The fourth day was an interesting one for me, largely because I hadn’t bothered with bed following the afterparty at the Phoenix bar the night before! That was the first time I’d been there after a Frightfest evening, and it was great to mingle with the regulars, along with the likes of David Hess and Joe Lynch who’d decided to go there as well. I think I’ll attempt a few more evenings there next year, though the only other night I made it there on this occasion was the insanely packed do after the final day.
However, for various reasons, the night meant that I missed Dead Snow (I ended up doing other things as I wasn’t sure of my ability to stay awake among other things, as well as the fact that the DVD release was the following day), as well as starting to drop off during Black. So, bear in mind with the following reviews that the Dead Snow review is from a DVD rather than the actual screening, so my opinion may be somewhat subdued compared to if I’d been with the crowd. Also, I can’t give a 100% accurate review of Black in the interest of fairness, as I’d been awake for over 36 hours at that point and the comfortable cinema seat was working against me.
It also means that my memories of any surprises are a little hazy. IIRC, this day was the one where we saw advance screening footage from Adam Green’s new movie Frozen. We mainly saw the trailer, which shows a lot of what happens in the movie – three skiiers get stuck on a ski lift in mid-air after it’s shut down for the weekend, and have to escape before they freeze to death. In addition, there was another excellent Douche Brothers short from Green and Joe Lynch – all of the shorts can now be viewed online here.
The other “surprise” of the night (although everyone knew about it) was a presentation of John Landis’ other horror landmark, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, along with the making of the video. The music video itself was as entertaining as ever, despite being shown on a dodgy transfer. However, the documentary really dragged. I remember enjoying this back in the day, but the editing is actually atrocious. If someone happens to mention something else from Michael Jackson’s career, we get a 2-3 minute clip, sometimes the who video or performance! It’s unnecessary and really made the evening start to drag.
Movies of the day reviews after the jump – Dead Snow, Human Centipede, Coffin Rock, Night Of The Demons, Dread and Black. No Discovery screen reviews again – I didn’t see them!
Dead Snow
A group of Norwegian students go into the snowy mountains to stay in a log cabin and enjoy the scenery. However, there is a local legend of a troop of Nazis who froze to death in those same mountains. They’re not dead, and the cabin has something they want.
As I mentioned above, I caught this on DVD a few days after Frightfest, and I do regret it. This definitely seems to be a movie built for that kind of audience environment, with plenty of gore and over-the-top moments.The first 40 minutes or so are the set-up to the inevitable zombie Nazi massacre, and to be honest it does drag. The identity of the killers are kept hidden during the first 2 deaths – little strange considering that the film’s main selling point is the Nazis. This makes it a little silly, and well as a slow moving piece.
However, it soon picks up once the action starts. There’s no question where the director’s influences are – one of the characters sports a Braindead T-shirt, a movie that’s clearly being imitated. Despite sticking closely to a few genre conventions, the movie is not afraid to buck trends wherever possible. This is most obvious from the Nazis themselves – while they love to munch on intestines like Romero’s zombies, they’re not only fast-moving but also intelligent. They use weapons, and can even climb trees to reach their prey!
The gore is plentiful, and characters die in unusual ways – including one character who wakes up and we get a POV while their guts are being eaten! However, I didn’t feel like the movie went far enough – we don’t quite reach Evil Dead 2 / Braindead levels of insanity, while the rules and motivations of the creatures aren’t really explored very well.
Overall, a decent movie well worth watching, but beer and like-minded friends will improve it no end.
Rating: 
Human Centipede (First Sequence)
Two American girls are travelling through Germany and are invited to a party. They get lost on the way there, and have a flat tyre, and have problems getting help. They walk to a remote house in the woods, but are drugged and kidnapped by the owner. He’s an insane doctor who has decided he wants to create a new creature by stitching 3 people together mouth-to-anus.
This was the disappointment of the festival to me, though a lot of people seemed to click with it. The problem for me was the depressing level of conventionalism. I was hoping for something twisted and brilliant, along the lines of Cronenberg classics such as Videodrome or Dead Ringers. What I got started as 30-40 minutes of astoundingly idiotic main characters getting trapped in a situation we’ve seen in hundreds of other movies. This is disappointing (despite some amusing humour), given that it’s a (given the central premise) resolutely uncommercial movie made by Tom Six, an avant-garde artist.
The film picks up substantially when the doctor finally explains to his “patients” what he’s about to do. Once that happens and the surgery takes place, the remainder of the movie is rather uncomfortable, though still not a twisted as I’d hoped. It’s disgusting and weird for sure, but we don’t get much time with the experiment before it’s inevitably interrupted. Once this happens, it almost seems like the director had an end point in mind, and forces the movie into that direction, even though the method makes no sense.
