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Sublime Disorder – Liminal Spaces in the Cinema of Jean Rollin

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By guest contributor Matt Rogerson

The phenomenon of liminal spaces is one that traditionally exists in both Architecture and Psychology. With its beginnings in the term ‘liminality’, conceived by Arnold Van Gennep in his book Rites de Passage (1909) and determined to mean a passageway, be it from one physical location, situation, status or time period to another, the liminal space is generally considered to be a place or state of change (1). In psychology, liminal spaces represent the transitional and the transformative, where we find ourselves in between one state of being and another. In architecture they might relate to hallways, waiting rooms or bus stations; any threshold between one place and the next, not meant to dwell in but to pass through, a way-point on our journey. In some cases, a liminal space can exist simultaneously in both the geographical and psychological sense. Consider an abandoned building, in a state of uncertain transition between owners, or a cemetery, a cold and uneasy place that people hurry through at night, haunted by the sense of proximity to the spiritual plane.

In horror, the liminal space is often to be feared. It evokes feelings of unease and dread, and can represent a portal not just between places but time, space and other dimensions. Between the known and the unknown.

Between the living and the dead…

In the hands of accomplished horror creators, liminal spaces can also be so much more. In Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink (2023), a family home becomes at once claustrophobic and impossibly vast, a mundane environment turned into a haunting, alien domain. Kane Parsons’ Backroom (2022 to date), which has spanned from online creepypasta to YouTube series to a forthcoming A24 movie (2) offers its audience “a maze-like expanse of hallways and open spaces that seem almost infinite…(with) a constant sensation of dread”(3). In literature, Mark Z Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves (2000) deals with liminal spaces in a number of inventive ways, from the living, mutating expanse of unlit passageways in the Navidson house, to re-creating those liminal spaces on the page through creative text positioning (4), to the extensive use of footnotes to establish a parallel narrative running through the book.

Liminal spaces are an intrinsic component of the cinema of Jean Rollin, the French surrealist and eroticist horror filmmaker whose works were often derided at the time of their release, but have undergone a period of artistic recuperation in recent years. His locations, often recurring (such as the Pourville-sur-Mer beach in Dieppe, where many of his filmic narratives begin and end) and often signifying the transition from life to death, are as important to his oeuvre as any character, inciting incident or overt narrative signposting. One of the oft-levelled criticisms of Rollin is that his films are aimless and uncompromisingly languid; plot, pacing and narrative cast aside in favour of disconnected images of nudity, sex and death. This is largely unfair, with the director’s films tackling socio-political, feminist, queer and existential themes that the audience is encouraged to find and follow – Rollin will direct you towards meaning, but he won’t hold your hand. One way of determining the rich variety in Rollin’s films is in his use of liminality. Rollin’s vampires, zombies, succubae, pirates, escapees and virginal young women are drawn to liminal spaces in each of his films, in service of a variety of themes, subtexts and messages. According to Tara Ogle, Director of Architecture for Page & Turnbull, sometimes liminal spaces “are liminal in a temporal way, that occupy a space between use and disuse, past and present, transitioning from one identity to another” (5); Rollin’s various portals and vestibules exist in each of these states and more, as evidenced by the following examples.

Cemeteries exhibit their discomfiting liminality in La rose de fer (1973) and Lèvres de sang (1975). In the former, a young woman and her new lover become trapped in a cemetery overnight, and the membrane between the worlds of the living and dead grows thin overnight, prompting madness and murder. In the latter, protagonist Frédéric attempts to have his childhood acquaintance Jennifer (believed to be a vampire) accepted by a society ruled by superstition and paranoia, and it involves bringing her and her followers from a remote chateau to Paris, via a cemetery.

Deighan notes that “coffins and coffin-like boxes often serve as portals or gateways, generally transporting characters through time and space.”(6) Rollin frequently features vampires in his films, and explores the use of coffins and coffin-like boxes in a number of sub-textual ways. In Le frisson des vampires (1971), a grandfather clock is used by vampire Isolde to visit and seduce uncertain newlywed Isle. The liminal space in Rollin’s third vampire movie represents a passageway from the realm of the undead to that of the living, but it also speaks to a queer-coded transformative experience: the Sapphic awakening of Isle, who represents generations of women that have entered into heterosexual marriage for the sake of expectation and appearances, tragically denying their sexuality and hiding their authenticity. While the clock might represent Isolde’s passage between realms, it is also the liminal space that allows Isle to undergo her transition and to ‘come out of the closet’.

Les Démoniaques (1974) is almost expressionist in its depiction of a dangerous stretch of France’s Coast. Smooth, obelisk-like rocks rise from the sand into the sky, looming over everything like ancient Gods. The shipwrecked boats look like the skeletal remains of giants long since killed, their ribcages split open under the bright blue moon and the endless night. This is a place where many have come to transition unwillingly from life to death. It is only after two young girls (the titular Demoniacs) are defiled and murdered by pirates that they are able to escape to a location yet further adrift from the real world; an old monastery, where the Devil and his minions await them, and bring gifts of healing and vengeance. The film’s beach (the very same Dieppe beach that Rollin returned to time and again, though it is unrecognizable here) acts not just as a liminal space between life and afterlife, but between rape and revenge, between the wronged and their wrath.

The liminal spaces in many of Rollin’s films are indicative of the socio-political climate in France at the time. Rollin’s first film was released during the 1968 Paris riots, where students and workers brought the city (and other parts of the country) to a stand-still for an entire month. Paris was an oppressive place, with a heavy gendarme presence and was unsafe for many marginalized people, particularly its LGBTQ+ community. This prompted a wave of countercultural urban migration – “le retour à la terre (‘the return to the land’)”(7) – with utopian aims of escaping de Gaulle’s government and living freely in rural communes (8). This is reflected across Rollin’s oeuvre, from his vampire films to his ‘escape’ cycle (La Nuit des Traquées,1980; Les Paumées du Petit Matin, 1981), as his liminal spaces provide his characters with passageways between metropolitan hell and rural idyll.

Perhaps most interesting is Rollin’s use of liminality to represent the transition of a young transgender girl (via queer-coded subtext). In La vampire nue (1970), antagonist Georges keeps his young ward captive (the nameless, titular vampire girl) first in his Paris mansion then later in his rural estate, where he subjects her to experiments as he seeks a ‘cure’ for her condition. Rollin’s critics suggested his sexualized vampires as nothing more than exploitative eroticism, but evidence in Rollin’s second film suggests themes of liberation, of queerness and potentially of the plight of the transgender child. Such children are often cut off from the world and denied necessary care by abusive parents who assert that they know ‘what is best for them’. This is all acutely resonant of Rollin’s narrative: the young ‘vampire’ is held captive by Georges until he can find a ‘cure’ for her condition, a thinly-veiled metaphor for the abusive practice of conversion therapy. His mansion is awash with signs and symbols of broken childhood. When the girl is revealed to be a harmless but fantastical creature, and her community come to rescue her, they do so by means of liminal spaces. It is somewhere between Rollin’s crumbling chateau and Pourville-sur-Mer beach that a portal exists, one that denies all known laws of physics. This liminal space, represented by a red velvet curtain, is both an otherworldly portal and an avenue for the young girl’s safety, and the most concrete example yet of Ogle’s assertion of the liminal space representing “transitioning from one identity to another”(9) in Rollin’s work.

Jean Rollin’s use of liminal spaces is impressively displayed across his entire filmography and concerns both the architectural and the psychological to convey the transitional and the transformative in a myriad of ways. They are portals between places, between realities, between states of being, and sometimes all at once. We can find liminality at the heart of everything he created…just don’t dwell there too long.

The son of a Video Nasties Pirate (and grandson of a censorious Roman Catholic matriarch), Matt Rogerson became a fan of genre cinema at a disturbingly early age. Decades later, his writing often concerns the intersection between the Roman Catholic faith and the horror film. He features in House of Leaves Publishing’s Filtered Reality: The Progenitors and Evolution of Found Footage Horror, Diabolique Magazine, Horror Homeroom, Dread Central, Horrified Magazine and Beyond the Void. Matt’s first two books, The Vatican versus Horror Movies and Faith in the films of Lucio Fulci will be published by McFarland & Co.

