The
9th edition of the horror film festival took up residence
in Sheffield's bestest independent cinema the Showroom over the last
weekend. Your correspondent forked out for a weekend pass and
strapped in for two days and one evening of terror and gory violence
(and that was just the Q&As etc). Here's what transpired.
Please
note that the reviews of the films may contain mild spoilers. I'll
not mention the endings but if you want to go in to any of them blind
maybe give the below a miss.
FRIDAY
After
a brief introduction from our genial hosts Rob and Polly, things kick
off with the brilliant and inventive short Great Choice. A
woman is trapped in a looping commercial for Red Lobster and things
get pretty nasty. Funny, disturbing and starring the amazing Carrie
Coon, it's a great start (9)
The
first feature is The Endless, the new film from Spring
directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (who provide a fun video
introduction). The pair also star as brothers who return to the cult
(sorry, commune) they left 10
years earlier for a quick visit. Obviously all is not as it seems in
the idyllic community where people are allowed to follow their
artistic muse, but the mindbending nature of what transpires is
unlike anything else I've seen. Inventive, original, sinister, warm,
disturbing and laugh-out-loud funny, The Endless may even surpass
Spring, one of my favourite horror films of recent years (9).
The
next bill gives us 3 shorts. Creswick
is atmospheric and tense
but the ending doesn't quite work (5).
Latched,
where a new mother accidentally awakens a rather nasty fairy, is
beautifully shot with some creepy moments (7).
Animated Spanish war story Dead
Horses looks fantastic
and is depressing as hell, but didn't do much for me (6).
The
next feature is Ashley Thorpe's Borley
Rectory, an animated
documentary about the “most haunted house in England” and the
involvement of paranormal investigator Harry Price. On top of this,
it's a love letter to the horror films of the 30s and 40s. A mix of
live action recreation, rotoscoping and digital animation, the film
looks incredible. My favourite trick used throughout the film is how
ghostly images sometimes emerge from the digital effects used to age
the film up. A genuinely unique experience but one where I
appreciated the technical achievement and oddity of the work rather
than a film I actively enjoyed (7).
Unfortunately
I have to give 68 Kill and the associated shorts a miss to catch the
last bus home. The Interchange at that time of night is the spookiest
experience of the weekend.
SATURDAY
Up
bright and early to join the first of many queues in order to watch
Icelandic horror film I
Remember You. First
though we have Swedish short Drip
Drop and Australian
offering The Man Who
Caught a Mermaid. The
former, about aquatic monsters terrorising a woman in her home is
stylish enough, but is the first time I notice something many of
these shorts share; the totally artistic but unnecessary close up of
something (6).
The latter is bleak with a great twist and anchored by a brilliant
central performance (7).
Oskar
Thor Axelsson's feature is a mix of crime procedural and ghost story,
skilfully merging two different story lines. A couple and their
friend move into a dilapidated house in the remote Westfjords, where
there are no neighbours or phone signal. Meanwhile a psychiatrist
haunted by unexplained disappearance of his son moves to Ísafjörður
and is drawn into a homicide
investigation where All Is Not As It Seems. The two stories
eventually link up of course
and the twist that does so isn't hard to guess. I Remember You has a
melancholic atmosphere and some properly scary moments, while Iceland
looks predictably gorgeous (7).
Another
queue (seriously though, the amount of queueing) and it's time for
Habit,
which is preceded by Couples
Night and
Bon Appetit.
Couple's Night brings the funny and piles twist upon twist to good
effect (8).
The latter is a slow burning cannibalism tale that aims for satire
but lands on painfully obvious (5).
Director
Simeon Halligan and actor Elliot James Langridge arrive to introduce
Habit and do a Q&A afterwards (with producer Rachel
Richardson-Jones). The film starts like a particularly good bit of
it's grim in Manchester drama, before dropping in the gory horror.
The two genres are skillfully merged throughout and things get pretty
bleak. Helped by great performances from Langridge and the rest of
the cast, Halligan has delivered a great modern British horror film
(7).
After
all that Scandinoir and northern gothic things pick up mood-wise with
the next bill. In Your
Date Is Here
a mother and daughter play with an old board game with predictably
horrific results. The dread builds nicely until an effective jump
scare finishes things off (9).
Meow
is a good 80s pastiche that keeps things relatively ambiguous until
the end. It's first time I notice another trend in these shorts;
everyone has a record player no matter when the film is set. Cute cat
too (7).
Then
it's time for Tyler MacIntyre's Tragedy
Girls.
Two teenage girls seek to learn “the trade” from a serial killer,
start bumping off people in their small town then use the ensuing
social media meltdowns to rise to fame. A smart, hilarious satire
that skewers both teenage and adult attitudes to social media,
complete
with brilliant turns from Brianna Hildebrand and Alexandra Tripp as
the narcissitic BFFs, Tragedy Girls is like a 21st
century update of Heathers (8).
After
the longest queue yet it's time for Inside
No. 9 with
writers/known geniuses Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton providing
an introduction to each of the three episodes. We're given “The
Harrowing”, spookiest episode “Seance Time” and (eliciting
the biggest cheer of the festival) are treated to brand new episode
“Tempting Fate”. All three are brilliant episodes of TV and a
treat to watch on the big screen. A lively and interesting Q&A
follows (9
obviously).
A
trio of shorts follow before the secret film. Crave
(introduced by the director) is a smart update of an old horror story
(saying which will ruin it) and one of the best shorts of the
festival (9).
