projectile green vomit as she infamously spider-crawls backwards down the stairs. In what is arguably still the scariest and most shocking exorcism movie of all time, a long and harrowing outburst of cursing, priest killing, and self-stabbing carnage sees Regan as our creepiest kid as she takes the brutally true form of the devil as we’ve never seen before…or since.

Excision

EXCISION ****

 

Once a short film of the same name produced in 2008, Richard Bates Jr finally brings his Excision vision to a feature length film four years later.

 

Pauline is eighteen; a slightly backward loner with no friends, whose sociopathic nature means she delights in being a deliberate nuisance to everyone; and who is a believer of God at her own convenience. Sounds like the symptoms of a typical teenage tragedy, right? But the fact that Pauline has psycho pseudo-sexual fantasies about surgical operations and has a lustrous, sexual stimulation for the feel, smell and taste of blood, immediately sets her miles apart from your generic teen struggling with adolescence. Pauline isn’t just any teenager, and this isn’t just any coming-of-age movie.

Despite failing academically at school, Pauline is desperately delusional about becoming a surgeon, disregarding any learning that isn’t likely to be important to become one later in life. Her diligence at school is elsewhere practiced, doing as much as she can to annoy her enemy classmates and deter wearisome teachers. Being shunned for her careless and sloppy appearance, and being labelled “weird” for her tactless and blunt remarks, Pauline is more than happy to unlike and be unliked, though seems confused at abrupt rejections in some instances where she tries to be kind. She waves at a new girl across the street but has to settle for the finger gesture back. 

These fantasies that Pauline has when she is asleep are shown as visually intense, spectacularly vivid, colourful dreams, tastefully crafted in several short sequences which act to temporarily disrupt the dreary and monotonous existence off Pauline’s real life. These dreams show clean, surgical atmospheres which are passionately tainted with masses of splattered red blood and torn out organs. Although they are more for aesthetic pleasure rather than professional skill, they encourage her aspiration of a medical career, and she smiles as she writhes and reaches her orgasmic climax.  

Pauline’s family may appear to be a perfectly painted picture of the pristine surburban family on the outside, but at the dinner table a control freak mother; a passive, much-of-nothing father; and a younger sister slowly dying with cystic fibrosis is the verified reality. Pauline begrudges her parents for insisting she sees a psychiatric doctor whom she has no disrespect for, questioning his level of profession and making her opinions of his inadequacy to treat her very clear. She makes adamant that she should see a real psychiatrist, though her self awareness of her ‘condition’ goes back and forth throughout the movie; sometimes she begs for professional help and other times defends her sociopathic nature – which she asks, “what teenager doesn’t have?” 

Despite her whimsical angst and carefree intolerance to be polite to anyone, there lies a deep emotional hardship for Pauline, and her family. Though sister and daughter Grace (Ariel Winter) is suffering from a fatal disease, which is perhaps the only thing that keeps the family together, this worry is predominantly subsided to the sideline of the erupting family break down. All mother Phyllis (Traci Lords) wants of her daughter is for her to be an educated and polite lady. But with Pauline sneering at cotillion classes and getting suspended from school, a dead beat mother breaks down in anger and heartbreak as she struggles to find anything to love in eldest daughter. Though she recognises her strict discipline on her daughters and tries to reach out to make amends, she is met by an inattentive Pauline who swiftly disregards her. Likewise, when Pauline openly attempts a heart-to-heart, her mother is far past her efforts to listen. It seems that this tragic relationship between mother and daughter is the underlying backbone for Pauline’s mental problems, though it is never confirmed. Instead, she confides her inappropriate wishes to God and her little sister – or whoever is too afraid to answer back. As for the helpless father and husband Bob (Roger Bart), he is forever stuck in the middle of the house’s female fury, but lacks any real substance as a character and sort of falls by the waist side to his wife and daughter’s snarling accusations. 

With little guidance and no proper psychotic treatment, Pauline decides to take matters into her own hands, believing that she may have the potential to put other people first for once and finally find approval from her mother. But unfortunately for Pauline and her family, the culmination of her dreams isn’t as gratifying when practiced in real life.

It’s almost as if the role of disgruntled and mentally disturbed, psychotic teen was written for AnnaLynne McCord. Largely solely driving the narrative, she plays a truly intriguing individual whom we rightfully struggle to understand as she convincingly bats between victim and perpetrator. We are both disgusted at her character absurdities and sympathetic to her lack of self-constraint. An interesting and perhaps nightmarish cross-between, but think: a miniature Pollyanna McIntosh in The Woman (2011) for her shabby appearance and awkward posture, and Ezra Miller in We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) for her seeming contentment with sadistic aggression.

While we initially jive and joule at Pauline’s attitude towards her peers and the tricks she plays on her school colleagues, Bates deploys a much more serious and harrowing reality that creeps into the latter stages of the movie. The misfortune of suffering from emotional or mental illness is played out and the disastrous consequence of abundant ignorance is realised only when it’s too late. Though boasting cross-generic elements of comedy and drama, Bates produces an engaging psychological horror which is both entertaining and poignant.