References:

1 Grindle, Mike (2024) The Psychology of Liminal Spaces: On the transitional zones between “what was” and “what’s next” [online] Available at: https://medium.com/counterarts/the-psychology-of-liminal-spaces-7aa1f650e7d5 [Accessed 9 April 2024]

2 Grobar, Matt (2023) ‘The Backrooms’ Horror Film Based On Viral Shorts By 17-Year-Old Kane Parsons In Works At A24, Atomic Monster, Chernin & 21 Laps [online] Available at: https://deadline.com/2023/02/the-backrooms-a24-developing-feature-based-on-viral-horror-shorts-1235249413/ [Accessed 9 April 2024]

3 Millican, Joshua (2023) Skinamarink: Why Liminal Horror May Be the Perfect Subgenre For the Times [online] Available at: https://gamerant.com/skinamarink-liminal-horror-perfect-post-pandemic-subgenre/ [Accessed 9 April 2024]

4 Brant, Lewis (2022) The Horror of Liminal Spaces [online] Available at: https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/437408/the-horror-of-liminal-spaces/ [Accessed 10 April 2024]

5 Ogle, cited by Hoyt, Angela (2024) Why Do Liminal Spaces Feel So Unsettling, Yet So Familiar? [online] Available at: https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/architecture/liminal-spaces [Accessed 9 April 2024]

6 Deighan, Samm (2017) “The Thing in the Coffin: Jean Rollin’s Female Vampire as Romantic Liberator” In: S.Deighan, ed., Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin Toronto: Spectacular Optical, 113

7 Farmer, Sarah (2020) Rural Inventions: The French Countryside after 1945. Oxford University Press, 54

8 Farmer, 54.

9 Ogle.

Spirit of Independence 2023: Black Daruma

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Review by Darren Gaskell

Aimless Ryan (Richard Galloway) is struggling to find purpose in life. Having quit his teaching gig, he’s struggling to find gainful employment and his lack of drive is testing the patience of partner Louise (Louise O’Leary). Wandering around a local antiques emporium, Ryan picks up a somewhat overpriced hammer, but also gets an unexpected extra into the bargain – a Japanese luck doll which grants ongoing fortune to its owner. Easy, right? No, of course not. There are rules to be obeyed and consequences for not adhering to them…

I remember watching (and reviewing) Fionn and Toby Watts’ previous movie Playhouse and, although the ambition of such a project may not have quite matched the budget, the promise for future endeavours was there for all to see. Black Daruma, with its (much) smaller cast, reduced interior space and far less emphasis on the natural dramatics of the surrounding locations, finds the dialogue and characters coming into much sharper focus.

The innovation here is that all of the escalating madness is shown from the point of view of the doll itself, which instantly lands the piece in found footage territory, complete with Paranormal Activity-style shots of rooms and corridors in which the viewer is waiting for something terrible to happen. The obvious fact that none of the doll can be seen – and is continually described as strange looking by various characters – lends a further edge of unease to the proceedings, leaving the audience to fill in the blanks on just how disturbing an item it is. Do you get a glimpse of the daruma in, say, a mirror, at some point? I’m clearly not going to tell you here.

Galloway and O’Leary convince as a couple trying to get the best out of a relationship which has hit a few rough patches, mostly down to the male half of said relationship being somewhat flaky, his unfocused attempts at finding a job being given support and encouragement by his partner because she doesn’t want to call time on what they have together, regardless of how much he arses about. Their early, less frantic interactions are nicely written, foreshadowing how incapable Ryan is of dealing with the supernatural and how Louise is probably going to be the one taking charge of the situation.

Supporting characters add to this darkly comic portrayal of fragile masculinity. There’s Alan (David Castleford), who spouts counselling buzzword bollocks masquerading as motivational soundbites and possibly has the least self-awareness of anyone on the planet. Also, and there’s no way for me to get around the detail of the guy’s name, a very close second to Alan in terms of being an utter wazzock is, ahem, Darren (Ross Marshall), a businessman with whom Ryan enjoys a drink and drug-fuelled odyssey around the suburbs, the two of them never coming close to any profound conclusions about life despite them being convinced they have.

So, we have accurate observations about various incarnations of the manchild and a kitchen sink (literally, at some points) style of relationship comedy drama, but if you remember where we came in, the first paragraph points to this being a horror movie, right? Well, it’s that too, each scene being shot through with a nervous tension that balances on the edge of chucklesome and chilling, the standout example of this being an extended job interview scene which is both hilariously OTT and low-key terrifying as Ryan goes to work on selling himself to a potential employer, buoyed by the daruma’s promise of riches as long as it’s by his side.

The gradual build up, a genuine disinterest in piling up victims and general lack of all-out moppet mayhem may put some off, but Black Daruma is a fine example of using limited resources to their full potential, relying on the strength of the writing and performances rather than showering the screen with blood, which is to the credit of all involved. The darkly comic, twisted final fifteen minutes may telegraph its ultimate act of nastiness but that’s hardly a blot on the copybook of what is a fun, fearsome experience for the bulk of its hour and a quarter. You’ll be questioning yourself as to why you’re laughing at some of the disturbing events within, but you will be laughing. It’s a minimalist shot in the arm for both doll kill pics and found footage concepts. Be careful of what you might find in antique shops!

Black Daruma screened as part of the Spirit of Independence Festival 2023 in Sheffield, UK.

Spirit of Independence 2023: Prep For Death

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Review by Darren Gaskell

23rd March 2020. As the spectre of Covid loomed large over the UK and the population was told to isolate, filmmaker Damien Sung decided to film a series of vlogs documenting his experience as a divorced father of three living some distance away from his wife and kids. Soon the effects of being alone in his flat take a toll and Damien takes drastic action, turning his initially cosy YouTube vignettes into an increasingly strange journey into the darkness of the soul.

Starting off as a genuine series of lockdown lifestyle videos and then warping into one of the oddest “on the run” adventures you’re ever likely to see, Sung’s friends worried that he was losing it and people believed he was committing crimes and filming them. This might appear ridiculous on the face of it but the convincing nature of how Prep For Death is assembled, coupled with a number of thoroughly unnerving moments, results in a truly gonzo experience that delivers on unfiltered WTF-ery.

Sung’s tale progresses on the lines of writing himself into ever more difficult corners and then looking for ever more wacky ways out of those predicaments, culminating in a final shot that fits perfectly with that ethos, delivering a punchline that doesn’t so much lean into the extreme as smash straight through it. It’s bizarre, it’s chilling, it has extraordinary ramifications as to where the story may go beyond the credits and, above all, it’s funny in that specifically queasy way the rest of Prep For Death serves up its utterly weird humour.

Yes, the in your face filming style may send people looking for a nice, comfy, multiplex experience running screaming from the room, but this film is not aimed at them. To be perfectly honest, I have genuinely no idea at whom it’s aimed, but that matters little when you’re dealing with something this odd. The sound mix is piercingly sharp, some of the visuals may induce motion sickness and the central character is an absolute lunatic but to those willing to go along for the ride – and keep riding for an hour – it’s a strangely rewarding time, even if it’s just to proclaim, “I survived that.”

A runtime of only an hour, you say? That’s true, but such is the intensity of Prep For Death that there’s no way this could stretch to ninety minutes and not result in frying the brains of its audience. In addition to its increasingly batshit plot developments, there are unexpected moments of gut-pummelling emotion, such as a conversation between Damien and a friend who is also divorced and is unable to see his children because of the psychological spectre of Covid and how it made us all afraid of being with others, in case we unwittingly killed them with a virus about which we knew little. It’s an amazing, superbly written, almost unbearably sad sequence which adds a bold, sobering edge to the general craziness on view.

To anyone who appreciates movies which are “out there,” give this one a whirl. Trust me, it’s out there. To the rest of humanity, who may tap out after ten minutes, I know where you’re coming from, but you’re also missing something which puts its own stamp on filmmaking. You may get through Prep For Death not quite knowing how to process any of it, but isn’t that a refreshing and exciting way to feel as the credits roll? I can’t tell you whether this is a one-star or five-star film or anything in between and that’s exactly what I love about it. Go into it with absolutely no preconceptions and make up your own mind.

Prep For Death screened as part of the Spirit of Independence Festival 2023 in Sheffield, UK.

Spirit of Independence 2023: All Through The Hall

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Review by Darren Gaskell


Security guard Ben (Adrian Linke) is working a night shift at a warehouse when three people, intent on getting their hands on the contents of the safe, break into the building. As Ben considers how to tackle the intruders, he also has to deal with the spectre of his recent past coming back to haunt him. As matters escalate and loyalties are tested, who will survive the night?

Falko Jakobs’ micro-budgeted, noir-influenced thriller bounces back and forth in time as the plot plays out from various perspectives, revealing vital details about the past of the protagonists as the confrontation heads towards its potentially lethal conclusion. For those of us who bristle at the use of chapter headings, they are in place here, but in this case they serve a useful function in terms of breaking down the story into its component parts before hitting the fast forward button in order to bring us back into the present.

As well as being a decent little thriller, All Through The Hall (2022) serves as something of an instruction manual for those interested in making a feature film for little money. The bulk of the film takes place in one location, the cast is limited in numbers (Jakobs himself plays a supporting role) and a virtue is made of reusing footage. Arguably, some of the cat and mouse sequences are played out to the point where suspense is over-stretched but there are a couple of pleasing, if not entirely unexpected, twists which keeps the tale engaging.