There are things to like about the movie. There are several moments that will make you squirm in your seat. I also liked the fact that the people who ends up on the front end of the “centipede” is a Japanese man who speaks only in Japanese, making it end more difficult for the girls at the back. Tom Six also seems to have a very good feel for when to show gore and when to keep everything implied for maximum effect. Final accolades need to be given to actor Dieter Lasar who plays the doctor – think a cross between Udo Kier and Christopher Walken, his performance carries the film.
Overall, it’s not a bad début, but what you’re imagining when reading about the film is probably as potent as anything contained within it. The full title of the movie is “Human Centipede (First Sequence)”, as Six is apparently working on a follow-up that’s built like a slasher movie and features a 15 person chain. Should be interesting…
Rating:
Coffin Rock
A couple in a small Australian town are having marital problems due to their inability to conceive a baby. They go to a family planning clinic to get tested, and while there the wife gets the attention of a security guard, Evan. He follows her back home, and stalks her until he manages to catch her at a vulnerable moment for a one-night stand. She finds out she’s pregnant soon after, and while trying to work out who the father actually is, Evans proves that’s he’s unwilling to let go of the relationship she believes they have.
Every year, there’s a couple of movies at Frightfest that don’t fit solidly into the horror genre. This is the one that really sticks out for me this year – it’s really just a thriller. That’s not a bad think necessarily, and it did provide a little bit of a respite between the relative insanity of the movies around it, but it’s not anything special. The relationships between the characters progress as you’d expect, and while Sam Parsonson is great as the psychotic Irishman Evan, there’s not all that much of note. A passable time-waster.
Rating:
Night of the Demons
The party of the year is held at a house that suffered great tragedy many years before. After the police shut the party down, the few remaining people find they are trapped in the house, with the host transformed into a demon. They have to stop the evil presence before the demons possess everybody – by coincidence, the exact number required to allow the demons to take over the world.
Director Adam Gierasch is a Frightfest fixture, who along with his partner (now wife) Jace Anderson has written some variable scripts including Mother Of Tears, Spiders and The Toolbox Murders. With Mother Of Tears, it was clear that their scripts were better than the resulting movies, so Gierasch has put his money where his mouth is (so to speak) and moved to directing. His début, Autopsy, from last year’s Frightfest was decently entertaining but forgettable fare to my mind, though many seemed to enjoy it.
Thankfully, this remake of the 80s classic is a step up. I haven’t seen the original for a long time, but there are a few sequences here that directly reference it (such as the lipstick/nipple scene). Other than that, we have a fast-moving and self-consciously cheesy movie with plenty of gore and action. It’s certainly nothing special, but entertaining with some interesting cameos (including original star Linnea Quigley) and an amusing performance by Edward Furlong. If you’re going to be watching 80s horror remakes, may as well make it fun movies like this one.
Rating:
Clive Barker’s Dread
A college student develops a relationship with a teacher who takes him under his wing. He first wants to create a project based around discovering peoples’ darkest, deepest fears, but this soon turns to obsession and violence.
I don’t remember much about Clive Barker’s original short story, except that it creeped me out a lot when I read it. As the only non-supernatural story in his original Books Of Blood series, Barker’s story has divided fans, but for me it was one of the most effective. I had been looking forward to this adaptation, but it’s unfortunately quite bland.
Like any attempt to expand a short story into a feature, there’s a lot of padding. Here, we have new characters (I believe anyway), such as a girl covered in birthmarks who is driven to extremes by humiliation. This doesn’t add much to the central concept, and merely makes the movie drag when it removes itself from its central concept.
The last 10 minutes or so contains scenes I remember vividly from the short story, and these are also the most effective parts of the movie. It’s great to see an independent producer tackling these stories though, but hopefully the next movies will be better expanded from the classic short stories.
Rating:
Black
A French bank robber is called to Dakar to take part in an easy score, but things go wrong. He’s soon embroiled in an uncontrollable situation involving African police, criminals and a gang boss who’s slowly being turned into a snake creature by a voodoo priestess.
As already mentioned, I was very tired during this screening and can only give a rough idea of how it is. What I saw is great, a throwback to blaxploitation movies such as Shaft In Africa, with some bizarre supernatural overtones. The soundtrack is great, but I was feeling that the movie was a little too long, especially with the decent action sequences seeming quite repetitive. Worth checking out, though I’ll have to revisit it before I can make a real assessment.
Rating:
[...] original post here: Frightfest 2009 – Day 4 Share and [...]
[...] : Frightfest 2009 – Day 4 [...]
[...] More here: Frightfest 2009 – Day 4 [...]