A week in but we’re still not done! It starts hurting a bit at this point. But, you know, a good hurt.
Let’s dispense with the first two quickly, as they were both forgettable.
V/H/S Halloween – A collection of “found footage” ultra low budget shorts. They can all be summed up as “something to do with a shakycam and all your haunted house props in the off season.” Vaguely amusing, mostly snoozing. 2/5 stars.
Deathstalker – A remake of the 1984 fantasy film. Daniel Bernhardt is our sword-swinging antihero cursed by an amulet he looted off a dying prince. He will have to defeat way too many glistening latex monsters and stop-motion critters to defeat a prophecy or something. What will carry the day? The poorly aimed magic missiles of the lizard-midget Doodad? The cute scrappy but utterly ineffective thief girl? A magical four-bladed sword made by a bored kid in shop class? Lead guitar by Slash on the song “Deathstalker?” Fight choreography straight out of the worst Hercules: The Legend Continues episodes? We’ll see. A fun throwback to bad 1980s fantasy movies, but not, you know… Good. The pacing was leaden. 2/5 stars.
There was a “20 years of the Masters of Horror” panel with Don Coscarelli, Joe Dante, and Ernest Dickerson; I could only catch a couple minutes of it though before running to one of the best movies of the fest.
A Woman Called Mother (Dia Bukan Ibu) – Genuinely terrifying. I watch a lot of horror and can’t remember the last time I got actually scared by a movie but woo doggie this one did it.
An Indonesian movie (the writer/director has been at Fantastic Fest before, in 2021 with martial arts actioner Preman), it’s about a single mom and her two teenage kids, a boy and a girl (the eldest and primary lead) moving out into the sticks where their uncle lives to start a hair salon a couple years after the father left. It has deep and complex character interaction very realistic to a partially-broken family. Does the mom regret being a mother? How does she reclaim her womanhood while also a single mom to two kids? How does the bond between the siblings weather their new life circumstances? How do you balance living a family member with the consequences of their mental health issues? Hey why does mom slaughter chickens every day? Are the kids just being really suggestible because they spend their spare time filming “ghosts are here” content for social media, or did they really see something weird in the mirror? The girl’s subjective observation vs reality can be hazy… Oh but don’t worry it ramps up hard as the movie barrels toward its climax! It almost lags a couple times- there’s twice you think “oh the movie might be over” but that’s just it starting another level up of crazy.
Expertly done, every bit as good as a Hereditary or other modern horror touchstone. This isn’t “good for an Indonesian movie” it’s top tier. It’s the director’s first horror movie and he’s got the touch for sure. 5/5 stars.
Between this and Ikatan Darah the Indonesians are on fire this year! Afterwards I made sure to find the director and actor of the older sister, who had both come to Austin for the premiere, and told them how good it was.
Then there was another secret screening. I waited in the standby line but couldn’t get in, and by that time it was too late to see something else. It was the new Gore Verbinski movie “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” starting Sam Rockwell, apparently. I’d never heard of it but later I heard that folks tended to like it. My late showing of horror comedy Coyotes was like three hours away – I went and got some dinner and killed an hour, and then I just couldn’t take it and went home.
Geek Related 