Despite the tiny budget, there’s the odd burst of entertaining, competently staged action and some niftily edited violence, which elicits the requisite amount of wincing from the audience without having to show too much. For instance, the very sight of Ben deciding upon a hammer as his weapon of choice is likely to set folks on edge (or have horror fans rubbing their hands with glee), creating instant trepidation as to if or when it may be used.

While it doesn’t reconstruct the thriller template, All Through The Hall is an efficient time-flier which recalls, in passing, a smaller-scale Free Fire without that movie’s need for over-egging its characterisations. The protagonists here are believable, the scope of their dreams not especially extraordinary. The heist is commensurate with the scale of the overall piece, relying on a few relatively simple ways of breaching a building which isn’t exactly Fort Knox.

Similarly, the de facto hero figure which Linke portrays isn’t the wise-cracking, thief-taking, shoot first, ask questions later figure you’d get in an American spin on this kind of story. Ben is weary of coming up against criminals and just wants a quiet life, and his confrontations with his antagonists are shot through with an air of reluctance. His escapes from various situations are refreshingly unspectacular. One particular way out of a locked space is so droll, I snort laughed.

The final act plays out exactly as you’d expect, right up to the point where it doesn’t. Remember, this is a movie from Germany and, as a film industry which has Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s shadow hanging over it, there’s always room for doom, resulting in a darker – but still entirely fitting – denouement than the one that appears to be slotting into place. It’s a blunt slap of an ending which not everyone will enjoy, but it doesn’t feel unearned in the slightest, considering the various hints dropped at regular intervals.

Occasionally the performances wobble and there are a couple of flat spots which feel like padding to push the svelte runtime over seventy minutes, but All Through The Hall works hard to deliver its thrills with a smidge of invention. More often than not, it succeeds. The film itself, like its criminal element, ties up the loose ends and leaves few, if any, questions but a more general one for me would be: What would Falko Jakobs make with a sizeable budget? That’s an interesting one to ponder.

All Through The Hall (2022) played as part of the Spirit of Independence Festival in Sheffield, UK.

Spirit of Independence 2023: Miracle Mile

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Review by Darren Gaskell

Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards) meets cute Julie Peters (Mare Winningham) and life is good as he prepares for what he believes will be a life-changing first date with her. One power outage later, Harry finds himself three and a half hours late to meet Julie at the diner where she works and, to no one’s surprise, she’s long since headed home in a state of upset. Calling her from the payphone outside the diner, Harry leaves a message apologising for blowing it in such a big way and when the phone rings almost as soon as he’s put the receiver down, he picks up, hoping it’s Julie giving him a chance to explain further.

It isn’t Julie.

Instead, it’s a guy called Chip, attempting to call his father to warn him that America has launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia and that the retaliatory missiles will be hitting the States within the next seventy minutes. The phone call is terminated in the most abrupt way imaginable and Harry is left wondering whether or not he’s just been the victim of a prank call but if it was true, can he reach Julie and get them both out of Los Angeles before the unthinkable happens?

At this point, it’s only right that I ‘fess up about my feelings for Steve De Jarnatt’s wonderfully peculiar genre hopper. Simply put, it’s my all-time favourite. I remember seeing it for the first time in an art cinema in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, delaying my appearance at a very understanding friend’s housewarming party because it was the first time I’d spotted the film playing anywhere in the UK. Already having purchased the incredible Tangerine Dream soundtrack on CD, I had to watch the movie to which it was aligned. After the credits had rolled, I was still in my seat trying to deal with it all, my world utterly rocked by the previous eighty-seven minutes of cinematic chaos.

Miracle Mile sets out as a rom com, detours into a memorably nightmarish set-up straight out of the best Twilight Zone episodes, stops off to take in a one location, ensemble mini drama piece then drives headlong into a real time, against the clock thriller before the gradually encroaching horrors are fully realised in a brilliantly tense final act, playing off the audience’s – and Harry’s – realisations and expectations of what has been set in motion, all delivered with a delightfully surreal edge.

Crucial to the success of the piece is the casting of Edwards and Winningham as the couple, displaying a winning, easy going chemistry that makes it impossible for the viewer to root against them. Edwards brings his innate likeability and charm to Harry and Winningham scores as a love interest that, as the script states, is slightly out of time, pleasingly out of step with typical Hollywood leading ladies of the era and perfect for this skewed look at life.

And oh, what a supporting roster too, packed with performers who have graced numerous movies and TV projects across the years. Bringing their A-game (amongst many others): Denise Crosby as a no-nonsense businesswoman who suspects the warning may be real; Robert Do’Qui, previously the gruff desk sergeant in RoboCop, here playing an even more gruff diner owner; Earl Boen and Danny De La Paz as patrons and BBQ enthusiasts.

When the action movies away from the eatery, the quality of actor doesn’t drop one iota, with our hero encountering Terminator alumnus Brian Thompson as a beefcake with a very specific set of skills, Mykelti Williamson as Wilson, whose involuntary involvement in Harry’s quest may clash with a set of business interests possibly not entirely on the level and Kurt Fuller as…well, I should allow you to discover what’s going with Kurt Fuller’s character for yourselves.

Underscoring its often downbeat plot points with a streak of quirky, occasionally laugh out loud humour, Miracle Mile also delivers on suspense and spectacle in a way which belies its budget, focusing on tightly marshalled sequences of mayhem that resonate more than any bloated, big studio swings at portraying a citywide slide into complete lawlessness.

Characters make frustratingly misguided decisions, blurt out odd lines of dialogue, flounder in the face of urgency. In this extraordinary situation, its inhabitants feel convincingly ill-equipped to deal with any of it. Even Harry is far from perfect. He’s a victim of his own idealism, seeing too much good in others, overestimating his assumed role as the central character in an unfolding catastrophe, focused on his mission to a point at which he has little grasp of the bedlam enveloping the area.

Switching the “Will they/won’t they?” construct of the comedy romance for “Will they/won’t they survive?,” the final twenty minutes are fraught with back and forth, life threatening moments for Harry and Julie, giving the audience sporadic pauses for breath before plunging them back into an even worse predicament, culminating in a final scene which may leave you an emotional wreck. That’s if the previous eighty minutes hasn’t.

Thirty-five years on, the power of Miracle Mile remains undimmed. Its willingness to mix genres results in a piece of work which switches effortlessly between sweet and terrifying, bolstered further by fabulous yet unshowy performances by Edwards and Winningham and superb support by all concerned, especially Williamson’s initially fun, ultimately sympathetic turn. The propulsive Tangerine Dream score is one of their best and to this day I always hear their track Running Out Of Time whenever I’m pushing a shopping trolley.

Ridiculously overlooked by audiences on its original release, the movie’s undoubted quality has endured and its following has rightly grown. I haven’t even gone into the heart rending subplot concerning Julie’s grandparents, one of whom is She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (and Tarantula!) star John Agar. There is so much more I could say about Miracle Mile but you should seek it out: watch it, get blown away and then we will talk about it. Oh, we will talk.

Miracle Mile (1988) screened as part of this year’s Spirit of Independence Film Festival in Sheffield, UK. For more information on the fest, please click here.

Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares: the Robert Englund Story (2022)

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Review by Darren Gaskell

Whether you’re a horror movie fan or you’d run a mile rather than watch anything remotely scary, chances are you’ll know the name of Robert Englund, propelled to icon status via his memorable portrayal of knife-gloved, stripey sweater sporting child killer Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare On Elm Street movies. Of course, there’s more to him that the infamy bestowed upon him courtesy of this most unlikely of fan figures.


Chris Griffiths and Gary Smart, who are also part of the team behind the Hellraiser documentary Leviathan and four-part RoboCop retrospective RoboDoc, draw upon six decades of performances and the reminiscences of a notable array of talking heads from the filmmaking community, all ready to spill the beans on working with the subject. Eschewing voice-over narration, the colourful details of Englund’s formative years and career trajectory are painted by the man himself in an informal, engaging way, clearly enjoying the attention but also ready to cut through his potential ego trip with a welcome streak of self-deprecating humour.


Often the issue with pieces of work which provide a certain level of fan service to genre staples is a reliance on overstating what all around amazing people these folks are, rendering the overall work too sugary and difficult to swallow. In the case of Hollywood Dreams And Nightmares, there’s a predictable dearth of colleagues turning up to stick the boot into Robert Englund but it’s clear that those who know and work with him have a genuine love of the bloke, many of them citing his enthusiasm and generosity on set, especially when it comes to those less experienced co-stars and crew.


Starting with those first forays into the theatre, leading to his first on-screen credit in Daniel Petrie’s drama Buster And Billie, from then on it’s a whistle stop tour of movie highlights – and some lowlights – which will almost certainly elicit the response of “I forgot he was in that” at various points. For me, it was the role of Harry in Gary Sherman’s superb small town chiller Dead And Buried, and Sherman is on hand here to wax lyrical about Englund’s ability to inhabit a character and imbue his dialogue with a naturalistic feel.


