Frightfest review part two

Including screenings of 'Nightwatch', 'P' and the eagerly anticipated 'Wolf Creek'.

Sep  2 2005

SUNDAY

More than a modicum of low-budget flair quickly doused the inauspicious beginnings of Sunday's opening film, 'The Collingswood Story'. What begins as a hackneyed and hokey device of unvarying webcam POVs for when the two main characters' instigate the eerie resurgence of a haunted house, yields considerable returns in the latter half, which proves to be a less hysterical, more measured and subsequently more effective rendering of lo-fi 'Blair Witch' credibility.

Concocting a follow-up to an international phenomenon like 'Ju-On: The Grudge' could never be less than a geek-wary burden to many filmmakers. But with 'Marebito', the relentlessly individual Takashi Shimizu has chosen a cinematic path less trodden, eschewing mainstream appeal with an esoteric nightmare produced digitally in eight days, which is sure to provoke and repel in equal measure. Encountering a female creature in an underground lair (bear with it!) a news cameraman - played with a disturbing aloofness by pallid fellow director Shinya Tsukamoto - longs for the terror he so often films but can never feel. As he begins a gradual descent into the dual role of dispassionate monster and babysitter, this fiercely intelligent, intriguing and bloody amalgam of 'Peeping Tom' and 'The Addiction' wends its way inexorably to a dour and fitting climax.

Ex-Fangoria scribe Anthony C Ferrante's allegedly goofy homage 'Boo!' literally failed to make its flight from the US, so replacing it was a different kind of airborne thrill from director Wes Craven. 'Red Eye' is an almost perversely ludicrous romp in the Hitchcock mould with every cliché – here an in-flight threat to our heroine and her Miami-based father if she fails to heed to the villain's outlandish demands – itself becoming a lynchpin in the next sly set-up. Rachel McAdams is a plucky retaliator and Cillian Murphy plays the '80s-style, seemingly causeless psycho with such sparkle-eyed relish, it's a wonder there wasn't a supporting role for the Stockholm syndrome.

Russian action fantasy sensation 'Nightwatch' heads to these shores with a certain reputation to live up to. A ceaselessly kinetic showstopper, it's a little long in the tooth considering the astonishing wealth of ideas crammed into its 114 minutes. For logic apologists and discerning Jean-Jacques Beineix/Leos Carax fans, though, it's an overblown treat. Just don't expect to fully comprehend every epic nuance – no matter how well you think you unraveled 'Primer'.

In the history of bad judgement calls, of minor interest to film scholars at least, will be the bizarre decision by production company Morgan Creek to reshoot a Paul Schrader horror picture using the director of 'Die Hard 2' and 'The Adventures Of Ford Fairlaine' to up the shock quotient. What's most ironic is that, had not the resulting 'Exorcist: The Beginning' been such a heady abortion in every way, Schrader's original vision would never have made it to the screen at all. As is now revealed, 'Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist' is hardly the masterpiece his supporters have rallied the studio to admit. It is, however, a fanciful, horrific, idiosyncratic and at times striking meditation on faith and the faithful and on the schism between those of different religious and moral convictions. Perhaps, had it been left unmauled to begin with, the picture would have enjoyed limited but well-earned success. As it is, curiosity has increased its cachet immeasurably and it deserves the second chance.

MONDAY

A brief mention should no doubt be made of the small cadre of short films populating the weekend's programme. Though fewer in number than in previous years, the four films on offer did prove more concentrated in terms of quality, which was very welcome. Brendan Muldowney's simple and chilling haunted cellar tale, 'The Ten Steps', was the outstanding crowd-pleaser of the weekend. Thankfully, the other short offerings - Dominic Hailstone's startlingly low-budget, Chris Cunningham-esque 'The Eel', Robert Grieves' Hitchcock pastiche 'The Victim' and David McGillivray and Keith Claxton's 'Mrs Davenport's Throat' - were by turns sharp, witty and quietly rewarding.

The Thai martial arts picture, with its reliance on such crunching verisimilitude as to make wires, effects houses and safety mat companies obsolete, has quickly become the stuff of modern action legend, following the release of international sensation 'Ong Bak' in 2004. Plugging the stopgap while that film's star, Tony Jaa, keeps local infirmaries busy with his next film, 'Tom Yum Goong', is the gloriously incongruous 'Born To Fight', directed by the outfit's stunt coordinator Panna Rittikrai. Utilising a practically plot-free, wildly sentimental and patriotic scenario, it's a hyperbolic and idealistic yarn of rural retaliation against a terrorist group seeking to liberate one of their recently incarcerated own or else the village they're holding hostage, and then the city of Bangkok, gets it. Of course, the local gym team on a humanitarian mission, along with one of their number's seemingly indestructible cop brothers, could never let that happen on their watch. What follows is both logic and gravity-defying to the nth degree, with one-legged men, children and the elderly getting in on the riotously entertaining and staggeringly over-the-top mayhem.

