I saw the hit movie Sinners last night and it was awesome! Like From Dusk Till Dawn but, frankly, better. The first musical sequence was one of the most successful “mix real world and dreamtime/spirit world” sequences ever made.
But this isn’t a movie review, it’s taking a hot new vampire power for your Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons game!
So the Irish vampire lord slash… demon? Remmick (expertly played by Jack O’Connell) had the ability to know everything his new vampire thralls knew in life. I’m not talking about that, though that’d be fine – but there seems to be a somewhat similar but way more limited effect on the newly made vampire spawn. They don’t appear to know everything the master does or have a hivemind, but they all appear to specifically inherit his Irish singing and dancing abilities. (Unless he just happened upon two crackers who were pro musicians to kill by pure chance.) In fact, you could perhaps frame it as the master is able to pass one of his skills down to his spawn.
I realized that this is the key to a lot of vampire group creation in D&D type games and is a brilliant idea. Because in general adventure creators always want to put together a bunch of similar vampires. A vampire band! A vampire ninja clan! A vampire monastery! A vampire Wall Street firm!
And currently adventure writers get that by:
In the lore, the vampire spends a super long time assessing candidates and only vamps ones with the desired skills. Very rare.
In the lore, the vampire came across an existing group of semi identical folks and vamped them. Fairly common.
Cheat and just say “whatever, all these vampires have Stealth +12 even though they were just random villagers because I need it for the plot, man.” Most common.
But, a small, thematic, and frankly just practical addition to the vampire’s Create Spawn power could just be “the master can bestow [one of his skills/his highest level skill] upon a spawn.”
In the world of super complicated PF2e type rulesets I’m sure that’s abusable, so you could add some level cap or something, “they become proficient in the skill and gain max ranks available at their character level.” Maybe the vampire has to just pick one skill forever, or maybe it’s locked to whatever their highest ranked skill was when they became a vampire. “Well, I guess we need Profession: stringed instrument based attack plans boys, that’s what I was good at in life!”
Create Spawn (Su)
A vampire can create spawn out of those it slays with blood drain or energy drain, provided that the slain creature is of the same creature type as the vampire’s base creature type. The victim rises from death as a vampire in 1d4 days. This vampire is under the command of the vampire that created it, and remains enslaved until its master’s destruction. A vampire may have enslaved spawn totaling no more than twice its own Hit Dice; any spawn it creates that would exceed this limit become free-willed undead. A vampire may free an enslaved spawn in order to enslave a new spawn, but once freed, a vampire or vampire spawn cannot be enslaved again.
A vampire created in this way inherits the master’s highest ranked skill, becoming proficient in it as a class skill and gaining ranks in the skill equal to its character level.
What do you think?
Heck you could add it as an option. Since his vampire spawn were getting up in minutes not days, clearly he had “Improved Create Spawn” where if you make spawn they are up in 1d4 minutes not 1d4 days and get one of your key skills.
You could make any of this work on vampires and not vampire spawn or vice versa (in Pathfinder these are different, vampire spawn aren’t a template they’re just like “ghouls” in other-vampire-fiction parlance, and a vampire can choose to make new full vampires or just vampire spawn).
Not everything’s a winner. But it’s a range, the 4’s you might like if they’re your thing… The ones I rated 1-2 I have trouble understanding how anyone would like, but someone made them!
I, The Executioner (4/10) was a perfectly serviceable Korean cop thriller movie, a sequel to 2014’s “Veteran,” apparently with the same Major Crimes squad from the first. A serial killer is killing people who got off easy from the justice system and they must catch him. Like a PG rated Se7en. It was OK. Some action but not “whoa check out that martial arts or gun fu” level. A lot of modern Korean film including this seems like watered down versions of what already exists. Not much more to say, watch it if you are bored and are really into Korean shows.
Frankie Freako (4/10) is a silly retro puppet movie starring Fake Young Dana Carvey and Fake Chrissy Tiegen where the hopelessly square husband calls the “Frankie Freako” 1-900 line to try to get less bland and suddenly little Garbage Pail Kids type puppets are tearing up his house. It is a reference to “Freddie Freaker” from the late ’80’s. It’s lightly entertaining but not great – who is this for? It’d be PG if not for an explicit neck wound and bear-trapped leg – content wise otherwise it’s solidly there’s at 11-12 year olds. Like, Gremlins is spicier. They could have gone hard R with it and had Frankie showing Fake Dana Carvey how to Eiffel Tower Fake Chrissy Tiegen and play up the gore, but no, “freaky partying” is drinking Fart Cola and spray painting the living room. The puppets didn’t have much funny dialogue either, just “let’s get freaky!” I didn’t hate it, it kept me engaged, but I don’t know who it’s for that would pay to see it.
Disembodied aka Aberration (4/10) is a 4k remaster of a 1998 film that you would swear was a surrealist horror movie from the ’60’s. A lady takes a room (technically, the boiler room) in the worst hotel ever and then decorates her room with her jarred brain and bathtub full of, uh, vaginal nodules and then starts growing oozing lumps. And is being tracked by an Evil Colonel Sanders looking guy from the Plasmaster Corporation. Luckily her next door hooker friend is on her side. Very gooey and trippy. The dialogue is hilarious but there’s not enough of it, with large parts having the put-me-to-sleep effect of slow moving old time horror. There is *lots* of vaginal imagery but no actual vaginas. Unclear resolution on the ending. This movie does not look great, I shudder to imagine it prior to this uplift work. I mean, I get the guy made it in his spare time with his spare money but 1998 horror movies were like “The Faculty” and “Ringu” and this looks like one of the “we just got out of the black & white era” films on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Universal Language (4/10) is an absurdist – comedy? – that merges a fantasy post-Quebec independence Canada with Iran and is in half French and half Farsi, with Tim Hortons becoming a samovar-bearing tea house. Which is cool but… I struggled to find a point and even to stay awake (and this was a 2:30 PM showing). There was some fun to be had seeing some Persian kids from the French immersion school wandering around on their youthful shenanigans in a snow-covered beige-building-filled Alberta that kinds looks like a sand-covered beige-building-filled Iran but other than that it was a bunch of visually interesting scenes where you felt like “this must MEAN something” but it’s totally opaque what besides the single obvious family regret angle. It has mood and technique but plot and acting not so much. I loved last year’s Moroccan art house film by Sofia Alaoui, Animalia, and Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home At Night; it’s not like I can’t get behind weird slow Middle Eastern stuff, I just didn’t get this one. I was briefly excited by the appearance of an “eclairagiste” in the credits and I thought they might have an eclair expert on staff but it just means lighting tech. Fucking Quebec.