There’s vital coverage of his breakthrough as an internationally identifiable star resulting from his role as gentle alien Willie in superior science fiction miniseries V, at which point a certain Wes Craven was about to come calling. Although the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise and the spin-off TV series are given due prominence, that particular juggernaut isn’t allowed to run roughshod over the remainder of the runtime. The final third focuses on Englund’s enduring appeal and a new crop of genre writers and directors with his name at the top of their casting wish lists, allowing him to step into new roles whilst gaining a new generation of fans without ever truly leaving Freddy behind.


Clocking in at two hours and ten minutes, Hollywood Dreams And Nightmares may feel slightly on the long side, but the focus on a career with such longevity demands that a raft of key films (and a few lesser known gems) clamour to be featured, which makes the inclusion of earlier appearances in Stay Hungry, Big Wednesday and Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder such pleasing additions to the tale. The latter movie, a low-key, lesser seen but well regarded Vietnam War story, demonstrates Englund’s range and keenness for detail while also allowing for fun, travelogue-style recollections from star Dennis Christopher.


Englund’s parents have sadly passed on and he has no children, leaving all the observations of sharing your life with a horror hero to brief but nonetheless effective contributions from wife Nancy, who is honest about their decision to travel the world and enjoy the ride rather than take the option of the picket fence, the kids and the dog. Why not? The picture is of two people extremely happy with each other for company, and their relationship brings a further lightness to the piece which far outweighs the odd darker moment.


There is, of course, an argument to be made for a much longer and more detailed trawl of Robert Englund’s career but Hollywood Dreams And Nightmares is a carefully curated exhibition of the man’s filmic journey and acquaintances down the years, which should leave horror hounds with a smile on their face and cinema fans with their appetite whetted to track down the work of someone whose considerable talent extends far beyond Freddy Krueger.

Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares (2022) is available to watch on all major streaming platforms now.

Fantasia 2023: Born of Woman

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Sayani

By Gabby Foor and Keri O’Shea

We are rounding off our coverage of Fantasia for this year with another block of short films; this time, the uniting factor is that all of these films were directed by a female director. There’s no one genre uniting these films per se, although there do seem to be some horror or dystopian elements in common: this could be the luck of the draw of course, or it could be to do with the fact that genre film is so open to the imagination, and such a good starting point for filmmakers hoping to establish a recognisable style or direction. Anyway, without further preamble, here’s our take on the eight short films which comprise this year’s Born of Woman block.

We start with Sayani (dir. Lucia Bernal). Stark, bright, quiet and alone. In some distant future, Bernal has created a barren, mesmerizing world for a lost pilot to navigate. With complete command over lighting, visuals and the creation of another space, Bernal lands us in a hopeless situation with a singular hero who has little hope of returning home. Initially bathed in dark with red lights, a pilot surveys her surroundings on a barren planet. In what seems like memory, we are suddenly bathed in light, and a mysterious, shadowy figure presses itself against the sheet-like material surrounding our pilot in her dreams; she welcomes it. As this memory fades, she awakens, injured, alone, with no supplies or ship. The pilot (Andrea Bonutto), attempts to radio for help, saying she is “Lost in place two.” She is “in a white place” now and is requesting return coordinates, but the radio returns nothing but unintelligible voices and static. The pilot begins to trek across the dry, pale land, and as she does, memory and visions begin to present themselves, seemingly leading her towards her destination.

This film has little dialogue and relies on careful attention to every memory and presentation. Our pilot is a lost but determined woman, following signs from her own personal journeys and potentially from beings with larger knowledge. This movie is an expressive exploration of memory and the unknown driven by a harrowing solitary journey. Bonutto plays the hard-faced, determined pilot well even without much to be said, her facial expressions and movements belying the difficulty of her journey and her eyes lighting up to the sights and sounds of the strange environment and in reaction to her own personal memories. The film itself is stunning to look at, with cinematographer Valentin Alvarez Sabouret using all the power of the camera to create a sense of vastness. Powerful lighting and the lack of sound emphasize loneliness; even when signs of other beings make themselves known, it’s clear that help might just be too far away.

A visual delight and a quiet, emotional journey to a shocking end, Sayani asks for ten minutes of patient attention to the reckoning of a solo traveller. While not an action packed or dialogue filled short, the visuals and our lead guide you on a journey that opens up your mind to the unknown and the tragic. Sayani sparks imagination and wonder, with a sense of mystery that follows you all the way to its uncertain and surprising end. [GF]

I wasn’t sure if I should weep, laugh, be horrified or rejoice during Se Dit d’un Cerf Qui Quitte Son Bois (Said of a Deer That Sheds Its Antlers) (dir. Salomé Crickx). It’s a film that rides the line of black comedy and new, terrifying if somewhat comedic dystopian rituals. Here is a world where the young are given a chance to shape their future, if they’re willing to do what it takes to change it. Dubbed one of the most subversive comedies to come out of Belgium, this movie is a frenzied short ride. It’s the 167th Annual Moult. Beginning in the woods, a young woman, armed and appearing to be a sentry, is guarding one of her town’s roads. She suddenly sees an old woman, fleeing down the path and whistles to stop her, intercepting her. She asks where she’s going, and strangely, asks her to specify her age. The older woman says she’s looking for her daughter; the sentry asks her the daughter’s name, and if she would be willing to wait for her there, levelling the gun as the woman makes twitchy steps to escape the interaction. Over the hill we hear shouting, and another young woman, the old woman’s daughter has arrived, also with gun in hand. The two younger women chat, thanking the sentry for catching the fleeing woman. The daughter gives her mother a quick kiss and a cheerful goodbye, before taking her own weapon and shooting her mother in the head. I suppose festivities are in full swing.

Said of a Deer That Sheds Its Antlers

With themes that mirror some of the ideas in Midsommar, Crickx puts the power of change in the hands of the young and takes some of the horror out of cult-like practices with moments of levity and a message of progress. Solemn parents pouting and running like children in the face of change very much mirrors some of the frustration sometimes felt, that the elderly cling to their ideas and refuse change or the ascendance of new blood. The festival itself, while a brutal hunt and a theoretically emotional experience, appears to be catharsis for the younger generations of the town as they exercise their new freedoms and celebrate the possibility of the rise of new ideas, customs, and genius from the potentially stifled voices of those deemed too young to have a voice yet. Over the top songs for the soundtrack and celebratory folk songs are all comedic lifts to a tragic, but seemingly necessary series of events that has become the norm for new generations. Crickx pulls no punches in saying what she believes the future may become if we don’t give new lives chances to thrive. With strong female performances that show both women and “children” can take the helm, this film is a dizzy, interesting and darkly witty look at how the young might take to changing the world. [GF]

In Only Yourself To Blame (dir. Noomi Yates) a woman walks home alone at night: this can feel like horror enough if you are a woman, thinking of the seen and unseen potential dangers. Yates takes this already intimidating set-up and adds in darker layers. A girl (Severine Simone) is escorting her drunk friend to a taxi at the end of a long night. After putting her friend in the vehicle to judgmental male eyes only concerned if the drunk girl will soil his taxi instead of getting her home safely, the girl makes her way home, cloaked in black and surrounded by paranoia. While most of it seems like the usual late-night riff raff, breaking bottles, rowdy boys, and urban surrounding sound, suddenly the paranoia escalates and the camera angle shifts to give us that very real feeling of someone standing over our shoulder. For our girl, this is the case, but it’s no average stranger or stalker; this person or thing is imitating her every move, and it’s in pursuit.

Fitting into a few genres here, this gave me vibes of Watcher, that someone is truly there menacing you but you can’t get a firm grasp on them. The camera work, flashbacks and use of imagery, especially at its climax, was incredibly well done as the tension ratchets up during this sojourn home. Yates takes an already frightening experience and adds in nuance with brief but impactful and heartbreaking glances of trauma that may be driving this intense fear, suspicion and desperation. Her horrifying but not over the top depiction of trauma is enough to give you the idea that as a victim you are constantly wondering what could happen to you next. This safety instinct is seen in her trying to get her friend home safely first, eyeing up the cab driver and making certain that another fellow female won’t end up in the wrong hands.