From the ridiculously sublime to the ridiculously absurd, 'Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium' is a vapid and shamefully crude display of imitation that aims to flatter but merely sputters. Taking more of a lead from Jorge Grau's worthy 'Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue' and Bruno Mattei's flaccid zombie shockers than any of the Romero masterpieces it flagrantly wishes to ape, 'Contagium's tale of a 30-year-old contamination, which reemerges amongst a strangely characterised band of mental patients and their medical staff, is a crassly executed, stiltedly performed and startlingly brainless mess worthy of Ed Wood. That its ponderously earnest leading man, reading from a philosophical tome, describes a woman who he feels is like a statue as 'statutory' should indicate the level of thought involved in this hopeless endeavour.

Paul Spurrier's Thai-set possession story, 'P', is notable for a few things. Its wears its auteurist sensibilities proudly, as Spurrier wrote, directed and partly photographed this tale of mystical vengeance. And its depiction of the unspoken fate of much of the country's poor female population in the sex industry of Bangkok is, while not particularly frank or graphic, still controversial enough that the picture remains unreleased in its country of origin. It is also the first picture to be made by a westerner in Thailand and it is perhaps this skewed perspective that elevates it beyond the typically well-rendered grotesques of the modern Asian horror film. Much in the same way that Luc Besson presented his subtly unique take on New York in 'Leon', Spurrier seems to achieve a quiet hyperrealism and nuance in 'P' that perhaps a native filmmaker would miss. This often shocking, occasionally awkward, but always eerie and beautiful CinemaScope film is not only a very competent ghost story but also a refreshing exploration of a Bangkok we often only see as a bustling, gaudy tourist trap.

The penultimate picture of the festival was perhaps its darkest and most troubling. Both an acknowledged member of the ilk descended from glossy Lektor thriller 'Manhunter' and a deeply etched study – drawn from director Christian Alvart's own upbringing – of Catholic distress, 'Anitbodies' is a slightly confused, morally complex but convincingly depraved thriller. Purposefully paring down the gaudy sensationalising that many serial-killer pictures impart on their subjects, it's very much the troubled hero's film. That 'hero' is Michael Martens, a diligent, faithful (in all ways), small-town German policeman intent on discovering the true perpetrator of a local child killing, which he believes has been falsely attributed to a notorious, incarcerated paedophile. As both universal and home truths that Martens has led his life by are stripped bare, his baptism into big-city police investigations slides into a quietly relentless tragedy of biblical evocations and allusions. Alvart's part gothic, part pastoral style straddles an acutely ambiguous line between maliciousness and pious morality with skill. If it's a little too drawn out, indulgent and saddled with a seemingly too redemptive ending, it's worth noting that for all the light at the end of Alvart's story, the darkness at the journey's heart still looms over the film's final familial embrace.

The closing night film was Greg Mclean's horrific and beautifully shot classic-in-waiting, 'Wolf Creek'. Infused with the same independent spirit as 'Open Water' and mirroring the realistic endurance of 'Switchblade Romance' (without that picture's divisive twist), it's a shockingly strong debut. The measured set-up, which lets us get to know the three leads during an invigorating road trip through the Australian outback before they're rescued from some serious car trouble by jolly bushman Mick Taylor, pays immeasurable dividends once the seamless transition from jovial banter to nauseating cruelty hits. At the heart of the horror is the terrifyingly villainous and effervescent turn from John Jarret as, in director McLean's words, 'the dark side of "Crocodile Dundee".' Which is putting it mildly. A magnificently vile creation, Jarret's Taylor is all the more terrifying for the little details than the perversely relishable dialogue he spouts. The hints toward his former employment (heavy shades of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre') and the oxymoron of the almost faceless nature of this affable, larger than life Aussie joker makes the whole thing all the more believable and chilling. The film's inspired use of a very matter-of-fact malevolence reveals the gimmickry of other low-budget sensations like 'Blair Witch' and 'Open Water' to be just that – gimmicks. This is a straight-edged and gruelling picture with no pretence and no baggage. It's nasty as hell and memorable as anything released in the last 10 years.

This sixth year has been Frightfest's most impressive in a succession of increasingly well-mounted events. Induction into the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation is already theirs and in all likelihood, bigger and better things await next year and hopefully for many years ahead. And so, until then, don't go into the house, don't eat the blue acid, and never forget that they're coming to get you, Barbara.

To read part one of the report, click here.

• 
•