Baby Invasion (3/10) defies easy explanation. It doesn’t have plot – at best you could say it has a loose conceit of people streaming themselves performing home invasions using baby face filters with comments streaming over the screen with a deafening techno as the entire soundtrack, but interspersed with trippy random Unreal Engine computer graphic kaleidoscopic… scenes? Segments? Anyway, even writing this down makes it seem more coherent than it is. Though strangely it’s not terrible; I could sit through it without intense regret. Not that I would recommend it; it’s the kind of thing that should just play on a big screen during a rave or something. Oddly non-graphic content wise though, possibly because the budget was “a dozen yo-yos and their airsoft gun collection and one guy who can use Unreal Engine.” And it is impressive the sheer volume of twitch stream comments they generated, thousands and thousands.
Ick (2/10) is a high school horror movie like The Faculty, but less subtle and played constantly at x2 speed. I am not exaggerating; I thought maybe we were just starting with a double-speed flashback or title scene but no it just kept going like that. No time for emotional beats or memorable sights, just ultrafast self-aware basic GenZ quips and CGI death. And 30-ish 2000s pop-punk needle drops. Not only did I not like it, now I am nursing a headache. The filmmaker wanted to make “a PG-13 starter horror movie for his 13 year old.” Maybe just put them on ADHD meds instead.
Zenithal (1/10, no link I can find which is probably for the best) is a wild mistake of a French movie about, I guess, penis oriented martial arts? Which could be goofy fun in concept, but then there were zero martial arts – or penises, except for the blurred/clothed three foot penis of the victim who was found “dick-capitated.” The height of humor here is practicing “Sexkido” and “being less genital and more zen-ithal.” If you are not guffawing by now then this movie has nothing for ya. Production value hovers around “don’t spend more than $20 on set dressing” level. And there’s a weird choice to make it very much like it’s a sequel to a previous movie (it’s not) and relying on alluded to prior events to make you give a crap about any of these characters. I made it 3/4 of the way through and finally the 20 minute long speech from the incel villain kept putting me to sleep and I just left. Come on, French people can do martial arts movies! District B-13! This made me sad and angry and sleepy. But I guess I’m happy the French are swinging for the fences, we get Planet B out of them in the same year, so if this is the price we have to pay, OK.
And that’s the Fantastic Fest 2024 roundup! Only two real stinkers and a lot of good stuff, I really enjoyed the programming this year.
These movies weren’t perfect, but if you are into their genre you may enjoy them, they are certainly… completed films! (Or TV series episodes, in one case.) Keep an eye out for the Sebastian Stan double shot!
Cloud (6/10) Is an interesting Japanese film about a guy making a living reselling on online auction sites who gets a bunch of disgruntled people in his wake that want to torture-murder him for what seems like extremely minor reasons. Very unusual escalation that seems to comment on a common societal fantasy of violence, ambivalence to new economic realities, that small sins are a downward spiral, and that you can trust no one if you are involved in even the lightest of shadiness. High realism in the action and shooting and such – not escalated in either the action or gore dimensions, very naturalistic. No close ups or quick cuts but very matter of fact filming that I felt was effective. Are all Japanese folks on the edge just looking for some excuse to go nuts? Maybe!
Teacup (6/10) – We got to see the first two episodes of an upcoming Peacock series that seems like a modern adaptation of Lovecraft’s Color out of Space. We are told it is based on the Robert McCammon novel “Stinger”, adapted by Ian McCulloch who also served as showrunner. “But without the dome. There’s two dome things already.” Good call, one “city in a dome” thing is more than enough (well, the Simpsons Movie can be the second, but now you’re cut off, horror writers). It’s a family out on a farm – veterinarian mom, cheating dad (Dr. Nick from Grey’s Anatomy), two kids, a grandma who likes to party (“weed helps her MS” but I’m pretty sure she’d party anyway). Animals start acting weird, strange folks roam the woods, and a guy in a gas mask and gun paints a line around the farm and warns them via whiteboard not to cross it. Then electronics cut out and demented shit happens. Good suspenseful horror. The season plays out over 48 hours. We are not supposed to “give out spoilers” but after 2 half hour episodes we don’t know a thing about what’s going on so… It was pretty cool, though with “NBC” level character interaction drama (like, not movie level dialogue and acting but better than CW level). The child actor playing the young son who plays a key role is good, which can make or break this kind of story. Worth watching if you have Peacock; probably not a reason to go subscribe if you don’t.
Escape from the 21st Century (6/10) is a crazy and inventive Chinese movie that is kind of Goonies meets Shaolin Soccer meets Back To The Future 2 meets… Surreal stuff. I don’t even know. Teens in a wacky fight get tossed into a quarry full of chemicals and start time traveling (like, in their personal timeline, so as themselves in their adult future) forward and backward in time when they… Sneeze? Get knocked out? Want to? The rules are unclear but future them is dystopian as heck (organ harvesting… girlfriend banging a dwarf pimp for drugs…); they try to change the past and can’t, then they fight amonsgt each other and try again? Very gonzo, wide swings from goofy to dark, but of course the power of collectivism will prevail. A little too long and too random but net positive. Not all the effects were done yet, either, so it may squeeze out another point in the final analysis.
