Saturday at Fantastic Fest! And it was a really solid lineup I saw today.
Welcome to Dolly’s House – A Taiwanese rotoscoped animated movie about a “eerie sites” type influencer, her flower arranging boyfriend, and a famous and mysterious dollmaking lady. And then it goes bananas. It’s super stylish and beautiful, and is one of the few treatments of influencer characters that wasn’t trite or annoying. In the end it had a very effective message of a girl being an influencer trying to fill the gap inside her left by her craving love and only getting a bunch of poor substitutes.
Visually it sometimes reminded me of Paprika, but with modern techniques like you see in Blue Eyed Samurai. 5/5
And then – another VHS based horror movie, like Death of a Yellow Bird from yesterday. There was another VHS horror movie, Playhouse, that got really good buzz and I wasn’t able to get into all fest 😦
Posthumous – A VHS tape haunting slash familial trauma movie! Zoe, a thirty year old woman “with a shitty aura” goes back home to hang out with her burnout dad and rummage through historical knickknacks for her birthday, which is always marred by her mom dying of cancer when she was born. But mom made some proactive video birthday wishes for her first 21 years (over the course of time, and I was initially very concerned that her mom was pregnant every year like clockwork when she filmed these till it became more clear). Turns out her parents hung out with the new agers next door back in the day but Zoe’s dad warns her to stay away from the “pot selling witch” next door. Then it ramps up from your normal VHS tape supernatural horror to Hellraiser level. It’s really well done, though I kept getting turned off by the missteps – like there’s diegetic video viewing which was good but then also there were just gratuitously inserted video shots and/or filters direct to audience which were obviously manipulative and not necessary because there were good bones there already. Also in the end there was just a bit too much explaining and a bit too much denouement – 4/5, if it had been tauter it’d hit 5/5.
This next one was for sure on my must watch list if only because last year’s Indian vampire movie Sister Midnight was one of my favorites and this looked stylish as heck.
Half – A movie in Malayam, which as a dumb American I’ve never heard of but it’s the language of a southern Indian state. It’s their first international release and first time at a film festival! And it’s a banger.
We have a pair of smoldering twins (the girl is mute, the boy a hunk) who get run off the road and murdered by some road bandits in the Rajistan desert. However, it turns out they are half vampires! So when night comes they heal up and go on a revenge spree.
Apparently Indians also like them some torture porn as the pair meted out gruesome justice while the bad guys also get their dhampir torturing in. It has a bopping music soundtrack and intense action and Silat-infused fight choreography from Very Tri Yulisman who worked on The Raid and The Raid 2 among other high velocity actioners. Kinda reminded me of The Crow. Except Indian. And twins. And in the desert. Anyway, a wild ride! 4/5
Ever seen Role Models? Knights of Badassdom? I guess “norms go into a LARP” is a whole genre now. To explain this, LARP, or “live-action roleplay”, is where a whole bunch of people get together in the woods to pretend to be elves and stuff and have a big organized event where they do quests. Like Dungeons & Dragons but outside.
Game Master – A French movie about a single corporate salesman dad who pursues his daughter, who is skipping her business school interview, into a massive LARP. Hijinks ensue. The director, who does a TV series that is like a French Curb Your Enthusiasm, describes it as “the wedding of Lord of the Rings and cringe comedy” which is pretty accurate. Goofy fun, family values, solidly in the “good hearted LARP subgenre.” Suitable for the family, which is unusual for Fantastic fest movies. Sentimental but watchable. 3/5
And to round out the night, the midnight showing was a bood old fashioned brutal slum apartment murder fest, like they do.
Kick On – An Australian movie about four friends out partying all night. They need some more coke and so they go to a guy… a crack fueled son of a Russian mobster who has a Roman fixation. Well it all goes bad and gruesome bludgeoning, wounding, and killing go on and on since the crooks are only barely competent. Mean and brutal but pretty straightforward and solidly done. The Brisbane Bandits are in the credits for some reason. 3/5
Whew, day 3 of movies going well past 1 AM, I’m starting to feel it. Will Sunday be a day of rest?