Only Yourself To Blame

Metaphors and messaging show that victims tear themselves up literally and figuratively, beating and blaming themselves in one instance and trying to find consolation in the next. Women from all backgrounds can put themselves in these shoes: the dance of trying to stay safe, the dance of blaming yourself for feeling that way, and the punishment that when things do go wrong that you could have done something different. This shifting, mimicking creature that stalks our main character is a mockery of her every move and an assault (and occasional comfort) to her being, showing how twisted and split (in some cases here literally) we can become after life shattering instances of revulsion. I think this is a powerful victim statement and a message to women to be kinder to themselves in the face of terror they did not generate. However, with its ending leaving us to wonder where our protagonist will end up, it is hard to say where these feelings will lead us after the credits: victim, or survivor? [GF]

Sweet Tooth (dir. Joséphine Darcy Hopkins) is a testament to a truth I’ve known all my life: girls can deliver the most well-crafted cruelty. Returning to Fantasia for the third time, Hopkins brings a tale of young girls caught in a game. A young girl, Madeleine (Lou Deleuze) is happily on her way to a work appointment with her mother. A beautician by trade, her mother is headed to an enormous mansion to tend to a few wealthy clients. When the two arrive, a servant immediately whisks Madeleine away to the basement, where the other women’s children are deeply involved with a board game. The three girls, led by the charismatic, sharp eyed Eugénie (Katell Varvat) invite the shy girl to join them in The Queen’s Game where the goal is to reach the castle in the center by taking turns spinning a wheel and drawing cards. The catch is these girls come from real money, and judging by the house, it is no large matter to them. The game requires a real cash buy-in, and with only a coin to offer, Madeleine is already trailing the other girls with the money she has to use. As the game goes on, and the girls get more vicious as they approach the win, money becomes an issue for Madeleine. No problems though, as Eugénie has a work around and suggests a bargaining or trading system that would count as credit. However, this trade off won’t be painless if Madeleine hopes to continue.

Sweet Tooth

This story is a chilling experience driven by talented young performances and a strong story with dark overtones. Katell Varvat, my new favorite young performer and the star of another short at Fantasia this year, Transylvanie, is as charming as she is manipulative, at times stealing the spotlight from those around her with her devilish portrayal of the brutal ring leader of young girls. Lou Deleuze is pulling her weight here as well with the rapid evolution of Madeleine as a character. Her innocence turned to desperation, which eventually solidifies into stone faced determination, is an intense development throughout the film’s runtime. The psychological thrill of the game, the gruesome bargaining system introduced, and the overtones of class warfare keep tensions high throughout. You’re consistently rooting for this underrated young girl to overcome the forceful, personal bullying to see some compensation, or at least vindication. This short is an excellent entry into the horror and psychological drama genres, driven by mesmerizing characters and careful writing. With an ending that is equal parts sad and satisfying, Sweet Tooth is an engaging short with a committed, convincing cast working at multiple levels. I was shocked and charmed repeatedly throughout and was thoroughly invested in the outcome of a children’s game. Hopkin’s film is a must see for the performances alone, as well as a horrifying, heart breaking story of how deep malice can run regardless of age, and what some children are willing to do in order to connect with their peers, or suffer the punishment of isolation. [GF]

The Taster (dir. Sophia Bierend) is relatively long for a short film at around the thirty minute mark, but in that time it develops an intriguing close focus on a character who would, in most cases, remain invisible. The Taster is somewhat dystopian, but its focus on a Europe ravaged by climate change which has rendered the Danube Delta one of the only remaining fertile zones (and as such something for various military factions to fight over) feels awfully close at hand. In its world – and the film does a great job at building a world – the vast majority of the population no longer has access to food and resources; only the powerful. i.e. those engaged in military conflict, can hope for such things.

The Taster

Into this mix is thrown Ozana (Silvana Mihai), who has been given an important new job: chief taster for a commander paranoid about assassination attempts via poisoned food. We see her arriving at the base, being mocked by a vehicle-load of laughing, mocking soldiers, who first offer her something to eat and then pelt her with it. She reacts angrily; she may be powerless by many of the most obvious measures, but there’s a spark in her which resurfaces later. Arriving at a base, she reports to Diana (Andreea Sovan) who fills her in on her forthcoming role: she must taste everything which is to be eaten by the mysterious commander. In the meantime she must not look at him, address him, or befriend any of the cooks at the base. This is something which quickly becomes challenging for Ozana.

In the film, food itself has become a dangerous, politicised, even intimidating substance (Ozana has not eaten anything solid for two years, having access only to some kind of nutritive mash). And the idea of an official taster is no myth: throughout history, and now no doubt, powerful people worth poisoning have relied on some subordinate to reduce their risk. We rarely hear from these anonymous people, however: Ozana is different because she is not anonymous, and in fact we see her navigating her position carefully: she is sympathetic, isolated, suppressing her curiosity beneath her fear, unfamiliarity and a sense of foreboding. The dynamics of sight and seeing are as important as the dynamics of consumption. Furthermore, the film’s quietly-brooding powerplay is well construed, picking out a key detail from this dystopia and examining it. I also appreciated the film’s eye for detail, such as in its code-switching between English and Romanian: this in itself points to important ideas about duty and personally-held ideas. [KO]

Pruning

Pruning (dir. Lola Blanc) focuses on the host of a webcast titled ‘Free Thinker’, this being a young woman named Sami Geller (Madeline Brewer). Sami, a right winger, rails against radical leftism in her broadcasts, advising that America needs to “prune” the “rot” in its midst (language which has genuinely been used in political life; EU diplomat Josep Borrell has used similar terminology very recently). Geller is a plausible demagogue in a world of increasingly polarised, contentious political commentary. But, offline, she’s very different: a nice neighbour; a concerned and self-conscious woman. When she discovers that a recent mass shooter has namechecked her as an inspiration – even using the same rhetoric – she is genuinely alarmed. But, as the film begins to cede to more fantasy and nightmarish elements, we see Geller struggling between person and persona, framed as she is by a world of clicks and likes. Whilst the question of personal responsibility is mooted but left hanging (largely by necessity, given the film’s modest runtime) this is a well made and conceived film, with disorienting, clever framing, earnest performances and some genuinely horrifying imagery. [KO]

Nian (dir. Michelle Krusiec) has a runtime of just six minutes or so; as such it’s a brief glimpse at Chinese folklore (which many Western audiences still know very little, this reviewer included) framed via a little girl’s run-in with an odious bully (setting up said odious individual for a takedown, but making it trippy good fun). Gertie (Lauren Mei) has a Chinese demon mask (reminder: they ward off demons) and she has brought this family heirloom into school for a Show and Tell session. By the way, grandma, who drops her off at school, is an instant hit with her lively turn of phrase. When a girl in her class isn’t exactly receptive to this glimpse at Chinese heritage, things go down: there’s just enough set-up and denouement here to hold everything together, and the film looks great, with some wonderful lighting and editing choices. [KO]

Sticking with the folkloric horror, but painting a far more complex picture is Mancha (‘Stain’) (dir. Nikki Mejia). Things start quietly as a little girl moves through a beautiful, snowy landscape; it changes when she glimpses a man, seemingly unbothered by the bitter cold, observing her. Something in her makes her run; or does it? Whose dream is this? Is it a dream at all?

Mancha

Via this opener, we meet three generations of the same family: grandma Natalia (Marlene Forte), mother Cory (Marisé Álvarez) and daughter – the little girl – Lucy (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro). Grandmother and mother work in a Latin restaurant, and there’s some disarming family chatter before the next shift starts; clearly, this is a loving family unit. But something else unites these women; what? Mancha hands around its focus between its different characters, moving from Lucy to Cory and back again. As it does this, a creeping strangeness takes hold: the vision of the man is linked in some way to a vision of a literal ‘stain’ spreading across the bodies of the women. Ultimately, it falls to Cory to take the weight of this burden, working to try and protect her young daughter. Clever edits and shots build a stark contrast between the icy world outside and the warm, inviting – but increasingly heady, if not fully expounded, unreal world inside. [KO]

Fantasia 2023: Small Gauge Trauma

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Get Away

By Gabby Foor and Keri O’Shea

We were delighted to be offered Fantasia’s short film blocks for coverage again this year. Small Gauge Trauma, the festival’s genre short film collection, is a great way to spot upcoming talent, clever homage, brand-new ideas and ingenious storytelling. As ever, the range has been incredible, with everything from your more typical vampires and ghosts right through to mind-altering slugs (oh yes), Cronenberg-akin machine projects and puppeteers. Without further ado, let’s round off our festival coverage on a high; we still have Born of Woman to follow, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

In fact, though, perhaps we have got ahead of ourselves a little. Starting off Small Gauge Trauma this year is Transylvanie, which we have already covered at the site. For more on this cleverly-crafted and charming film, which blends its vampire iconography with the emotive, ambiguous likes of Let The Right One In and Martin, check out Gabby’s review here.

Next up, Cover Your Ears (dir. Oskar Johansson) picks up on a concept which has run like a seam through a certain subset of horror in recent years: sensory deprivation. Here, however, the protagonists elect not to hear, for reasons which the film reveals – to chilling effect. Two young women – who seem like sisters – live alone in a grand house. The film starts with one of the girls accidentally smashing a plate; the other girl looks on as she clears away the pieces, but it’s one of the film’s first jarring moments of high sound. There’s something strained, if still loving, in this relationship. In particular, when it’s time for bed, the girls put on noise-cancelling headphones: why?