The House At The End OF The Street

THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET **

 

We’ve seen a number of humdrum horror film titles over the years but House at the End of the Street could perhaps be the most generic one yet. And I’m afraid to say that it is a rather suitable heading for the films predominantly dreary, formulaic content.

Newly-divorced Susan (Elisabeth Shue) and daughter Elissa (Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence) move to an upscale, rural town in order to make a fresh start. When they learn that the house opposite was where a young girl murdered her parents, and that the family’s son Ryan (Max Thieriot) still resides in it, the nosy neighbours and jack-ass jerks at school insist to use its devastation to cast a lurking shadow over the town. But as Elissa befriends exiled loner Ryan, she discovers that the house still suppresses a sinister secret.

 

After conquering her challenging, action-packed role in Hunger Games earlier this year, Lawrence’s role as a disgruntled high-school teenager must have been a piece of cake in comparison. The majority of her screen time is spent exercising her angst against her mother or looking momentarily shocked at, say, the sound of a broken twig behind her - one of the many triggers of an semi-conscious roll of the eyes!

As proved countless times before, small budget horror by no means spells disaster. But in this case, little imagination and a lot of cliché clutter makes for a predictable and lagging plot. Suffering significantly from a lack of impacting atmosphere, the teenage romance upstairs with the creepy-girl-hidden-in-the-basement does little more than go through the motions. The character of intriguing loner Ryan is captivating and Elissa’s instinctual pull towards helping the emotionally damaged allows their relationship to grow into an innocent and tender understanding. But we can only sit back and wait for the tragedy to unfold, rightfully suspecting that Ryan’s deep mental scars will be something to do with it. A little frustrating too is the time we spend watching the girl escape from the basement… and then watching Ryan capture her and return the key to its original spot (why wouldn’t he hide the key somewhere else!?) Director… clearly initialises an intriguing story of ones mental delusion and disguise, but its effect is ultimately minimalised by its poor execution, and further suffocated by the rest of the characters pitiful problems.

It’s hard to believe that my concluding reaction would be largely negative when after the first two minutes I genuinely felt reassured that it wasn’t going to go down the tragic Hollywoodesque horror route that the likes of The Wicker Tree (2010), Fright Night (2011) or Playback (2012) did. The opening scene of the family murders is loaded with suspense, plunging into a girl’s vicious attack on her family, with crafty, flashy cinematography to indicate her possessive or disturbed state. While it makes an inviting introductory scene, it is probably its own worst enemy by instantly causing high, but regrettably unmet, expectations for the following 100 minutes, looking out of place in both style and approach as the rest sits back into the comfortable and unimaginative conventional screen shots. Max Thieriot impresses in his first major film role, playing a convincing psychologically damaged adolescent. His adoption of unnervy and qwerky mannerisms works to conceal his true nature, with just enough stamina for the audience to question his intentions until the suspended climax.

 

Writing this I am still uncertain of the relevance to the film’s title considering that the house is not clearly at the end of a street or particularly secluded, as it would suggest. Perhaps there is an element of pickiness in my accusation, but it bothered me nonetheless. NOT to be confused with, but perhaps should have taken tips from, low budget Italian exploitation films, The House on the Edge of the Park or Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left. Now let’s stop with the hullabaloo of houses locale!

The Imposter

THE IMPOSTER *****

Infamous serial imposter Frederic Bourdin has stolen the identities of over 500 missing children worldwide. In 1997, the French 23-year old claimed to be missing child Nicholas Barclay from San Antonio, Texas, who had disappeared at the age of 13 three years prior. Despite lacking the physical attributes of their American speaking blonde and blue-eyed Nicholas, he successfully convinced the Barclay family that he was their long lost son, ascribing his changing physicalities to the trauma from the sexual abuse he experienced during his kidnapping. It was only when a TV crew member, who was filming the family at the time, raised suspicion of his doubts that this was Nicholas that further fingerprints and DNA tests were carried out. In March 1998, five months after he had come to live with the Barclay’s in the USA, Bourdin was imprisoned and later sentenced to six years in prison after pleading to passport fraud and perjury. But his impersonations of missing children worldwide continued long within the bars of his cell.

His story has become world renowned with an explosive mass of tabloid press, and his hijacking of Nicholas Barclay’s identity has been more recently depicted in a fictionalised account in French director and screenwriter Jean-Paul Salome’s The Chameleon.

But this year, fact finally and favourably replaces fiction as documentary specialist Bart Layton delivers the definitive biographical documentary of the decade.

Featuring a catalogue of recent interviews accompanied with several reconstructions (Adam O’Brian playing younger Frederic Bourdin), Layton forms a clear and vivid account of the journey of Bourdin’s impersonation of Nicholas Barclay from both his, the Barclay families and authorities perspective over those five months. Though it is the 1997 incident that the documentary is primarily concerned with, Layton is essentially successful in capturing the bigger picture of Frederic Bourdin’s psychological plight by including a brief pre and post-1997 report of his life.

