The original plan was that I would be commuting home to Oxford from Frightfest every night. After one night of that, I simply had scrap the plan and find somewhere - anywhere!- in London to stay. Back-to-back horror movies can be quite a tiring experience and staying up afterward trying to make sense of them, and write these posts? Killer.
Having said that, I didn't skip a single film to sleep, eat or just hide and only missed Black late on Sunday night because it clashed with my short window of opportunity to interview John Landis. The video of that interview will be coming soon, but in the meantime, let's go over the films I did get to see. Once again, I'll say that for basic plot and cast or crew details, you'd be better off with the Frightfest programme page.
Dead Snow - dir. Tommy Wirkola
Despite some of the most pervasive hype of the year, at least as far as horror pictures go, this was something of a dud. Frightfest ringmaster Alan Jones promised us that we'd enjoy this if we liked the zombie films of Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi but as much as I love those guys movies (and I probably love them more than anyone you know) I couldn't see any real connection between their work and this dull headache of a film.
There was one highpoint, there really was. It was the moment in which one of our protagonists attempt to amputate part of their body after a bit. This bid to prevent the spread of the zombie virus is met with an unexpected payoff that was at least as good as some of the worse ideas in the better (ie. mediocre) Raimi and Jackson knock-offs we've had over the last few decades.
During the Q&A at the end, Wirkola revealed his concept for the opening scenes of a sequel (which by necessity spoils a little bit of the first film, but anyway, I'll go ahead and tell you). The one-armed survivor is seen at the end driving away with a zombie hanging on to him through his car window and the sequel would see this zombie's arm being severed in a car accident and falling into the car. The poor chap would then wake up in hospital to be greeted with the 'good news' - "It's okay, we managed to save your arm and sew it back on". Sounds faintly amusing, but didn't Raimi pretty much polish off the whole 'zombie arm' gag book in Evil Dead 2?
Overall, I resented this film for treating me like an idiot. I guess a lot of the other audience members are somewhat desensitised to this kind of cultural insult by now because it certainly received a rapturous wave of applause.
Human Centipede: First Sequence - dir. Tom Six
Much of the foyer conversation around this film revolved around how 'sick' it was, or how 'dark'. I heard a lot of claims that it was the most 'fucked up' film in the festival. Okay… I didn't see it that way and I'm sure you'll judge me how you will.
You need to know the premise here. This was a film about a surgeon kidnapping people and then sewing them together to create a string of folk linked mouth-to-anus, only capable of crawling and, besides the head of the chain, of receiving nutrition from the waste of those in front. That's a very specific, creative set up, sure, but does that really mean the film is 'sick'? I think the assumption might be that because Tom Six can create this vision, he somehow has a desire to enact it or finds it tickles his fetish bone. A dodgy assumption, I think.
Being a feature film directed by a fine artist, I was expecting something at once more formally extravagant and less sound in terms of screen language fundamentals than Human Centipede actually proved. I want to stress that there really were none of the quibbles with screen geography or fluid editing that can often plague films by 'outsiders' new to film and more interested in 'expressing themselves' or 'creating images' than actually using the medium in a truly expressive (ie. relatable and comprehendable) fashion.
Coffin Rock - dir. Rupert Glasson
This picture played like a tense, pressurised drama that built to red hot outbursts of material more typical in the horror genre. It did this, however, without ever ceasing to be that tense, pressurised drama - and that is its greatest strength.
I would have recommended a lot of tightening in the edit, and there's some daft plotting to be overlooked, but I found Coffin Rock to pass the afternoon very agreeably.
I'm hungry for more films that succeed both as entertainments for genre hounds as well as drama for a more 'casual' audience. Coffin Rock may not excel as either, but neither did it fail.
Night of the Demons - dir. Adam Giersa
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