Cover Your Ears

This film creates a keen sense of the uncanny with its neat, careful touches. Inverting shots, or inverting what is being filmed, quickly serves as an alarming, if simple enough motif; we’re also locked out of the film’s only dialogue as if we, too, are wearing the headphones, which keeps us uncertain of the film’s rising threat (though rising strings in the film’s soundtrack – prior to also falling silent – raise those hackles). With its close, unerring focus on the protagonists and their own rising hackles, this is an effective horror which only tantalises a story, but does more than enough to generate an atmospheric scare. [KO]

Get Away (dir. Michael Gabriele) shows us three young women arriving at a remote getaway in the desert for some well-deserved downtime. Deciding to take it easy and watch a movie, they’re charmed to discover the lodge’s VHS player and its single viewing choice: Desert Dwellers III, which looks like a low-budget horror (and it is). As they begin to watch, the plot begins to look oddly familiar…

Get Away

What follows is a high energy, often upbeat-feeling horror of its own, nicely paced, nicely constructed and with lots of fun layering and mirroring. Whilst at first the script’s focus on the girls’ ‘no phone signal’ chatter seemed to be having a little too much made of it, it becomes clear that it’s there because the film is being self-referential, playing with tropes and ideas throughout. The idea of the creepy video tape has certainly been with us long enough to feel like part of our heritage at this point, and it gets a good outing here (which feels like Resolution (2012) in some places – and that’s certainly intended a compliment). [KO]

The Nolberto Method (dir. David Winstone) brings the ridiculous and the sublime into record-breaking levels of conjunction here: it’s dark, it’s sharp and it’s very good indeed. It works on multiple levels too: you can drill down (heh) from its humour and its madcap plot elements into something far more profound, into ideas about personhood, personality and one’s place in the world. It also feels, for all its reference to a distinctly foreign influence, undeniably British.

We start in a therapy session, where a clearly depressed man, Darius (Adam Loxley) wants to pour out his heart to his smart, detached therapist. But she stops him: this in itself blindsides Darius, who clearly has certain expectations on how this is all going to go. His counsellor Anika (Sarah Beck Mather) runs him through a few questions to see if they can ‘proceed’ with a radical new treatment. Which relates to a slug. A very special slug. What ensues is dialogue-rich, with jet black humour and excellent performances. There’s some mockery of therapy tropes, some on-point understanding of depression and its contested nature, but ultimately The Nolberto Method crosses from this into a study of selfhood which begs important questions, even if it does it obliquely. [KO]

Next up, Puppet Man (dir. Andrew Fuchs) has its own novel take on trauma: here, reality and unreality are blended together in a sad, meticulous and at times emotionally devastating story. Sal, our puppeteer is about to go to work. He seems to be literally patching himself up before the show, and he seems troubled, down-at-heel. No matter; it’s on with the show, which is titled ‘Tinkerbell’. It all seems to be innocuous enough, right up until the puppets speak their first lines: anthropomorphised animals they might be, but their yearning for love, support and belonging bleed into, and are bled into by the puppet man himself. How much of him is in this? Things blur even further when he tales a phonecall during the performance.

In just fifteen minutes, Puppet Man creates a thought-provoking character study which interrogates the relationship between performer and audiences, as well as between performer and performance. We are invited to determine where one of these things ends and the other begins; in its way, the film suggests that in some cases, they overlap in ways which are impossible to separate. This is an inspired piece of world-building. [KO]

Next up: Role Play (dir. Bill Neil). Having made trailer edits for decades prior to beginning his own filmmaking efforts, director Neil here brings us one of the most compact films of the festival. Fitted with all the trappings of stranger danger and with nods to queer and feminist horror, this story of a one-night stand turned into a nightmare is a small offering of the disturbing to the outright terrifying. Two men are returning to an apartment after a night out, kissing and stumbling in the door. One is older, dressed sharply in business attire with a serious demeanor; the other is a younger man dressed casually and clearly intimidated by his seemingly more experienced and intense partner. After some teasing around the older man suddenly proposes the two engage in some role play, cutting off the flirtation. Surveying the apartment, lofty and expensive with a magnificent view, the younger man is distracted while the older one disappears up the stairs, warning the young man he will need a “safe word” if things get intense. The boy laughs it off as dramatic effect, but as he ascends towards the bedroom, what awaits him can’t be stopped by any safe word.

Role Play

The setup of the role play itself is terrifying and brilliant, keeping things hidden and letting tensions build as predator and prey are identified and separated. Lighting tricks and practical effects make an unsettling reveals just as intense as promised, with practical effects, creepy attire and gestures. Both men play their roles conservatively well, with neither needing to deliver an over the top performance as their exchanges are cryptic and short; the abomination and subsequent experiences awaiting our victim cannot be described in words. With some feminist and queer horror overtones that always warn you about the perils of the unknown and the risks of taking an enticing guest home, Neil acknowledges the dangers for marginalized groups to be more easily preyed upon. The idea that this is all, in ways, for fun, makes it more frightening, as only one party controls the rules of play, making this even more about power and evoking fear. The fate of both characters hangs in the city skyline that lingers in the final shot, the happenings of the evening condensed into a traumatizing blur. You might come to understand only a few things about the older, more mysterious of the two gentlemen, but the impact of this knowledge is enough to leave you wanting more. [GF]

At just over six minutes, Stop Dead (dir. Emily Greenwood) presents many concepts and references that add up to a terrifying ultimatum for anyone caught in its web. With echoes of It Follows, this film takes the stalking entity angle and keeps the stakes high. Beginning with two officers on a stop, one obviously more business oriented than the other, it looks like a slow night in rural country for the pair. From out of the darkness into the squad cars headlights a girl emerges, dirty, dead faced, and slowly inching her way forwards, each step looking more exhausted than the last. The officers move to call it in, and they attempt to approach the girl and offer help when she suddenly gets violent, drawing a weapon, saying she cannot stop, even under the threat of being tasered. There’s something worse in the woods than guns drawn at her, and she would do anything to keep moving.

Stop Dead

This simple concept plays off of It Follows very well: you’re safe so long as you keep gaining ground. The origin of the entity here is less fleshed out than in It Follows, but its design and movements make it terrifying, mimicking the chittering and erratic movements of The Babadook. This entity makes it clear that as long as you’re moving, you’re safe, but the consequences of defying its rule are horrifying. Impressive and unexpected practical effects burst forth suddenly and turn this terror into an all-out nightmare once you’re presented with the fate of those that cease to move. Leaving the characters in a life or death position where they are forever on their feet, this entity is relentless and daunting as it mocks them, defying time and space with its movements, constantly looming. [GF]

House arrest is one thing, haunted house arrest is another in Incomplete (dir. Zoey Martinson). It’s a truly chilling, compact, nail biting tale of one man’s confinement, much to my horror and delight. If you’ve seen the old cult classic Housebound, you may be familiar with the idea of a person confined to a house with unexplainable happenings and the desperation to escape. However, as part of the Small Gauge Trauma portion of the festival, this is a much shorter, darker story with less precious time to uncover secrets. In this tale, a young man (Marchant Davis) has been confined to his home on house arrest, supported by his sister, and bound by check-ins from a caller labeled “Overseer.” A constantly beeping machine prompts him for a breathalyzer on a schedule, marking him “incomplete” even on occasions when he completes the test. With the machine going haywire, mysterious shadows manifesting, and nowhere to go, it looks like our prisoner isn’t in solitary after all.

Incomplete

The plot device and minimal but efficient use of effects used to reveal the paranormal activity is brilliant, and the director waits the perfect amount of time before dropping the hammer of how terrifying the realizations are. Davis is a perfect lead, emotions pitched high, scrambling and bargaining to try and find a way out of this hopelessly frightening situation without permanently jeopardizing his freedom or losing his sanity. The gentle build-up to the shocking realization of what’s been happening makes the blow all the more creepy as we come to see how sinister the presence is. This short film fits neatly into the haunted house genre, while managing to stand out amongst a crowded topic saturated with unoriginal tropes and effects we have seen too many times before. Martinson sets out to break clichés with a tiny cast and inventive horror and dystopian-like devices that zoom in on all the things that make you squirm. [GF]

The existence of ghosts has always been, and may always be, in question. Spirits have been represented in all forms of media, and some claim to have seen the real deal, but in There Are No Ghosts (dir. Nacho Solana), we ride a gray line involving the undead that I haven’t encountered before. Beginning with an old woman having a late-night beverage, we hear all the tell-tale signs of a haunting: whispering, moving, footsteps coming from every angle. When the woman is finally shocked out of her trance from the fear of the events, we cut to Andrea (Catalina Sopelana), whose phone is ringing off the hook. Andrea has a gift: she is in tune to the things most people can’t see or hear from the other side and offers her services at no charge to families experiencing paranormal activity. After receiving a call to go to the old woman’s house, Andrea is on her way to hunt down what may be tormenting the old woman.