Due to the nature of the topic the lack of emotional response from the participants throughout the feature is surprising. Instead, the detailed descriptions from various Barclay family members and Bourdin himself are effectively bold, candid, direct and largely emotionless.

The bio-doc immaculately unveils the mind and the manipulative mastery of Bourdin. His unnervingly confidence and his self-assuring ability to convince and persuade withdraws the suspicion of the Barclay’s involvement in Nicholas’ disappearance much less than it did in the film adaptation (that concluded with the uncovering of the family secret - that the death of Nicholas was at their hands.) Although unwelcome, it is difficult not to seep sympathy for the now-retired imposter Bourdin as he recalls his absent childhood and his longing plea to find love and affection. But his overriding selfishness and his natural blight, all the more clear in his final words in the documentary, reminds us of his ever-present determination to be accepted and his nonchalant attitude to exercise his cruel obsession at the expense of others misery and heartbreak.

Frightfest the 13th: The Bleedin' Good and the Bloody Awful

 

The good, the bad and the ugly from this year’s Frightfest…

 

5 MUST SEE’S

• Sleep Tight ****

Ever wondered what is lurking beneath your bed at night? Director of REC Jaume Balaguero delivers this dark and sinister psychological thriller about an apartment janitor Cesar who sneaks into resident Clara’s apartment at night and hides under her bed, waiting until she is asleep to carry out his disturbing fantasies. In addition to constructing a captivating plot about a man’s obsession, Balaguero creates a controlled suspense as well as a lasting intensity that seeps a creepy uneasiness.
 

• V/H/S ***

Six tapes, six stories, six directors. An anthology of short found footage clips that will make you give late night skyping a second thought. Framed by a story of a group of hoodlums who are paid to break into a house to obtain a certain rare vhs tape, the rest of the stories are the ones that they regretfully come across during their search. Boasting variety in plots, lengths and twists, V/H/S uses several shooting methods, covering every piece of technology that has a record button!

 

• Sinister ****

Ethan Hawke stars as true-crime writer Elis who is desperate to recoup his former success and make his next book a hit. But when he moves his family to a house that was once a crime scene in a series of family murders spanning five decades in a final hope for inspiration, he finds a box in the attic full of reels that contain footage of these deaths. Convinced that he is seeing mysterious figures lurking around his house that resemble those in the footage, he soon realises that he is way beyond his professional limits and that danger is creeping closer and closer to his family. A nail-biting supernatural thriller by director of THE EXORCIST OF EMILY ROSE Scott Derrickson that holds its restraint and suspense while offering plenty of scares that will keep you jumping out of your seat.

 

• Chained ***

Jennifer Chambers Lynch directs this dark chiller, delivering what she herself describes as a psychological look into “how monsters are born.” Cab-driver Bob spends his days kidnapping girls off the city streets, taking them to his secluded house in the country and raping and killing them before burying their corpses in his garage. When he carries out this ritual on Tim’s mother, young Tim is left in the hands of the serial killer. Time passes and, after years of being locked up and kept as a slave, Tim must decide whether he is to stay chained up in his captures house forever or choose the life of a killer for his freedom. Whilst CHAINED is both an adequately moving and troubling account of a deranged man teaching a young boy his murdering methods, the plot tries to do too much towards its conclusion and a climatic twist opens doors that are never sufficiently closed.

• Tulpa ***

SHADOW director Federico Zampaglione attempts to revive the Italian giallo horror genre in this classic whodunit murder mystery. Businesswoman Lisa spends her days at the top of the corporate game, but at night her little dark secret is exercised when she regularly visits an underground Club Tulpa where a Tibetan Buddhist guru teaches that personal freedom can be found through promiscuous free sex. But when her lovers in Tulpa are being murdered one by one, her secret world runs risk of being uncovered and her life is endangered. A colourful masterpiece that closely resembles the classic artwork and imagery of giallo directors Bava, Argento and Fulci but which ultimately suffers in its unnecessary and distracting use of bad dialogue and dubbing.

 

 5 AVOID THESE

 

• The Thompsons **

Our anguished vampire family return with a new name in this sequel to the 2006 feature THE HAMILTONS. Desperate for some place to go after being forced to leave their home town, the Thompson family are faced with an offer they can’t refuse: ancient vampire clan the Stuart’s offer them shelter, solace and a place to belong their cosy English town. But when they arrive it is clear that their intentions are not so welcoming. The story is comprehendible and the story runs smoothly enough, but the charming elements of its predecessor are absent: the mystery of whether it’s entirely a vampire movie is lost, and the poetic resonance that ‘they have a disease and are not monsters’ is imperceptible. With its content poorly sourcing the first film of the franchise, the quality of the plot stands alone and thus runs the risk of it simply being another teen-vamp movie.