I am ashamed to say I don't remember Third
Wheel (it
was a loooooooong weekend). Teddy
Bears Picnic is
grim and suffers from unnecessary close up syndrome (5).
The
secret film turns out to be Ryuhei
Kitamura's
Downrange.
A bunch of generically attractive carpooling 20-somethings are
stranded in the wilderness when their giant SUV breaks down. Turns
out the tyre was shot out by a sniper, who proceeds to pick our
protagonists off one by one. This is a great premise, worthy of a
gritty 70s thriller, but the director's aim is way off. Though
mercilessly violent and incredibly
gory, the dialogue creaks and people make incredibly stupid
decisions. It's probably the film that raises
the most unintended laughs of the entire festival. It'll pass a
Saturday night in if you get good and intoxicated beforehand (5).
With that I
decide to skip Suspiria and head home to get up bright and early for
the 10am start on Sunday.
SUNDAY
Proceeding
bleary eyed to the Showroom, I need something relatively gentle to
ease me back into proceedings. Instead we get Japanese WTF-fest Tag.
Errrrrrrk.
First up though
we have Eldritch
Code,
a neat Lovecraftian story about a corporate IT guy chasing a
particularly nasty bit of malware. Doing a genuinely fresh take on
Lovecraft is difficult these days, but Eldritch Code nearly pulls it
off (7).
This is followed by It
Began Without Warning,
a fairly meh alien invasion/evil kids tale (5).
So to Sion
Sono's Tag, which is an odd one even by J-horror standards. It has
the most astonishing opening 10 minutes of any film of the festival,
when a malevolent wind massacres two coach loads of school girls (I
am not making this up). Things get weirder from there as the main
character starts to shift through different realities. There are a
few great (and gory) moments, though none which match the opening for
sheer jaw dropping audaciousness. However, the film doesn't stick the
landing, while
the
pervy letching
over
school girls and
other
young women leaves a sour taste (6).
The next bill
goes a lot better. It opens with Swedish sleep paralysis short
Paralys,
which is especially fun for those of us who do suffer from said
ailment (8).
Next up is Tickle
Monster,
which manages to be funny, creepy and deliver possibly the best jump
scare of the entire festival (9).
The final short is Ear
Worm,
the title of which is basically a spoiler and features a genuinely
catchy song which has been stuck in my head since I saw it (8).
The feature is
Mayhem
by Joe Lynch, a big, loud, dumbass violent action flick with another
killer concept. A virus emerges which removes people's inhibitions,
allowing them to act out their (usually deadly) impulses. The virus
strikes the building where our hero (Walking Dead alumnus Stephen
Yeun) works on the day he is unfairly dismissed, and as any killings
undertaken while ill are not considered murder he decides to take
revenge. Funny, gory, intense and cathartic for us office drones,
this is another great Saturday night film and easier to recommend
than Downrange. Plus it's refreshing to see a non-white actor star in
such a film (8).
Next, we have
Short
Cut
and Undress
Me.
The former is a fairly good excuse for a nasty pun (7),
while the latter is a dreary body horror story which feels twice as
long as it's 14 minute run time (3).
M.F.A.
by
Natalia Leite is next and it's a tough one. Art student Noelle (an
incredible performance by Francesca Eastwood) is sexually assaulted
at a party. When the school authorities prove to be useless she takes
matters into her own hands, the descent into darkness fuelling (and
massively improving) her art. A
brutal evisceration of rape culture on campus (and by extension in
society as a whole), M.F.A. is more powerful and thoughtful than the
dubious films usually filed under the rape/revenge category. The rape
scenes were most difficult things to watch all weekend, while the
violence that follows isn't glorified either. A timely film and one
which will haunt the viewer for some time afterwards (9).
After
a bit of walk to catch breath and clear heads, it's time to back to
some good ol' fashioned demonic horror. We
Summoned A Demon
is from the same people as a short I saw last year called Death Metal
(I still use the exclamation “Shit on my fuck!” on occasion) and
is in a similar dumbasses vs Satan vein. Funny and violent, someone
let Chris McInroy do a feature soon please (8).
So
to the 30th
anniversary of Hellraiser,
showing in a new print. I've not seen it for some time so was looking
forward to see how well it holds up. Like so many 80s films that you
saw when you were too young, the sad answer “not very”. The
dialogue, from the human characters at least, groans with cliches,
while most of the performances leave a lot to be desired. Most of the
effects have dated badly too. However, the Cenobites still look great
and have iconic lines, while the story and Clive Barker's hugely
original concept are winners (7).
There's an informative Q&A with actor Nicholas Vine and make up
artist Geoff Portass afterwards.
Next
we have Flow,
an amusing tale of two women soldiers who wipe out their enemies
despite running out of tampons (7).
Caravan
is a dark and atmospheric Aussie chiller with a horrifying denouement
(7).
The
longest queue of them all is for the final film I see all weekend is
Creep
2,
which is a shame as it's a
bit rubbish.
A found footage film with pretensions to being more than the jump
scare filled serial killer film it so clearly is, any points it tries
to make about “art” or “journalism” or whatever gets lost in
the meandering monologues. Both central performances are decent and
there a few wry chuckles raised, but the film long outstays it's
welcome (3).
Unable to
justify the expense of another taxi home and a bit bleary eyed I
sadly decide to miss closing film You Better Watch Out and go home to
watch cartoons for a week.
Many thanks to
the guys at Celluloid Screams for a great festival. Can't way for
next year already!