Day 2 (and sadly, as always, the last day) was rather more eventful in many ways than the first day. Highlight of the night has to go to Jason Eisener (director of Hobo With A Shotgun) dropping his trousers at the end of his opening Q&A, then returning in his boxers to answer the audience Q&A following the movie!
There were a few extra surprises, as well. We were treated to a preview of one of the special features from an upcoming remaster of Don’t Look Now, and an amusing short called Zombie Musical. Freebies also flowed quick and fast (well, apart from the Troll Hunter t-shirts that Alan was struggling to offload). I managed to bag 2 free DVDs (the dodgy looking Death Tube and Gnaw), a Drive Angry T-shirt and poker chip and some Skyline glowsticks (!), as well as buying the official T-shirt.
First up was the deliberately bizarre Rubber from French director Quentin Dupieux, better known as electronic musician Mr. Oizo. The plot is simple but strange enough – an abandoned rubber tyre gains sentience and psychokinetic powers and goes on a killing spree. However, the execution takes further left-field turns with the entire thing being watched over by a group of paying spectators thorough binoculars, and some characters being perfectly aware that they’re only acting in a movie.
Generally speaking, it’s a decent movie that’s worth watching, but it’s more of a dry comedy along the lines of Aki Kaurismaki or Jim Jarmusch with a dash of surrealism than an actual horror movie. The humour is rather strange, and while the gore moments (mostly exploding heads) are amusing gooey, it’s one of those films that’s pretty borderline for a genre festival, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Next up was the thoroughly politically-minded Territories, which may get retitled Checkpoint by the time it makes it to general release. Again, the story here is deceptively simple. A group of 5 people are travelling back from a wedding through backroads when they encounter a state border check. The officers are at first tough but fair, but seem to take a special interest in the driver, who is of Middle Eastern racial origin. Before long, the situation deteriorates and one of them is killed, while the rest find themselves taken to a backwoods re-enactment of Guantanamo Bay.
There’s a few major flaws with this otherwise solidly directed movie. The first is that, while the political subtext is a welcome change from the typical backwoods torture genre, it’s rather too obvious. The second problem is that the focus abruptly switches to a new character toward the back third of the film, and this is a little confusing and never satisfactorily resolved. There may have been a further subtext there I was missing, but if so I missed it.
Overall, a decent and well constructed thriller for the most part, but it’s too flawed to wholeheartedly recommend.
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The Shrine was the next on the lineup – the new, serious film from the director of the decent horror comedy Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. The story here follows a journalist for a small-time investigative magazine who’s tired of being shunted to minor projects. She sees the story of disappearances of travellers through Eastern Europe as her last chance at getting a real career and goes along to the village where the last missing person was last known to be, along with her photographer boyfriend and her intern. Needless to say, not everything is as it seems and they find a dangerous situation unfold.
This is one of those movies that impresses and annoys at alternate intervals. To start with, it’s the typical moron movie, with characters making stupid and rash decisions that would guarantee them problems even if the event they encountered didn’t happen. This continues throughout the movie, with characters often doing what the plot demands, rather than what any intelligent person would do. This is a common criticism of the horror genre as a whole, and this does us no favours.
Having said that, when this film works, it really works. A key scene involving fog and a statue is perfectly executed, and there’s a final twist during the climax that’s amazingly effective and turns most of the movie on its head. It also has to be commended for daring to use the native language for all of the native characters, unsubtitled. That really does add to the sense of confusion and oppression (vital for the twist to work) and helps identify with some otherwise worthless characters.
Overall, a worthwhile watch, but one that fails to impress as often as it succeeds.
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The only remake on the roster was Mother’s Day, nominally based on a Troma movie. I’ve not seen the original, but a little research suggests that only the general mother character has really carried over. Since it’s in the normal remit of my blog, I’ll probably review the original in the near future.
Anyway, this remake takes the form of a home invasion movie. A bank robbery has gone wrong, one of the brothers involved has been shot and badly injured, and they flee to the pre-arranged meeting point of their mother’s house. Unfortunately, they’ve now been on the run for several months and have not heard that their mother’s home has been foreclosed and picked up on by a couple who are currently entertaining several groups of friends in the basement. When they realise their mistake, they force on of the guests to attend to their shot brother, while they get their mother and sister to meet them at the house. When she arrives, it’s instantly clear that the mother is the one who calls the shots and she has a very twisted view of what’s right and wrong in this situation.
While the ensemble arranged for the movie is pretty decent all around, the star of the show is inevitably Rebecca De Mornay as the mother. Simultaneously chilling psychotic, persuasive and charming, she give one of the great performances of recent horror movies, surpassing her own role in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle as a benchmark of female psychos.
It’s not quite the best home invasion movie of recent times, but it’s a notch above most recent horror movies and would have been my favourite of the festival had I Saw The Devil not shown the previous night. It’s also a revelation regarding director Darren Lynn Boseman – previously best known for Saw 2 – 4 and Repo: the Genetic Opera. It’s easily a step up from any of those films, and he mostly dials back on the more annoying tactics he normally uses behind the camera. Definitely recommended.
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Well, I was really looking forward to Hobo With A Shotgun and all the signs were there at first glance. Rutger Hauer starring in a grindhouse homage assembled via the same trailer-to-movie technique used for Machete. how could it lose? Well, while most people seemed to love it, it was only fairly entertaining in my opinion.
I think my problem was the Troma style direction of the movie. While Troma has its fans, I’ve never really been one of them and their more outlandish movies tend to leave me cold. It’s just a matter of taste, of course, but I found it as hard to get really into Hobo as I do with many of Troma’s titles.
Having said that, there’s plenty to recommend here. When the characters aren’t being straight-up annoying, there’s a lot of laughs to be had. There’s homages to everything from 70s fighting hobo movies to 80s Italian exploitation to Bumfights references. The movie is shot with an incredible, eye-popping colour palette, and the gore is plentiful when it comes.
Overall, a decent, crowd-pleasing end to the night but one that’s defeinitely experienced with a crowd.
Rating:
(a decent Norwegian found footage movie with an interesting sense of humour) and Adam Green’s segment of 
(the amusing Diary of Anne Frankenstein) so I didn’t miss anything too important IMHO. By this point, I’d pretty much decided I couldn’t be bothered with the Discovery screen as well – far too many people queuing far too early for my tastes! As ever, I bet I’ll catch up with all the films eventually anyway…
) but what we got was decent, branded with the Kill List logo. I got free copies of Fanboys and Black, both films at previous festivals, and a range of goods including a Troll Hunter survival guide. Overall for movies, a reasonable day but there’s still nothing that really stood out – Tucker & Dale was the most enjoyable experience but that was rather in many ways.