Don’t Mess With Grandma, aka Sunset Superman (6/10), is a fun light… home invasion movie!?! It’s like if Tyler Perry did one of the Jim Varney Ernest movies but starring Michael Jai White. I’m just sad that three of the home-invader family weren’t played by Paul, Jason, and June from How Did this Get Made because those three actors seemed adjacent to them (though younger, I guess. They can play their parents in the sequel!!!). Jai White is great as the put upon son of the grandma who has to juggle her needs along with not killing any of these fool crackers who are hell bent on robbing the place. It’s all very silly and has plenty of Dio music. The violence is mostly light and humorous, with one exception that was a bit of a jarring tonal shift. This won’t be for everyone, if my setup of “Madea in Ernest Scared Stupid” doesn’t do it for you, I certainly get it.
The Apprentice (6/10) was a secret screening, and was introduced by Sebastian Stan who plays Donald Trump in this biopic about his early years up through the ’80’s. Stan did a great job, he was barely recognizable as himself at times but was a spot on Trump. It shows his rise as a real estate developer and power player, increasingly at the expense of his family, wife, and friends, and his descent into diet pills and serial adultery and spousal abuse. The set design was stunning. In the end though it’s a movie about banal evil that does not get its comeuppance, which while accurate is unsatisfying. It just ends with him getting lipo and Roy Cohn, his lawyer, mentor, and fixer, dying of AIDS. It’s good in that it’s balanced, it’s not trying to apologize for Trump or do a hack job on him, but as a result it left me a little nonplussed. “So you’ve shown us Trump is a bit of a corrupt dick. Cool story, bro. I think everyone knows that just some people like it and some people don’t.” Even biopics need a point, otherwise they’re a documentary with actors. Giving it a bonus point for Sebastian Stan.
A Different Man (6/10) has Sebastian Stan playing a man with extreme facial deformity trying to be an actor in New York. Since it’s New York he gets the occasional weird look but otherwise gets along fine. He has a crush on his playwright neighbor. And then he gets an experimental treatment that completely removes the deformity and now he’s Sebastian Stan. He makes the weird choice to assume a new name and tell everyone he’s a friend of the deformed guy who died by suicide. Things initially go well for him – real estate success! Women who want to bang Sebastian Stan! But then when he hears the playwright ex-neighbor is doing a play about “a woman and her relationship with her deformed neighbor” he starts to get obsessed and things go downhill especially when a new facially deformed guy shows up. High concept and cool, but it really starts to meander and there are four times when you think it’s the end but no, here’s another piece, adding… What? It’s also tough to get insight into the mind of our protagonist, even once the makeup is gone he’s played pretty cryptically between times he trips out. Was there really even a character arc? I’m not sure, which is weird for how much happens to the lead. It was OK but I think the script thinks it’s more clever than it is. Giving it a bonus point for Sebastian Stan.
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire (5/10) is a faux true crime documentary about a serial killer named “Mr. Shiny” in the San Bernardino area. Starts normal and then ramps up into Lovecraft style weirdness. A little slow and tips its hand into improbability well before the super weird stuff happens (I didn’t know it was a fake documentary when I sat down but the red flags piled up and it became apparent shortly in) but is a good home watch for true crime fans. And it has a post credits scene, which startled the few of us who hung back to plonk away on our phones.
Heavier Trip (5/10) is a sequel to a silly Finnish movie about the hardest of metal bands, Impaled Rektum, and their attempts at gaining metal cred and/or stardom (which are at odds, and one of the themes). Imprisoned for Nordic crimes against the public peace at the end of last movie, they are in Norwegian prison, which means escaping is easy when they find out they need to save the family reindeer slaughterhouse. Metal hijinks ensue, including hitching a ride with an established metal band whose lead singer is one Michael Brucker looking SOB and an ambivalent relationship with Japanese girl-idol metal band Babymetal. Their goal is to play at the German open air heavy metal festival Wacken to get the money, but the quest for fame intervenes. The power of friendship, of course, prevails. Something to watch if you are in a goofy mood and/or like metal.
Mr. Crocket (5/10) is a Black-helmed horror movie set in the VHS days about an evil Mr. Rogers who has died and comes back through the TV Freddy Krueger style to kill “naughty” parents and abduct kids to his hellscape. Some parents survive and want to get their kids back! Solid but doesn’t fully use a lot of its ideas effectively (like the horrific mascots, lots of great design to see very little use). Some funny bits some scary bits some just there bits. No subtlety here, just suddenly shrieking Mr. Crocket on TV screens. If Tales from the Hood had a kids-show segment, this would be it.
Terrifier 3 (5/10) – I’d never seen any of the Terrifier movies, just little clips on TikTok of the clown acting spooky. I was convinced to see it by the evil lobby clowns and crowd hype at the fest. It is basically the most gruesome murder/torture porn ever made. At the start the programmer warned “We don’t do content warnings at Fantastic Fest but if you are going to have problems with basically anything, run.” It’s supernatural in a Chucky sort of way where the rules are super unclear. They bravely tried to catch you up on the plot from Terrifier 1 and 2 with a flashback and A, B, C, and D plots, to middling effect. And then no man, woman, child, or animal is safe from getting their face torn off like an angry chimp on meth is on the loose by the clown and his… zombie girlfriend? At least two major characters get killed unceremoniously offscreen which is weird. The gore effects are the real star here; I have no idea how they so realistically show people e.g. getting full chainsawed from their genitalia on up in full screen with no cuts nothing left to the imagination. I don’t plan on going and watching more of them myself but they’re a thing.