• Under the Bed *

A child’s worst nightmare is played out onscreen when Jonny and younger brother Gattlin are tormented at night by a terrorizing monster hidden under their bed. With an engaging insight to Jonny’s mental and emotional past instantly raising questions about the truth of his claims -  similar to the opening scenario in supernatural thriller THE HAUNTING IN CONNETICUT - we are offered a promising start. But when the brothers decide to team up in a bizarre battle with the bed monsters with nothing more than a home-made doctor-who-like torch, the haunting horror cripples into nothing more than a kid’s fantasy film accompanied by cheesy acting and pointless random chunks of narrative. As the brother’s night terror unfolds and the monsters enter next-door neighbour’s territory, it appears that the threat is no longer restricted to under the bed - perhaps it should have been.
 

• After **

Two strangers survive a road accident and wake up to find that they are alone in their small hometown which is now an unfamiliar and unworldly existence. Being slowly engulfed by a foreboding black mist that conceals ravenous creatures, the two form an unlikely alliance to work out the truth about their lonely isolation. The sci-fi thriller goes through the motions of a struggle to understand the strange happenings in a race against time but the outcome is realised by the viewer long before the characters figure it out. AFTER is visually impressive in its bold exploration of dreamlike and imaginative atmospheres and, following a similar pattern than that seen in Gareth Evans’ MONSTERS, the blossoming relationship of the pair is a welcome diversion from the hardships of the situation. But again this falls short to being unconvincing and predictable- a severely dull watch after the visual splendour of the dark fantastical ‘world’ is appreciated.

 

• Outpost II: The Black Sun **

During the close of WW2, German scientist Klausener worked on a terrifying new technology with the power to create his own immortal Nazi army. Now a NATO force is being deployed to go to Eastern Europe and stop whatever is relentlessly killing everyone in its path. Ruthless war investigator Lena teams up with adventurer Wallace to track down infamous war criminal Klausener. But when the duo are confronted by a swarm of Nazi Storm Troopers, they find themselves in dead mans land and are forced to team up with the Special Unit forces in an attempt to stop the supernatural machinery behind their monstrous regime. While containing some brief references, the sequel lacks considerable relevance to OUTPOST, replacing originality and horror rudiments with 100 minutes of explosively brutal action set pieces. The narrative and script is lifeless but coherently sustained - at least until its conclusion takes several bizarre turns, one of which in the purposeless, cackling wicked-witch type nurse who chases the good guys around the tunnels with a hypodermic needle! The characters are not in the slightest bit interesting (if anything too serious for a zombie flick), nor has anything been noticeably advanced with the race-running, knife-stabbing zombies- they’re still the blood-thirsty, human digesting brutal blighters we saw in the first! After the mediocre success of its predecessor, one wondered where else the franchise could go. But with this sequel set for a straight to DVD release and with a prequel in production, prepare for yet more Nazi Zombie regimes!
 

• Hidden in the Woods **

Chilean director Patricio Valladares treats us to a large slice of exploitation of the rawest kind! Brought up in forest isolation, tormented sisters Ana and Anny seize the opportunity to escape their sexually abusive father when the social services call. Taking their incest son/brother with them, the trio journey through in the woods to flee their former lives. But big time drug boss Costello and his hot-headed henchmen are determined to stop them in their tracks to find out where their now imprisoned father is storing a multi-million dollar drug stash. Rape, revenge, prostitution and cannibalism drive the shock factor in this Chilean frenzy. But unfortunately this can only make up for the unrealistic and seemingly motiveless madmen mafia pursuit, which too heavily features exaggerated machismo gun shoot-outs that boast plenty of violent carnage, but cop out of showing any respectful special effects.

 

More Gore to look out for:

• Paura 3D          
• The Seasoning House
• [Rec] 3: Genesis 
• Maniac
• Tower Block
• Sawney: Flesh of Man
• Before Dawn
• Berberian Sound Studio
• We are the Night
•  Inbred
• The Arrival of Wang
• Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut

 

To see more about the event, this year’s films and what FRIGHTFEST has in store for future dates and festivals, visit http://www.frightfest.co.uk/

 

 

FRIGHTFEST THE 13TH REVIEW

FILM 4 FRIGHTFEST THE 13^TH : THE HOME OF HORROR

Unlucky for some…

 

FRIGHTFEST, sponsored by FILM4, is a 5-day Horror and Fantasy Film Festival based in London that screens a multitude of UK, European and Worldwide premieres of the most highly-anticipated horror films of the year. Holding its first major event in 2000, Frightfest has since developed into a successful, not-to-be-missed annual event for fans of the genre. The festival is increasingly becoming recognised as not only the most highly regarded of its kind in the UK, but also in the world, alongside the likes of America’s largest and longest running horror film festival SCREAMFEST and fan-favourite TORONTO AFTER DARK FILM FESTIVAL.

Labelled by director Guillermo del Toro (PANS LABRYTNH, CRONOS, THE DEVILS BACKBONE) as “The Woodstock of Gore,” this UK horror event attracts the very best directors, producers, casts (and fans!) of the genre from all over the world, unveiling a unique mixture of talent from all enthusiasts across the industry.