With no special or practical effects to generate spectres, the audio design of footsteps, whispered messages, and general haunted fare falls to sound editor Sergio Ausin Belmonte. This unique design, despite its lack of classical ghost scares, still lends itself to the haunted house or ghost hunting genre easily. Ghosts are… less concrete in this world, and in very Latin fashion as I was taught growing up, they’re not always something to fear, maybe something to understand instead. Andrea’s generosity – which goes against everything a generally for-profit medium does – shows deep compassion and empathy as she lays herself and her easily dismissed gifts bare in personal ads, knowing just how taboo the subject is to go seeking help on your own. With nothing but a bottle of beer and her own personal experiences to lead her to the echoes of the dead, Andrea is a serene-faced messenger to those in crisis, even when they aren’t ready to hear the truth. This is a poignant story of ghost hunting devoid of candles, salt and cameras to document the X-Files-like reveal of a spirit. This is meant as a guide to show that all of us are open to echoes from those past; some just tune into the frequency better. I was moved by the presentation of how our dead move on and what they leave behind, as well as by the portrayal of the rare benevolent medium out to help the grieving instead of preying on believers. With a haunting walkthrough of a family’s tragedy through the eyes of someone gifted, you hear the pain and regret of the past and are only left to imagine the history and swiftly ended future of those who leave their messages scrawled behind as they pass over. [GF]

Finally we have La Machine d’Alex (dir. Mael Le Mée) and I’ve never seen a piece of film quite like this before. This a work of psychosexual tension, futuristic fleshy fusion, and a sometimes disturbing, sometimes liberating look at the life of a woman with a passion, and fixation. Alex (Lomane de Dietrich), is the only woman in her “automotive biomechanics” class. A gifted student but one who prefers to keep to herself, Alex is a genius with the engines being created in the lab. They’re a fusion between traditional mechanics and “artificial flesh” that gives the engines a living quality and requires them to receive further, medical-like maintenance. While Alex excels as a student, her attention lies elsewhere with her own personal work. She is designing her own engine—large, intricate, somewhere between a miracle and an abomination of metal and false flesh. Reactive, adaptive, and connected to Alex and her stimulation of it through touch as well as a control panel, the machine serves her needs in many ways and becomes a focal point for herself and for curious others, when the possibilities of the artificial flesh make themselves apparent in carnal ways.

La Machine D’Alex

The star of the show is the use of intense practical effects that may be a little too grotesque for some viewers, but is realistic in its depiction of pulsating flesh, tissue, muscle and oozing bile. The engines themselves are not a beautiful sight to behold, and their maintenance is a slimy, invasive procedure with many closeups showing the messy, meaty action. The stoical and determined performance given by de Dietrich is spot on for a scientist, head wrapped in data but their heart firmly planted in their work. This film lands somewhere in a dystopian, psychological, and science fiction mash up, making it hard to pin down a time when this is taking place or the state of society that has adapted to these humanoid engines. Audiences may find some of what Alex and her machine engage in strange or disturbing, but it all speaks to something bigger around her intelligence and her loneliness. Sexuality and shamelessness find voices in this film in unorthodox ways that make you consider lines of morality versus lands unexplored, whether you wanted to consider it or not.

While I might not have understood the draw Alex had to her engine over the company of others, I do understand an introverted creator nurturing and loving something they both built and brought to life. The engines appear to be tools to most, but where one sees only utility, Alex sees untapped potential. Ultimately, even in the face of judgement, Alex holds firm in her beliefs about her machine and how she intends to use it, regardless of what peers or administrators think. This erotic, scientific fever dream of technology beyond our comprehension is a singularly creative piece of work, brimming with originality and a boldness to display such extreme practical work and the extreme actions of people engaging with it. I can’t say if you’ll enjoy this film in a classical entertainment sense. This movie is nuanced with a sense of gravity, surprising character depth, and themes we tend to turn away from lest someone see our curious eyes observing what could be considered taboo. I can say if you choose to watch this film, it will most likely be unlike anything you have experienced before and is likely to stir curious and strange emotions in you if you choose to embrace Le Mée’s vision. [GF]


Fantasia 2023: Mad Cats

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Review by Darren Gaskell


When directionless Taka (Sho Mineo) receives a mysterious tape containing details as to the whereabouts of his hitherto missing archaeologist brother Mune (So Yamanaka) he sets off on a rescue mission, which also comes complete with side quest relating to the retrieval of a wooden box. Of course, the wooden box is of interest to other parties, specifically a group of human/cat hybrids with claws sharpened for pet owners and dealers of an unethical persuasion…


Mixing martial arts melodrama and mumblecore musings, writer/director Reiki Tsuno’s feature-length debut juggles moments of utter ridiculousness with surprisingly resonant emotional beats concerning the pull of family, be it flesh and blood or of the pet variety. Taka even finds his own dysfunctional group to assist in completing his assignment in the shape of perma-hungry, homeless Takezo (Yûya Matsuura) and the mysterious, lethal Ayana (Ayana – yes, Ayana is playing Ayana here).


Resembling a series of loosely bound vignettes rather than a solidly structured plot, Tsuno’s interest appears to lie in delivering low-budget oddness, with much of the necessary early exposition delivered via means of news bulletins on radio station 99.9 KITY. I never said it was a festival of subtlety. Indeed, feline references permeate the piece, whether it’s the anguished meows of Taka’s attackers as they’re dealt a blow or the appearance of products such as Purr Lager.


Action clichés aplenty are skewered, as Tsuno spins his own strange take on such staples as the overly fancy display of weaponry skills, which would normally serve as the preamble for a massive ruckus but here is played as an increasingly head-scratching running gag. The obligatory training montage is less oblique in its approach and falls back on the fact that both Taka and Takezo are, to put it mildly, crap at combat, but even when Mad Cats takes the more conventional route it still manages to raise a smile.
Tsuno clearly didn’t have a wealth of cash at his disposal but to his credit, it never feels cheap. The film is shot with confidence, it has a sharp look and its locations are carefully chosen for maximum impact. The fight sequences are rather good too, if a little short, slyly reducing their confrontations to limited numbers of protagonists at any one time as The Boss sends out her assassins in ones and twos depending on their choice of death-dealing implement.


Another budget saver is to have your cat cast played by humans, made so by the superpowers of a particularly strong brand of ancient catnip. Every member female of this kick-ass colony’s female ensemble is excellent, each individual and memorable, all regarding their enemies with that enigmatic look which the owner of many a domestic puss will recognise. They could kill you if they wanted to. They just might.


The combination of physical comedy, soul searching, slo-mo punch-ups and a smattering of set-ups which lean into horror may sound like genre hopping for the sake of it, but the switches in tone work because the atmosphere is consistently outlandish, allowing for the tale to take random twists and turns and rarely feeling the worse for it.


In terms of the comedic elements, there’s a lot of anguished shouting and screaming from Sho Mineo as Taka reacts to yet another failing of his in the hero department. Admittedly it’s amusing the first few times but it happens so much more than a few times and ultimately I found it grating. Going some way to balance that out is the no nonsense, all action Ayana, showing the men how it’s done and saving their hides on numerous occasions. As the purposely annoying one of the troika, Matsuura fares better because Takezo is a better written, more rounded character with the bulk of the funniest lines in the movie, which lends itself to a more detailed performance.


Mad Cats is a peculiar movie than doesn’t attempt to be more peculiar than it already is. The very premise comes with an in-built level of weirdness and there’s no need to draw any further attention to that or to provide too much in the way of explanation as to just what is happening and why. Laughs and chills often run side by side and for every surprisingly nasty act of violence there’s usually a pratfall and, at one point, a fart joke, to restore the balance.


It’s possible that you may reach the end credits of this film and think “What the hell did I just watch?” but that sums up Mad Cats’ manifesto perfectly. Throwing different styles into the mix with abandon and worrying little about how jarring that could be is an admirably bold choice, but it pays off handsomely in this case, even if there’s an almost inevitable flat spot in the run-up to the final act that needs a couple of minutes trimming from it.


Closing with the text “For all the innocent lives, past and future, taken away by selfish devils”, you’d think the preceding eighty-odd minutes would be sombre and reflective, but the occasional glimpse into the abyss is far outweighed by a joyful, unapologetically chaotic whirlwind of an adventure spawned by an Egyptian cat goddess. By and large, it was just my saucer of cream.