What Happened to Dorothy Bell? (5/10) Is a found footage (though stretching credulity a bit on that point) movie about a female college student whose grandmother went off her rocker back in the day and – burned down a church? Stabbed the seven-year-old girl in the face? Then went back to work at the library and killed herself by throwing herself off a single story landing? Ok so the details don’t really check out but it’s scary and has an evil book. She has video sessions with a therapist who is a good argument for replacing mental health professionals with an AI because she had such weak basic responses. For a book oriented evil spirit it’s pretty good with the Internet too, it’s good to see demonic forces keeping their skill sets updated. Anyway, passable but barely, watch in the dark to get a couple frights.
Dead Talents Society (5/10) is a Taiwanese movie (yes, I said it; fuck you Chinese government) about ghost society where they have ghost-televised scaring contests; it owes a lot to Beetlejuice in terms of the “hapless new dead folks try to learn to be scary” plot. Funny takes on urban legend folklore and pretty typical Asian “the dead are all organized like we are in real life because we love bureaucracy from beyond the grave.” Some fun gags but way too slow and spaced out; I had trouble not snoozing and was really eager for it to be over. And I’m getting pretty sick of all the “ah genZs who can’t be bothered to do anything or care but just roll their eyes and mope around” as a theme; it’s lazy and usually not funny unless you have some new and clever take. YMMV but my patience with Asian media where all the acting is “unrealistic motivation TURNED UP TO ELEVEN” has run out. Full disclosure – many people loved this movie and it got some Fest awards so it may be for you especially if “Japanese Beetlejuice game show” sounds good to you. I’m just in a weird place with Asian movies right now.
Plenty of perfectly good movies of various types at this FF! Keep an eye out for a cluster of older movies that are still perfectly good in the middle.
Baby Assassins 3 aka Baby Assassins: Nice Days (8/10) is the latest in Yugo Sakmoto’s Japanese series of “two GenZ shrieky Japanese girls are John Wicks.” Literally; this is a series made by and with stunt people to show off action choreography and one of the lead girls, Saori Izawa, just got done doing stunts on John Wick 4. The action was top notch including some real knock down drag out hand-to-hand fights. And while the acting in between was still melodramatic to the max, it had some decent character moments, especially between our dynamic duo at the end. Make out already! I liked it better than the previous entry in the series (Baby Assasins: 2 Babies) – its action was better and character stuff not as silly.
Bookworm (8/10) – This year’s family movie! Last year Riddle of Fire surprised and delighted me. This year, we have a solid entry with Elijah Wood and a Kiwi girl cracking us up in between bouts of child endangerment. New Zealand precocious kid Mildred (Nell Fisher)’s mom gets landed in a coma from a faulty toaster and her baby daddy comes from the US to help care for her – Elijah Woods, playing a failed David Blaine style magician (“Illusionist!”) who knew mom for a couple hours in a convenience store parking lot in Vegas but hasn’t been in the picture since then. Then they go camping to try to get footage of the mythical Canterbury Panther (NZ’s Bigfoot of a big cat). Besides the predictable prickly daughter-father bonding is surprisingly dark and hilarious writing – no-filter dialogue and some real danger with brutally real consequences. But, you know, for kids! I hollered out loud at least five times during this film, sometimes in humor, sometimes in shock.
MadS (8/10) is a lively French movie about rave kids in the beginning of a zombie-type outbreak. A rich kid rave is not where you want your original superspreader event to be. And of course this in turn unleashes the paramilitary death squads. The gimmick here is that it is shot in one long 90 minute take, which really keeps up the momentum! Ok so I get that they’re all stoned and some have “the virus” but boy French people are excitable! The amount of squalling and hollering and thrashing and running around bashing into things is impressive and along with the one-shot format is one big thrill ride (the sound design is impressive too). I can’t imagine those actresses screaming like that for all that time straight, that’s some sore throats for sure. Anyway, a worthy take on day 0 zombie outbreak especially if you like things like 28 Days Later.
House of Spoils (8/10) sports a chef who has just gotten her big break opens a cauldron-to-table restaurant when the spirit of the witch that used to live in their rustic location starts whispering to her. A good horror movie leveraging our cultural love of hollering “Yes, Chef!” It has super solid production values, this should be a wide-release movie. An interesting roller coaster of twists about what’s going on in the plot and an atypical but welcome – if just a shred preachy – resolution. And despite some gross food scenes it had good ones as well; once it was over I popped down to the nearby Soto for a chili hamachi and lychee martini.
Saturday Night (8/10) was the first secret screening of Fantastic Fest; it’s about Lorne Michaels and the cast and crew getting ready for their first ever Saturday Night Live broadcast in 1975, in real-time for the 90 minutes leading up to its start. Jason Reitman directed and did extensive research and interviews to piece together the intense blend of humor, greed, pride, lust, and cocaine that was that time. Great performances emulating the comedy greats of the day especially of Chevy Chase and John Belushi. Frantic pace and lots of humor, some from the comedians but more from the ridiculous lengths Lorne has to go to in order to hit air (Belushi going missing! Drug induced lockjaw! The Standards & Practices lady! A llama! Studio suits! Milton Berle’s huge penis! Johnny Carson being a huge penis!). Mainstream (out of the ordinary for Fantastic Fest) but definitely worth seeing.
Mac and Me (8/10) is what a lot of these “zany” movies aspire to be. Sure it’s an ET ripoff from 1988, sure it’s full of Coke, McDonalds, and Sears product placement, but it is bananas in a great way. From the weird too-human naked aliens (like… sea-monkeys that have the face of Arseface from The Preacher) that do not even start to obey the laws of physics, to the absolutely wild child-in-wheelchair endangerment, to the full on spontaneous breakdance party at McDonalds (in the credits: “And starring Ronald McDonald as himself”), you absolutely do not expect what is about to happen in the next scene at any point. The audience shrieked in shock and hilarity many times. As a bonus they played the original alternate ending ripped from a Japanese laserdisc where a cop trips and DEAD CENTER SHOOTS WHEELCHAIR KID WHOSE BODY THEN WHEELS INTO A GASOLINE FIRE!?! “He’s going to be OK!” “He’s gone.” At any moment you don’t know if someone’s going to die in an abandoned cobalt mine or tear up a mall or OD on soda. They said “let’s take ET and turn it up to 11” and I’m here for it. I know this is a high rating for a movie that ended up on How Did This Get Made, but I enjoyed this screening more than the vast majority so I gotta be honest!