In it’s thirteenth consecutive year, FRIGHTFEST THE 13^TH did not disappoint. As my third consecutive year at FRIGHTFEST I was pleased to be back amongst the real buffs of the genre and immersed in gore galore! Although FRIGHTFEST now holds three established events (a smaller version of the summer festival with a similar set-up and held in February as part of Glasgow’s International Film Festival, and also an all-nighter held over the Halloween period) it is this occasion that really comes alive with buzz and excitement and the prosperity and diversity that the genre can offer.

When I arrived at Leicester Square’s Empire Cinema early Thursday afternoon, I followed the ritual of picking up my weekend pass and the festival programme and started rooting through line-up’s and the short descriptions of each chosen film. I took out my pen and started to *star* what I thought looked to be the promising films of the five days, whilst too looking decidingly at the DISCOVERY SCREEN line-up. Despite it always containing a few appealing films, every year I can never seem to tear myself away from the MAIN SCREEN for the sake of my ever present “fomo”- fear.of.missing.out! (Though it’s always these films that you pretend are not there and later end up buying on DVD and being pleasantly surprised). With the festival appearing to grow in size each year, another of Empire’s screens (labelled the RE-DISCOVERY SCREEN) was being used to show the highlights of their Glasgow Festival – as well as this stretching the festival to host a grand 50 films, I think it’s a nice touch to give people who perhaps cannot justify the travel for a two-day event or who cannot get away from work twice a year the opportunity to watch the films shown at Glasgow in the months beforehand.

The World Premiere of Paul Hyett’s THE SEASONING HOUSE opened the weekend on Thursday evening. Known in the industry for his work on various British horror movies as a special effects make-up artist (THE DESCENT, EDEN LAKE, THE WOMAN IN BLACK), Hyett’s directorial debut kick-started the festival with a gritty, Eastern European movie about a girl who is kidnapped by the army during the Balkan war in the mid 90’s and used as a slave in a seasoning house. Mirroring the likes of MARTYRS and HOSTEL, Hyett generates a feeling of relentless claustrophobia as malicious physical and sexual torture is tightly bound within the walls of the house.

The festival followed its standard routine of screening five/six premieres per day back-to-back as you reluctantly count down from twenty-four to that final one film – an experience that must closely resemble one’s feelings when they unwrap their last rolo!

The mad Manetti brothers returned this summer with PAURA 3D following the encouraging reception of their first horror/sci-fi film L’ARRIVO DI WANG shown earlier this year at Frightfest Glasgow. A very different film to their first, PAURA- meaning ‘fear’ in Italian- intended to create exactly that, throwing the sci-fi elements aside. With an intriguing situation and a nightmare waiting to happen for three young boys perfectly set-up, the film falls a bit short in its final hour and the impression of a layered plot and a likely enticing twist in the story, gives way to an uninteresting easy way out.

NIGHTBREED: THE CABAL CUT was also a pleasant inclusion in the programme. Following many questions and queries over a substantial amount of lost footage that was shot but not included in its heavily reduced studio release in 1990, Russell Cherrington and Mark Miller have been on a quest to restore the original footage that was shot to follow Clive Barker’s original (3 hour) script. Having not seen the 1990 studio release before I wondered how the film had ever become successful without the additional footage. What appeared to be the most important and somewhat vital explanatory elements within the now 2 hour 37 minute film had only just been found and included (easily identifiable by the differing quality of the three ‘parts’.) Although the determined pair still have a long way to go with the project in terms of digitally remastering the newfound reels and VHS clips, they believe it will eventually reach Blu-ray - A masterful achievement for the pair and a true gift for all original lovers of the Nightbreed.

Back in February we saw a sneaky preview clip of Federico Zampaglione’s attempt at his own Italian giallo horror film, TULPA. With a good audience reaction and an as-ever excited Federico bouncing around the stage, I knew that the premiere of this film was in store for us this weekend. With obvious and self-stated influences from the likes of Bava and Argento, TULPA was a true love letter to 70/80’s giallo style. But perhaps too true – although the film looked cinematically attractive and the music score was spot on (composed by his brother and Andrea Moscianese and not, in Federico’s words, “a typical score you’d expect from a giallo… [but] something modern”), the characters voices were badly dubbed and the script was poor. Whether or not it simply didn’t translate very well to English I guess we will never know (unless they release a purely subtitled version) but it was an unfortunate comedic disturbance on the audience, deviating them away from the dark and ominous themed plot, and drawing attention to what seemed like playful, hammy acting. Federico delighted in key plot elements of the typical giallo with the deviant sexual presence, occult themes and symbols (A “Tulpa” being part of a traditional Tibetan Buddhism) and more crucially the whodunit murder mystery with the hidden killer in black cloak and hat…and not to forget, the black gloves.