Mad Cats (2023) featured as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Fantasia 2023: Hundreds of Beavers

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By Darren Gaskell

Leaping on to the screen, Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) celebrates his successful applejack distillery in a cheerful musical number to lift the spirits, right up to the point at which a lack of vigilance due to imbibing too much product combined with some sneaky, tree-based vandalism ends with said distillery being spectacularly destroyed, and Jean being forced to use his questionable quantity of wits to survive in the wilds.


Discovering that a local merchant (Doug Mancheski) will hand over much needed supplies in exchange for animal pelts, Jean sees an opportunity to make a name for himself, to gain revenge on the pesky, toothy critters responsible for the destruction of his business and to cash in on the added bonus of being allowed to marry the merchant’s daughter (Olivia Graves) if he can bring back…well, the title says it all. Let battle commence between Jean and beaverkind!


Dialogue free for a large proportion of its one hour and forty-eight minute running time, Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds Of Beavers opts for a delightful, demented combination of silent movie buffoonery and Chuck Jones-era ridiculousness. If you’ve seen the team’s previous effort, Lake Michigan Monster, you’ll have some idea where this may be going but even then you may not be prepared for just how gloriously madcap this is. It brims with running jokes, sight gags and fun, impressively staged action set-pieces. The laugh-out loud moments are many and the pace rarely flags as Jean progresses from staggering incompetent to would-be wilderness warrior.


As Jean, Tews shows great flair for physical comedy and his antics resemble a cross between Buster Keaton and Wile E. Coyote. The constant failure of his initial trap-setting and the inevitable, repeated, comedy kicking being dished out by a gang of beavers is sure to raise more than a few chuckles, but the film doesn’t fall into the trap of making its lead character the fall guy for the duration. However ludicrous the plot turns are – and trust me, they’re ludicrous – this is a journey for Jean in both the literal and metaphorical sense, delivered as a fine parody of wasteland adventure flicks.


The supporting cast are vital to the success of the overall piece, most notably Mancheski as the gruff merchant whose lack of respect for Jean is blindingly obvious, especially when it comes to any designs our hero may have on Graves’ flirty furrier. The romantic interludes between Graves and Tews are as goofy as everything else on show, including a bizarre sequence in which Jean’s potential love interest finds an unexpectedly modern way in which to set his heart racing.


I won’t spoil too many more of the high spots of this beautifully crafted film, suffice to say the look of the creatures, given this is a low budget move, is both thoroughly practical and utterly hilarious, as is the charmingly crude animation of Jean’s travels around the area. There are innovative (and often lethal) uses for ropes, icicles and even excrement. Yes, Hundreds Of Beavers may have the appearance of a classic silent film but that conceals a slightly darker heart than you’d expect, although the overall tone is generally jovial.


The script, co-written by Cheslik and Tews, is so crammed with side-splitting situations from the get-go that there’s a slight concern the eventual payoff will fall short. Don’t worry – it doesn’t. It’s also a tale that, unlike so many films with weird concepts, refuses to get bogged down in its middle act, as Jean’s multiple side quests bring him inexorably closer to a final, apocalyptic showdown with…well, the title says it all. The climax delivers an outlandish take on a Bond movie, complete with a foray into the beavers’ sprawling base that resembles an 80s platform game and a couple of extended chase sequences which, considering this is such a daft movie, are genuinely thrilling.


Hundreds Of Beavers is an indie oddity of the most wonderful kind, turning its do-it-yourself vibe into a virtue as its unique, ramshackle visual style charms in a way that only the meanest viewer would reject. Its comedic compositions are carefully constructed in order to get the maximum mileage from repeating them and re-inventing them, often returning for one last bow when you least expect. The punch-ups are absurd, the movie’s take on its own brand of “gore” even more so. It’s one of the smartest dumb movies I’ve ever seen. Even its own title card is in on the joke.


An absolute triumph of low budget filmmaking, the enthusiasm of all involved translates to the screen in spades. If you’re not in the mood for something unrelentingly silly then you may tire of Jean’s shenanigans early on, but what can’t be denied is the sheer skill required to produce a film with such an individual stamp. I adored pretty much everything about this. It left me with a huge smile on my face and a hankering for both a glass of that applejack and to spread the word about the legend of Jean Kayak. It’s a win for Wisconsin!

Hundreds of Beavers (2023) featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Smoking Causes Coughing (2022)

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By guest contributor Darren Gaskell


Following an energy-sapping battle against an evil giant turtle, five superheroes known as the Tobacco Force are instructed by Didier, their chief, to head for a rural retreat in order to work on their cohesion as a team. Soon after they reach their swanky recovery pad, bickering and uncertainty among the group sets in, which is round about the time that Lézardin, Emperor Of Evil and number one threat to the planet, decides the Earth needs to be put out of its misery…


Welcome to another trip into the mind of Quentin Dupieux, the man responsible for killer tyre movie Rubber (2010) and several other bizarre cinematic outings. If you saw Rubber and loved it, chances are you’ll get plenty of mileage out of this one too. If you saw Rubber and hated it, Dupieux’s latest venture is unlikely to convert you as all of those zany, random detours which wound you up to the point of breaking something are still present and correct.


This time out, the viewer is served up the Power Rangers episode which A24 decided to distribute crossed with a slimmed-down portmanteau movie, as our heroes take time out from their soul-searching to tell each other scary campfire stories – or are interrupted by a someone else who wants to tell them a scary campfire story, as in the case of a young girl. Or a talking fish on the grill. Okay, make that something.


In most other films, this would be an indication that the A-plot has absolutely nowhere to go and the button marked “STALLING FOR TIME” is being walloped frantically by the filmmaker. However, in this corner of the Dupieux multiverse, the term “A-plot” is undefined and the sharp turns in the proceedings seem more to do with him having had enough of his protagonists for the time being, wishing to regale the audience with something entirely different.


To which end, there’s a vignette about a helmet which turns its wearer into a serial killer. This is bizarre, gory and quite amusing. Another detour takes us to a farm, at which a well-meaning but useless bloke has fallen into a nasty-looking piece of machinery and is steadily being turned into mush via a series of mechanical malfunctions and incoherent instructions. This is bizarre, gory and quite amusing.


For a large proportion of Smoking Causes Coughing, Dupieux seems ambivalent at best about his suit-clad super folks, painting them as a shambling, vain bunch, even if they’re a shambling, vain bunch who can combine their individual powers to blast their foes with an accelerated form of cancer. This causes coughing, no doubt, but also hideous death by explosion, accompanied by a spectacular shower of blood and guts, which whacks an abrupt and eye-popping exclamation point on what had previously been a scrap straight from a Saturday morning kids’ show.


Leader of the team Benzène (Gilles Lellouche) is becoming disillusioned with his charges, possibly with good reason: Méthanol (Vincent Lacoste) is showing his grumpy, sullen side more; Mercure (Jean-Pascal Zadi) is missing his family; and Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier) holds a candle for boss Didier, which would ordinarily make for much musing on unrequited love with an unobtainable guy except that…


…Didier is a rat. Not only is Didier a rat, but he’s also a rat who constantly dribbles green goo of unknown origin. Fifth team member Ammoniaque (Oulaya Amamra) advises that going in for a snog could have dangerous consequences other than a doomed workplace romance, as Didier’s drool could be toxic or detergent. For all his heroism and will to protect the world, Didier is a hilariously foul creation, a nightmarish rodent puppet voiced by Alain Chabat. Of course, women find Didier irresistible. The combination of Didier’s stoicism and slobbering broke me every single time and I was then waiting for the next time he appeared, but your appreciation of the character may depend on how funny you find the concept of Tony Stark looking like the cousin of Trevor from Meet The Feebles.


In terms of performances, Demoustier stands out as the lovelorn, more emotionally fragile of the group, but everyone here turns in agreeable work: the cast includes such luminaries as Adèle Exarchopoulos and Benoît Poelvoorde, so Dupieux’s ability to attach Euro cinema fixtures to his eccentric projects remains undimmed.


Running just seventy-seven minutes, Smoking Causes Coughing is acutely aware of how far to stretch its ramshackle comedic stylings and gets out while the going’s (mostly) good. However, for those who fail to acquire the taste for its baked-in wackiness, this will feel like seventy-seven hours, as Dupieux refuses to develop any of the many plot threads and eschews an action packed climax in favour of a more elegant, budgetary-conscious solution. Following the trend of tentpole superhero movies there’s also a post-credit sequence, but even that isn’t setting anything up for the next movie; it’s a scene engineered to eke out a previous joke which has already been thrashed to within an inch of its life.


Dupieux seems more comfortable than ever with pushing the boundaries of absurdism and leaving the viewer with little or no explanation as to just what the hell is going on, displaying an approach to the material which is so laid back that there’s no attempt to win the audience over with the expected crowd pleasing moments of the franchises being parodied. This will infuriate just as many as it will delight, but I rather enjoyed the non-adventures of Tobacco Force.

Smoking Causes Coughing is out on general release (UK) on 7th July 2023.