The Guest (7/10) was a 4K remaster of a 2014 thriller that goes from being a Hallmark movie about a guy who just got out of the military coming to visit the small town family of a dead brother in arms to help them and romance the sister, to Jason Bourne, to Friday the 13th in short order! Starring Dan Stevens aka Legion from the FX series (best Marvel TV series to date and I’ll fight anyone who says different) as the boy-next-door-psychopath, . All the family characters were great (except the dad; I was kinda rooting for soldier boy to seduce the wife tbh). Not perfect; the plot doesn’t entirely make sense and tries to be a little much in one sausage casing, but it’s gripping and a solid watch!
Raze (7/10) is another ten year old movie where a bunch of sick one percenter fucks kidnap women and keep them in an underground prison and make them fight to the death in a bare-knuckle arena or else they’ll kill ther loved ones (you know, standard one percenter shit). But not normal women, Aussie Zoe Bell (stuntwoman and actor, you may know her from Tarantino’s Death Proof) is our main character (and producer) and all the women are selected for being formidable – not (all) professional fighters but mostly with some history of violence. So it’s Hunger Games/Battle Royale-y; the women are trying to find a way out of the prison but are also having to just brutally bludgeon their fellow captives to death, friend and foe alike, if their number comes up. All the women actors were hell on wheels and making the most of the opportunity to be a badass. I don’t know why I had never heard of this movie before!
Bone Lake (7/10) sees a couple AirBnBing a nice lake house in the middle of nowhere and it turns out it’s “double booked” with another young hot couple and then the mind, sex, and murder games begin. Gripping and keeps you guessing! Not enough nudity for an erotic thriller though, and the gore level went from 0 to 60 pretty surprisingly at the end. The whole movie is just 4 actors, and their performances successfully drive the whole film! And the lovely house is effectively the fifth actor; it’s a great space for the setting (apparently the homeowner really hovered over them while filming) and since it’s the only location you get a really good feeling of the space. Shot in 18 days on a shoestring budget and is really, really good for that!
The Creep Tapes (7/10) was a secret screening – apparently there are a pair of movies I haven’t seen (Creep and Creep 2) and these are the first three episodes of a TV series following on that’ll be on AMC/Shudder. The crowd reacted favorably upon hearing this; I don’t like it when I hear “TV series” but it got me in a receptive mood. It’s basically a humorous spoof of a serial killer (Mark Duplass) filming his own exploits done super low budget (cast and crew: 5-6 people) and it’s really good! Funny but also startling and… well, creepy. Just goes to show a good story and talented people makes for good entertainment even if you don’t have any budget and a single shitty digital camera. I’ll go watch Creep and Creep 2 now! This may not be for everyone, it’s definitely a mood, but I liked it. At least one fellow fest-goer did not, for what that’s worth.
OK, so respect to all filmmakers, but some of the movies from the fest I was unhappy with. No 1/5s this year, I don’t completely regret seeing any of them, but I wouldn’t recommend someone watch them unless they are super into whatever its subject in and even then I’d have some notes.
And in the category of “bad”, I had some utter chaos IRL – I had to miss two showings due to a killer hailstorm partially destroying my house. 0/5 no bueno, would not recommend. Maybe good fodder for a natural disaster film better than Acide. But once I got my shattered windows and skylight covered and called my insurance company, there was really nothing to do but go back to the fest!
Divinity, a very impressionistic black&white film about… immortality serum and… hard to be sure what else exactly. It is directed by Steven Soderbergh but do not let that lead you to think it is good or has a budget over $100k. Has angels (maybe), hookers (pretty sure), scientists (pretty sure), fetus milking (I think) and some stop motion animation for the final scene (real sure). And completely incomprehensible plot. Some interesting visuals at least, 2/5
The Origin aka Out of Darkness, where cro-mags 45000 years ago struggle to survive in Scotland, a blasted and inhospitable wasteland in the best of millennia. Like Prey or 13th Warrior but less fun. High realism survival… or lack thereof. Dirty and boring mostly, but some suspense, 2/5
Kennedy – An Indian crime drama with our antihero being an ex-cop working as a hit man for crooked cops (and as an Uber driver?) and seeking revenge for his blown up boy. Nice and slick and well acted but way, way too long. 2/3 of the way through you’re like “I know how it’s gonna end let’s just get there eh?” Also he sees dead people but not in any plot relevant way. Cut a half hour or better yet 45 minutes out, put it on Netflix, people will watch it. 2/5
We Are Zombies – A “Z Nation” low-caliber production set in a world where the living and non-brain eating living dead (or “living impaired”) coexist. Plot is about three slackers ripping off a zombie “humane disposal” company by getting there first and selling people’s former loved ones to a performance artist. “Zilf webcam shows” is the height of humor here. 2/5 and that’s me being generous.
100 Yards – Decent Chinese period martial arts fighting marred by a convoluted plot, frankly baffling character motivation, and indifferent acting. Not enough martial arts per minute. And in the end the victor is…. The French post office? In a surprise last minute victory over… old people? Yes, seriously. I shoulda slept in. 2/5.