Matthias Hoene revelled in this year’s line-up as director of zombie-infested geezer gala COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES and co-producer of council house versus lone sniper TOWER BLOCK (the weekend’s closing film.) Beginning before the film had, with his stand-up-comedy-like-introduction, Hoene didn’t fail to get the audience in high spirits – and at least this time it was intentional!

Spoilt by the number of cast and crew that attend these premieres, Q&A’s that follow- always made interesting by some quirky question from the audience or a bonkers story from the director. I’ll never forget Glasgow Frightfest 2011 when Jason Eisner stripped and did the whole Q&A for HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN just in his underpants!

Also featured as an intricate part of the weekend is the INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM SHOWCASE, ANDY NYMAN’S QUIZ FROM HELL, and some surprise guests and premiere trailers of upcoming releases (one of which was a first look at a new compilation trailer for Season 3 of THE WALKING DEAD due to be aired in the UK in October.) But what trumps these “special events”, especially this time, is TOTAL FILM’S TOTAL ICON INTERVIEW. This year, Italian horror director Dario Argento returned to Frightfest for the first time in four years (since his appearance at 2008 when his MOTHER OF TEARS got its UK premiere in the frightfest programme). While the interview with last year’s candidate actor/director/producer Larry Fessenden had been a highlight of 2011’s Frightfest, I knew that this time I was facing one of the biggest horror icon legend of the last four decades. Interviewed at length by Total Film’s Jamie Graham, Dario spoke about his upcoming Dracula 3D release and what inspired him to rework such a classic novel and, perhaps more interestingly, why he wanted to shoot it in 3D. But what was inevitably even more interesting than that was of course the questions about his previous influences; his mastery of the Italian giallo horror film (THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, CAT ‘O NINE TAILS); how he entered filmmaking, and more specifically, the horror genre; and how he “imagined” or “dreamed” the artistically visual and audio elements so apparent in his most successful genre-classics (SUSPIRIA, PHENOMENA, TENEBRAE, INFERNO, DEEP RED.)

 

For a transcribed version of the entire interview, visit http://www.totalfilm.com/features/dario-argento-answers-your-questions/top-5

Exit Humanity

EXIT HUMANITY ****

Four years after his directorial debut with winter chiller, Scarce (2008), John Geddes returns with this gritty zombie meets American West drama.

It’s 1865 in Tennessee, in the midst of the brutal American Civil War, and Edward Young returns from a hunting trip to find his wife contaminated with a violent disease and his son missing. Being forced to shoot dead his beloved wife, he searches the forests for his son - but it isn’t long until he finds him in a similar infected state. His life ripped from him, Edward has nothing left. Believed to have failed as a man, husband and father, he is desperate to fulfil his last promise to his son and take him to a waterfall. Edward packs his son’s ashes and begins his journey, leaving his former and once-content life burning to the ground.

The ‘story,’ told as a first hand account from a diary that Edward kept during his ordeal, is framed by a series of chapters and narrated by Malcolm Young (Brian Cox), an ancestor to Edward and the beholder of his diary. While voice-over narration can often seem displaced and fall victim to becoming detached from the interior diegesis, the storytelling here is well upheld and well-balanced throughout. And what better voice to expresses the overwhelming emotions of battle- of remorse and pain, of anger and vengeance- than King Lear himself, Brian Cox.

Frequent but short animations of sketchbook illustrations give the picture another attractive dimension, being graphically impressive whilst constantly reminding the viewer of the raw storytelling format.

The first chapter of the account deals firstly with Edward’s unbearable sadness and the agony he feels over the loss of his loved ones, and secondly with his conflicting curiosity with the zombie-like, plague-stricken people. Edward studies the newly developed, irrational behaviour of an infected neighbour, taking notes of their biting nature in order to aid survival.

Exit Humanity disregards modern cinematic advances in zombie narratives. Here, we scrap the past century of the likes of Romero and Fulci and return to the very roots of zombie-ism. Portrayed as the world’s first encounter of the walking dead, we are offered a refreshingly unique take on an apocalyptic disaster quite like never before.

The figures themselves are not racing around the forest with gruesome dishevelled features and missing half a head. Recently revived in the likes of ongoing TV series The Walking Dead, they boast simplicity and are tastefully crafted (as tasteful as a discoloured face, black eyes and drooling mouths can be!) For blood-thirsty fans that thrive on blood, guts and gore, this is not the film for them – perhaps see the previous review for a film of this disposition.

The contaminated population are not the malicious, inhumanly strong and overly threatening figures, but portrayed as rather sympathetically helpless- as monsters that once were men- as Edward fearlessly clings onto his affected son whilst crying out in despair.

It would be easy to label Exit Humanity as a zombie movie. But that wouldn’t do justice to Geddes. The word ‘zombie’ is never used in the film, the contamination being referred to as simply “another plague.” As General Williamson’s doctor fails to understand what the disease is, it is eventually explained to have been caused by a supernatural curse – another nicely fitting flagpole of the 19^th century era and a somewhat different, but welcome, reasoning from that of the conventional scientific-experiment-gone-wrong justification.

