Here’s the full film guide for the fest. How this works is that there’s usually 5 showings a day (11, 2, 5, 8, 11) and you have to select your movies (if you’re a peasant with a Fan level badge like me) at 10 AM sharp every day, when a solid thousand fest-goers all click reload in a frenzy trying to be the first ones in and you have about 60 seconds to get tickets before they’re all gone. Then you leap in your car to get to the theater in time for the first showing at 11 and ride it hard till you go home at like 1:30 AM. Today I got 4 out of 5 of my first picks, but in the first slot I couldn’t get into “Ghost In The Cell” and went with my backup, Roma Elastica.
Roma Elastica – A 1980s glam Italy fever dream. The most European movie it is possible to make. Well, southern Europe, so it makes moping and death look good. (Eastern Europe makes moping and death look brutal and Northern Europe makes moping and death look philosophical. That’s your 101 guide to European cinema.) Anyway, Marion Cotillard is a (slightly) aging French actress with a newly discovered brain tumor who goes to 1980s Italy to film a movie. The movie is ridiculous, the people are ridiculous, her pain not so much. It’s like if you took a very vague idea about what The Substance is about and made it sooooo European. Fair warning, I laughed out loud a good number of times but I think I was the only one who did. It’s satire but a weird kind of satire. Often I find films about filmmaking/actors to be dreadful and narcissistic but so far she’s 2 for 2 on making it work (last year’s The Ice Tower was also really good). Anyway, you have to go into this one with the right mindset and have fun with it. 3/5
Then the high point of the day was another film whose lead was dying of cancer! Talk about a theme.
Death of a Yellow Bird – A guy with a terminal cancer diagnosis goes to his old family home to hang out alone and come to grips with it. But is he alone? What’s the deal with his father and his brother? This one is really good, a VHS-tape supernatural slow burn tension builder about family trauma and healing.
I did see the “twist” coming a mile away but it kept me on the edge of my seat till the end. Well acted (basically one actor, not counting videos, memories, and voices on the phone), directed, shot, sound design, really good. And not gruesome at all, it’s family safe (though scary). 4.5/5.
Then, a very promising premise that didn’t deliver.
Kung Fu Deadly – An Irish movie set in modern Dublin where jiangshi (Chinese hopping vampires) led by an undead Chinese pirate lady are revived by a feckless vaping… mobster (?) and attack! Or at least disrupt the rat population and take over a karaoke lounge. A Chinese-Irish version of Simon Pegg and an African-Irish version of Nick Frost who are brothers (?) who work as exterminators fight them off with the powers of… Ancient Chinese magic? Family? Chinese dance? Spice bags and Guinness? Not a bad premise but the humor and action were lacking and the melodrama gave me diabetes. It’s a shame. There’s a cool coin sword and everything. But not enough kung fu, not enough hopping vampires. 2.5/5
Godmother – Hmm, it’s tough to review this one without giving the big twist away… OK light spoiler warning, because this starts out like your usual Airbnb slasher (a young couple goes to a desert house rental for a romantic weekend, her wild sister tags along, and the old folks of the area are weird…) and ends up like Rosemary’s Baby meets Hellraiser. Quite a ride! And the production of this indie film sounds equally grueling. Filmed in 16 days, co-written by Alanah Pearce from the game Dispatch and eventually given money by streamer Jacksepticeye to get it over the finish line. The result is a really good horror movie! Great performances by both female leads. 4/5
And Alanah Pearce was in attendance! She’s built like Malevola in real life. The next movie was a “secret screening”, which means you don’t know what it is until you’re in the theater! Speculation was rampant about what it’d be, the majority seemed to think a new V/H/S movie, but not so…
In a Violent Nature: Part 2 – Basically an updated Friday the 13th where an implacable undead killer with an old timey fireman mask instead of a hockey mask and the most tenuous of backstories rips his way through a summer camp. You get about 5-10 minutes of setup and then it’s full tilt kill. This is one of those movies that has no point except to innovate around the gruesomeness of the murders, stretching the limits of special effects and taste. Getting hacked in two with a hatchet is the most mundane way to go in this one; camp counselors get various objects pushed through them and are dismembered and decapitated and blood eagled for a couple hours. It doesn’t have the touch of whimsy of a Terrifier movie (winking hell clown murders!), it’s just murder porn. Not my cup of tea, but well done for what it is. At least the main kid has a character arc (debatably). I’ll give it a point for good cinematography even at night. 2/5
And that’s 5 films down! More to come on Day 3.