Baby Assassins 2 – two Japanese girls (not really babies, more like GenZs) cope with life as assassins guild members when they really just want to eat. Two similar lads decide they need to kill them to get their spot in the guild and hijinks ensue. Decent action and super annoying acting. A John Wick premise with an Aggretsuko execution. Ok but forgettable, except that the Matthew Lillard looking one liked to snack on Churus (the cat treat), which was funny. 2/5
One-Percenter – a Japanese action star really knows him some action and unleashes it on some Yakuza in a “Die Hard in a factory” scenario when they interrupt his filming. It was ok but the kills (well, takedowns) were a little weak. Floppy fake guns were distracting and I had seen things like flashlight beat downs done much better at the same film festival. And there was too much “meta” actor/stuntman self congratulatory stuff for me (hey film people your film’s audience is not just filmmakers, if you want to make more than $20 that is). 2/5
Saw X – Normally I wouldn’t go to a Saw movie but it was a secret screening so I was already seated by the time it started (though about ten people rushed the door to leave once it was announced). I haven’t watched many Saw movies so had to figure out that the old guy was Jigsaw and the chick was his apprentice, but I got there. Jigsaw has brain cancer and goes to an international clinic but it’s a scam so it’s torture murder time. But man there was a lot of plot relative to the torture murders, unusually, which made it better for me than the average Saw movie. Torture porn not my thing 2/5
The Deep Dark – French miners (well, one is French, the rest are the European version of diversity, a Spaniard, Italian, Moroccan, and so on) dig too deep at the behest of some visiting archaeologist and find some Lovecraft, and get chased around the mines by a Spirit Halloween display. Started well but lagging pacing and fully showing an unconvincing puppet monster hurt it (have you read no Lovecraft! Fear of the unknown yo, don’t show the monster so much). 2/5
Not every film can be great, but these are decent and if you’re into whatever their niche is you should give them a try.
The Other Laurens, a French neo-noir (but high color saturation style), a private detective’s estranged twin brother dies and his niece dupes him in to investigate and you know, rich people, bikers, smuggling, betrayal. Slow burn but enjoyable, watch if you like French noir, 3/5
The Silence Project aka Project Silence, where a bunch of squalling Koreans get stuck on a bridge with escaped military-enhanced murder dogs. Modern, slick, serviceable. For God’s sake Koreans in crisis shriek and yowl and beat their breast and fall down in an outpouring of emotion a lot. They go for a satisfying “punch the guy in charge after the rescue” ending but the lead character was a dirtbag politician until close to the end which robs it of some of the satisfaction. Think of it as “Train to Busan but not as good.” Watch if you are super into Korean movies, 3/5
Tiger Stripes – A Malaysian girl gets her period and as is traditional that turns into body horror, and ends up with some possession by/turning into a tiger (maybe?). Looks at the separation that happens between children and young women when they hit that age. Good child actors! And I liked the look into Malay culture. Well done, 3/5
Eileen – Based on an Ottessa Moshfegh novel (which I then bought at the fest book fair!) in which a young Massachusetts lady is working in a prison and taking care of her drunk widower ex-cop dad in a realistically unpleasant New England. She has her sexual awakening, like most of us, via Anne Hathaway, who plays an elegant prison psychiatrist. Some great lines like “Did she seem angry to you?” “It’s Massachusetts, everyone is angry.” It goes quickly from coming of age story to crime investigation to crime committing. Sometimes it’s not a good idea to liberate the quiet ones, 3/5
Acide – French movie about acid rain attacking. I was excited and from the intro and opening I thought we were gonna get something good, but then… The color was trash, like ultra compression artifacts trash, but I heard from someone later that was our projection setup not the movie. But then there were very very few people-melts, and I had been led to expect many. Was it not finished? There was a blank spot for 15 seconds when I think horses were getting acid rained on… And like I get it, they’re French, but the amount of flopping to the ground when in danger and total lack of survival skills was shocking. Not gonna put some plastic sheeting over that car eh? Gonna wrap your feet in aluminum tins not plastic bags? No one has baking soda or hydrogen peroxide to treat getting splashed by acid? The choices (repeatedly) to drive around screaming in the rain instead of just parking inside something was infuriating. I have never said the sentence “Roland Emmerich should remake this” in my life, but now I am. 2/5 but that is influenced by the poor video quality of the version I saw, may be 3/5.
Plenty of perfectly good movies of various types at this FF!
The Animal Kingdom, a French movie where some people start gradually turning into one animal or another, causing French style social unrest. A boy and his dad move to a smaller town to be close to “the center” the mom has been remanded to when the boy starts showing signs of animalism too…. Well shot and well made. We all watch tv with subtitles on nowadays, let’s get this going here in the US. 4/5.
Saltburn – Very well made Harry Potter slashfic I saw as a secret screening. The lad from Banshees of Inisherin goes to Oxford and meets a rich boy who takes him back to his manor house of Saltburn to hang out with his decadent/goofy family leading to both homoeroticism and The Talented Mr. Ripley style supplantation. Suspenseful, with some super gross scenes causing the audience to scream “oh god why” a couple times – like Babylon x2. 4/5 or 3/5 if you have a weak stomach. [Editor’s note from a year later – this came out in theaters and made a good splash.]
The Last Stop in Yuma County – A fun entry in the “stuck in a diner under threat of violence” genre, with great characters which is what you need out of one of those. Various people with various agendas, some criminal, drop in on a diner out in the middle of nowhere and things start to get tense. Good writing and acting and use of the location. The producer sold his house to make it, which is a little drastic but I think it’ll pay off. 4/5
Cobweb – A fun Korean movie about the rigors of moviemaking, which I was prepared to dislike because I don’t like filmmakers masturbating about how cool they are but Jee-woon Kim successfully subverts expectations. Song Kang-ho does a great job as the director who is trying to re-shoot his movie to make it Brilliant(tm) despite the government censors being against it, although I am not sure any of the performances count as “nuanced.” The spider won me over, 4/5
Dream Scenario – A secret screening. Nicolas Cage (well, his character, an average Joe professor) starts appearing in people’s dreams, it turns into an Internet meme once people clue in, and then it all goes bad. Less blood-covered shrieking Cage than many of his recent movies – but not zero. Good A24 type stuff, though a little heavy handed on the social media/cancel culture theme. 4/5 [Editor’s note from a year later – this also came out in theaters and made a good splash.]