The battle is not with the “plague” as such and Geddes never seriously initiates a human versus zombie feud. Instead, it is with General Williamson (Bill Moseley) and his possy who have heard that someone has immunity to the fatal bites. Prepared to kidnap and kill to get hold of “the one” and use them to produce a cure, is it the undead or living who really exit humanity? Moseley seems to have recently grasped the villain role firmly with two hands. First playing a child killer in Robert Lieberman’s The Tortured (2010) and now pulling off a convincing performance as a dastardly war captain trying to seize control of the population and showing no mercy for the innocent. Gibson however carries a large amount of the film as our true war hero, sweetly counterbalancing the wickedness of Moseley’s character. His emotional capacity is stretched by Geddes - and it certainly pays off. Gibson provides a truly compelling and heartbreaking performance of a lost man desperately trying to seek hope and redemption which he carries well throughout.

And of course, it would be hard to ignore the casting of much loved horror veteran Dee Wallace as an exiled witch ‘Eve’. With the ability to add grace to any horror film, this role fits our horror icon like a mask to a monster …[and is perhaps a warm-up for her more recent role as a guru in Rob Zombie’s upcoming The Lords of Salem, set for release later this year!]

After 108 minutes and when the credits started to roll, I struggled to uphold my initial thoughts that this was going to be a horror film. Yes, it has some resemblances to the established zombie film, but includes traditional conventions of the Action and Adventure, and even the Western style (with a two man gun stand off to conclude the combat) that we cannot ignore.

What Geddes unveils is well balanced, mixed-genre film revealing a true depiction of an honest man who has lost everything; an autobiographical tale of a broken man, stricken with grief and riddled with sorrow to the point of suicide, who finds a new reason to live. He learns to embrace a world of darkness; to embrace a life amongst the walking dead.

Zombie 108 (Z-108)

ZOMBIE 108 (Z-108) **

Funded by 900 genre fans and causing a big buzz within the horror scene, upcoming director Joe Chein delivers a pulsating, blood-gushing zombie flick.

A scientific experiment goes wrong and a virus is set loose in Taipei, turning the city’s people into ravenous zombies. While the Army and SWAT teams oversee evacuation, the neighbourhood Ximending’s gang- unaware of the chaos unfolding around them- try and disrupt their operations. But when they too come under zombie attack, the police and gang form an unlikely alliance for their best chance of survival.

It certainly isn’t an original storyline- something that perhaps would have saved it from being ‘just another zombie film.’ With obvious influences from the highly successful 28 days later franchise evident in the opening scene of rampage and disorder, a large proportion of the narrative feels in some way or another ‘borrowed.’ But what separates it from the countless number of zombie movies Chein has evidently watched and been openly influenced by, is the inclusion of a sideline plot. Whereas in zombie or post-apocalyptic movies we typically follow one group of strangers for the duration of the movie with individuals being picked off one by one until only the hero or heroine remains, Z-108 creates multiple characters stuck in different situations, stemming the narrative until they come together only towards the end. While the police and gangs are fighting off zombies and trying to prevent the virus from spreading to each other, we also see Linda (Yvonne Yao) and her daughter Chloe (Chloe Lin) being kidnapped and tortured by a mad-man making the most of the end-of-the-world crisis. Using captured zombies for manual labour to power the electricity in his home, and taking advantage of the helplessness of others and lack of police enforcement to kidnap, rape and murder women, the sociopath pervert (Chien Jen Hao) certainly broadens the scope of extreme shock and is a temporary distraction from the dull familiarity of the zombie led design.

What eastern directors, and Chein alike, seem to do so well is to take a step back now and again- giving the audience a necessary breather from the adrenalin pumping zombie action- and reflect on the emotions of the characters. A memorable example is when the gang leader or ‘big boss’ asks to kill his wife as she turns into a ravenous, blood spitting subhuman before him. The continually beating grunge/garage music which is likely to trigger a headache is replaced by a slower, more classical sound and the camera momentarily stops jumping around and trying to keep up with the pace of its soundtrack.

Die-hard genre fans have much to appreciate in the way of gruesome and grisly gore. With several exploding zombie heads, a mangled torso crawling along the floor and a body axed slowly to death, with a bit of martial arts thrown in, prepare for 90 minutes of stomach-churning as violence and bloodshed is not spared. Despite an impressive range of zombie effects (though neon yellow eyes and faces half mutilated as soon as they turn are perhaps a bit farfetched), the zombies themselves are run of the mill and the transformations are unimpressively sudden. Most of the characters ‘turn’ and there aren’t any that you can really cheer for (except perhaps the kidnapped woman who, when she exerts her revenge with an axe to the perverts limp body, you cant help but feel pleased for her.) The acting is acceptable but nothing exceptional, the generic foreigner confronting a naked zombie with, “you can’t have my number, bitch.”