Dogman – A secret screening. Luc Besson directed (but all American English) movie about a… drag queen dog whisperer in a wheelchair! It was really interesting, and mostly hinged on Caleb Landry Jones’ virtuoso performance. As an aside, that is one Joker looking son of a bitch if ever I saw one, DC needs to call him up. Anyway, very interesting narrative structure, mostly “The Usual Suspects” style extended interrogation flashback style. Similarities to The Professional in that it ends up in a bit of apocalyptic shootout but also in that it has real heart and compassion for its characters. Really enjoyable. I appreciated that drag was part of the main character’s ongoing healing process from his abusive childhood, not related to his “crimes” in any way. No distribution in North America yet because of the anti-Besson sentiment. 4/5
Spooktacular! – A documentary about the Spookyworld theme park that rose and fell in the 1990s in the Northeast and spurred the rise of the modern hardcore haunted house industry. Mixes park content with business realities and social change and its interaction with the park. And plenty of Alice Cooper and Tom Savini, who were involved at points. Really interesting, and makes me wish I had been to Spookyworld! We have House of Torment here in Austin but it only does a third of what these folks did! 4/5 at least in documentary terms. https://www.spooktacularthemovie.com
When Evil Lurks – an Argentinian movie following two brothers who desperately try to escape a demonic presence that moves and spreads kinda like Legion but with more people being affected. I like that the government has standard protocols for handling this but generally is inefficient and sucky so it gets out of hand before they start actually following them. Reminds me of the Mexican movie “We Are What We Are” I saw a previous year at FF where cannibals on a rampage were called in by the police as a “code 17”, a concerningly low number for such an event. The seven rules for dealing with the “corrupted” are basically “run” which is what they do. Shocking violence against kids. Some holes but fewer than most modern horror movies! 4/5
Your Lucky Day – a $156 million lottery ticket winner in a bodega at night close to the holidays results in a robbery gone wrong, the winner and a policeman getting capped, and then the survivors – a robber, the clerk, and a married and expecting couple, deciding “well… maybe we should cook up a story about what happened and split the winnings.” Needless to say such plans are unstable and things go from bad to worse as more people get involved, with the increasing body count resulting in yet more convoluted schemes. P.S. ACAB. 4/5
Sri Asih: The Warrior – Indonesian Wonder Woman, basically, in the “Bumlangit Cinematic Universe” which is as much or more fun and high budget as the DCEU. A girl is born during a weirdly supernatural volcano eruption, grows up in an orphanage, gets adopted and trained as a MMA fighter as visions of a fire goddess try to convince her to unleash her anger and give in to the dark side… and then basically she becomes a superhero! She then combats the ever popular combination of supernatural evil, the criminal rich, and the patriarchy. Good mostly practical fight scenes, top quality cinematography, action choreography by the company the Raid guy founded. Great work here, better than most DC movies and at least half of the Wonder Woman movies. 4/5
I’ll Crush Y’all, aka Os reviento – Spanish movie where a boxer and ex-criminal trying to just live a clean life gets caught up in a bunch of accidentally colliding criminal schemes after his father dies of old age, requiring him to beat the stuffing out of various waves of local goons. His brother and ex-girlfriend and new would-be girlfriend and father’s old flame put in appearances as well, and you understand the relationships between the various groups here they’re not just arbitrary unrelated criminal armies like in so many less good movies. Bloody and funny with a lot of friendly fire and self injuries by the street level thugs as the bodies pile up. Got the Fantastic Fest audience award, I wouldn’t go that far but it was fun and violent, 4/5
Totally Killer – A Blumhouse joint in the vein of Happy Death Day’s vibe and a plot that’s Halloween crossed with Back To The Future. A modern gen-Z girl has parents whose friends got serial-killed back in the 1980s by a masked killer leading up to Halloween, and the killer suddenly returns and kills her mom! This then leads her to get her friend’s time machine she’s been developing (eye roll) to to back in time to stop the murders. Most of the humor is from a modern kid being back in the unsafe 1980s, and it’s pretty funny, it doesn’t spend time on cheap pop culture references, but shows her culture shock with the lack of security and such. A ride in a station wagon with all all windows rolled up and completely full of cigarette smoke with kids in the back gave me IRL flashbacks. Fun, silly, stabby, 4/5, take a point off if you weren’t around in the 80’s.
Iron Man 3 was an impressive movie, in my opinion possibly the best of the Iron Man franchise – and that’s high praise, because Iron Man is the best of Marvel superhero franchise films going. This picture sums up the movie.As we begin, Tony Stark is suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder stemming from the events of the Avengers movie. Aliens, gods, destruction of Manhattan – he has retreated to his home and holed up, neurotically building Iron Man suit after Iron Man suit and having panic attacks. It’s a good riff off the Tony Stark of the comics, who would have drunk himself into a coma – I guess they decided that wasn’t good for the kids or something but this works.
A terrorist called The Mandarin, who looks all bristly and ringed and scary, not green and quite so Yellow Peril-y as in the comics but threatening as he releases his oddly paternal press releases upon commission of various bombings and other acts of terror.
As you already know from the trailers, Stark tries to stay out of that for a while, then gives the Mandarin some stick, and gets his house blown up good with him and Pepper in it. And thus it begins!
The movie is a lot more about Stark’s journey than about Iron Man, so it gets to leverage Robert Downy Jr’s acting skills heavily – one of its key advantages over the otherwise puddin’-faced Marvel lead actors (Captain America and Thor, I’m looking at you). There’s a great set of scenes where Stark is interacting with a precocious 10 year old kid, and it’s hilarious because he doesn’t know how to talk to a kid so he just treats him like Tony treats an adult. Like after he shares his little moppet story about his dad leaving, Stark replies, “Dads leave. No need to be such a pussy about it.”
I was wondering how they were going to avoid “jumping the shark” with the introduction of the Mandarin. Sure, the overall Marvel universe has every kind of weirdness in it, but they rightly try to usually keep it down to 1 or 2 even in a given comic, and Joe Sixpack is going to bail out if the Marvel movies ladle it on too thick. I’m not going to spoil the big plot twist here, but I absolutely love and approve of what they did with the Mandarin in this movie. I will note that Ben Kingsley is unexpectedly hilarious.
They kept Tony out of the armor for a lot of the time, and that worked very well. There was one armor-holocaust fight scene, and that was nice, but they made a much stronger movie by not just “amping it up” for a third movie. In fact, I’m even more impressed as I wonder how they got that to fly at all. I can imagine the discussion with the Hollywood exec. “Iron Man 3! So we’re going to have like 4 story tall Iron Man right? And bigger explosions, we upped the effects budget by 250%!” “Uh, no, we were thinking Tony would be out of the armor and dealing with psychological stuff and talking to kids and stuff.” The level of blackmail and extortion that must be required to make an actual good movie as the third in a blockbuster series is dizzying.
Anyway, we get to see A.I.M. in action (no MODOK, sadly) and their creation of Extremis, a bio-nanotech superjuice that isn’t all that unrealistic really. They don’t wear the cute little yellow suits though.
I’m not saying any of the main actors should get an Oscar, but for a blockbuster/superhero movie, Iron Man 3 is remarkably well written, directed, and acted. I give it 4 out of 5 M.O.D.O.K.s.
I was bored and looking through Netflix for something to watch, and it recommended to me The Wild Hunt – an independent movie where Canadian LARPers go a little mental. It had won a couple film festival awards, so I figured what the heck.
The setup is that Erik, an Icelander in Canada, heads out to a big ol’ LARP weekend in the woods to try to get his worthless girlfriend back. He’s not a LARPer but his brother is really big into it; Viking heritage, Norse sagas, the whole bit. The whole batch of LARPers are very, very, very serious about it – it almost converts over into cool, actually. You have other movies like Role Models where the people are into LARP but it’s still very cheesy and you’re like “whatever, diversity yay, ponce around all you want,’there’s nothing wrong with that’, but eek.” But here they are all so into it and put a lot of work into it – if you can make LARP seem cool, this movie comes closest to doing it.
It’s a pretty interesting movie. It starts out weak mainly because of the unsympathetic main characters – Erik is a certifiable wuss, his girlfriend is a bitchy whore, and the initial crop of LARPers you meet are reasonably insane – but evens out its keel once you get to know more of the (better, and more interesting, frankly) secondary characters and they quicken the pace. It’s a low budget thriller set in an isolated setting where romantic hassles etc. end up cascading into Lord of the Flies. The ending is a lot more dark and brutal than I would have expected from the first act. About a third of the way through, I wasn’t sold and wondered if I should bail, but after seeing the whole thing I’d give it a 5/10, decent.
Of course some roleplayers are worried that this will “demonize the hobby.” To that I say bah, many of the movies/TV shows with killers, they are doctors and lawyers and cops and moviemakers and other such. It should just be a rush to see your own niche thing breeding killers for a change. And it’s not like anyone will actually be afraid of this happening for real; they’re Canadians for God’s sake. Everyone knows Canadians can’t kill anyone; they don’t have the constitution for it. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Belgian director Pieter Van Hees brings us his new film, Dirty Mind, about a shy stunt effects guy, Diego (played by Wim Helsen), who suffers some brain trauma and suddenly develops a totally uninhibited personality (a real syndrome called frontal lobe disorder). He starts calling himself “Tony T, as in TNT, boom baby!” and becomes a devil-may-care stuntman. A doctor, Janna (Kristine Van Pellicom) tries to get him to get treatment for his disorder, but Diego/Tony hated his loser life and is enjoying being a stuntman and chick magnet. So he tries ceaselessly to seduce Janna instead.
The interesting part of the film is the debate over whether Diego/Tony really needs treatment or not. He was an unhappy loser living with his mother, also a pathetic depressive, always overshadowed by his stuntman brother Cisse (Robbie Cleiren). Now, sure he’s a little inappropriate at times but is generally acting like his brother or any number of non-brain-damaged overenthusiastic assholes we all know and semi-love. The film slowly ups the ante as his syndrome progresses – in the beginning, his brother and family are very enthusiastic about the new personality. But then Tony starts to eclipse his brother in the stunt world and cuts him out of deals; he has sexual contact with people he shouldn’t; he gets very narcissistic and loses the ability to empathize with people or determine what is inappropriate and the progresses to very risky behavior. But even with that the people in his life vacillate over whether Diego or Tony is the best guy (also an interesting theme, about how other people help determine who we are).
Helsen’s performance is great. The film’s serious but funny at times; Tony has these little pseudo-raps he does about how great he is that are hilarious. The best takeaway points are:
There’s a fine line between mental disorder and the normal range of human behavior
Women love the bad boys – even (especially) the buttoned up professional women; when it comes down to it they’ll throw it all away for the deep dicking
Sometimes your mother just needs a good punch in the uterus for lippin’ off to you
I thought this movie was awesome. Very thought-provoking. The one thing I didn’t like was the ending; they throw in a little “action” at the end when the operate-or-not decision is at stake and I thought that was a misstep, trying to do things the “Hollywood friendly” way or something. But besides that, this was one of my favorite movies of the festival, and definitely the most thought-provoking.
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