A zombie movie that certainly doesn’t stand out from the rest, and by no means a zombie classic that can be compared to the likes of Romero’s work. Although a decent first attempt to parallel the successful, spine-chilling horror genre films of Japan, new-kid-on-the-block Taiwan haven’t quite achieved the necessary level for a rivalry with this movie. But with the execution of the first zombie movie in the history of their cinema, Z-108 will certainly put them on the map with expectations of future horror releases.

A Simple Life

A SIMPLE LIFE ****

Five-time award winner at the 31st Annual Hong Kong Film Awards A SIMPLE LIFE is coming of age drama - but not the teen-angst tale that has been so deeply explored in the recent decades of cinema. Instead, a story of a woman coming to terms with retirement and old age.

Following a stroke, Ah Tao decides to retire as a maid and take up residence in a care home. But after 60 years of service to several generations of one family, she is still matron to one of the family members, Roger (Andy Lau), whom ensures she is in good hands when her physical health decreases. She struggles to be doted on as former masters and mistresses come bearing gifts and bring comfort, whilst trying to accept her condition as she watches both the old and young and less fortunate pass through the doors of the home.

 A Simple Life doesn’t just depict an honest and heart warming journey of a woman coping with the transition towards elderliness and frailty, physical deterioration and dependence. Amidst the gradual struggle and the inevitable and unfair robbing of health that old age brings, lies a touching story of a profound family friendship. Not blood-related members but as close to it (always referring to each other as god-son or Aunt), Ah Toa and Roger's relationship is not one of perhaps a conventional family obligation, but one of a deep sense of gratification and respect as their roles become conditionally reversed and their responsibilities for each other swap hands.

Andy Lau (Internal Affairs, 2002 and House of Flying Daggers, 2004) and Deannie Yip (who hasn’t acted in anything substantial in a decade) reunite after numerous past collaborations (The Truth, 1988 and Prince Charming, 1999), forming an inspiring and moving on-screen bond. Their sentimental connection is transparent in both their light-hearted and jovial exchanges (teasing one another as they walk through the park arm in arm), and when there is but little need for words.

Inspired by the true story of the producer (Roger Lee) and his servant, writers Susan Chan and Yan-lam Lee, and director Anne Hui bring plenty of heartbreak, but also a lingering sense of reassurance and joy, a welcomed measure of cheerful optimism, in this stunning portrayal of the latter period of one’s, ‘simple life.’

Playback

PLAYBACK *

My attention immediately captured by one review that described Playback as “Ring meets Halloween”, I envisioned an ingenious masterpiece derived from the concoction of two of my favourite horror films. Even when I heard that the cast included Christian Slater as the local cop, my hopes remained high and my fingers remained crossed as I held my breath for what could potentially be my “ideal” horror flick.

I needn’t have bothered. Within the first few scenes it was obvious that this was nothing more than a piece of mindless teen horror garbage- and not even a very good one at that- belonging to the genre’s relentless ‘junkmail.’ The likening of Playback to the marvel remake of the Japanese horror classic must have been purely its inclusion of a videotape and distorted TV screen, or perhaps the ill mention of it as one of the characters “favourite film.” As for its similarity to one of horror’s most legendary teen-slasher films…I’m still clueless to what it is.

The film opens in the past as we witness the live footage of a series of murders through the killer’s video camera. Fine. Jumping forward however many years, the communities hidden-but-not-forgotten secret is dug up by college student Julian (Johnny Pacar) to use for his school project on ‘what changed a community.’ But as he digs deeper into the infamous history of his town, he unlocks an evil; an evil back with vengeance and eager to possess and destroy anyone through video playback.

The plot plays out very much like this for an hour or so- a group of college kids trying to get hold of documents and stories. What gives the story a slightly more interesting disposition is when Julian’s friend Quinn (Toby Hemingway) comes across “the” video whilst working at a video sorting depot. After playing back the tape he becomes rapidly possessed, killing off Julian’s friends (none of whom we have any emotional connection to or association with) in a gruesome bloodshed form and possessing others by luring them to look into one of his hidden cameras and “zapping” them from his TV monitor. Other than that, I’m not sure what the significance of the handheld cameras was exactly, apart from capturing footage of naked girls to sell to corrupt-cop Christian.

I was left scratching my head, trying to work out if this was a story of the possession by an evil entity or indeed a slasher. I suppose we could applaud director Michael A. Nickles for entwining the two, despite the already implemented serial-killers-goes-viral formation. But its delivery is confusing and it comes across more as a disjointed jumble of concepts. What first appears to be a curse or entity full of revengeful purposes and even genetic motivations turns into a random massacre of teenagers who enjoy nothing more than pool parties, listen to dreadful music and be obsessed with a murder that happened two decades ago. It is for this reason that the acting is hard to comment on, the breadth of credibility automatically severely limited.

Even the climatic revelation of Julian’s former history in the film’s conclusion seems irrelevant, and the showdown between Quinn, Julian and his mum even less spectacular with hammy one-liners and a few too many gun shots. Unless for some reason you'd like to see Slater's head blown off by a shotgun, don't waste 1 hour and 38 minutes of your time with these teenagers!