Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Horror in Short: Fist of Jesus (2012)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Some of you may remember, a few weeks back, we featured a nifty and very gory short film by the title of Brutal Relax? Well, wouldn’t you know, but filmmakers Adrián Cardona and David Muñoz have only gone and taken their madcap visions of the walking dead back to the time of Christ…

This is, at least at first, a very recognisable Jesus (played by Marc Velasco) with some very recognisable followers. Ours not to ponder how a Middle Eastern man transmogrified (I love that word) in popular consciousness into a benign, blue-eyed hippy with facial hair, but regardless of that, Velasco is our Jesus, and he’s obviously having difficulty keeping a handle on the whole miracle thing. So much so that, as per the story of Lazarus, when Jesus brings him back to life he turns out to be a Bible-era zombie. Damn.

You’d better take a look for yourselves…

Yep, so before long we have Pharisean zombies (understandable), Roman Legionary zombies (equally so) and…cowboy zombies? Hey, we’re dealing with the dead coming back to life here, so it wouldn’t do to get too skittish about anachronisms. The point is that our Lord and Saviour has a situation on his hands and he has to do what he can to re-establish order. Like Brutal Relax before it, this film is played for laughs, as well as being endearingly tongue-in-cheek and splatter-happy. I’ll admit to laughing out loud at the multiplying fishes as weapons idea; why not employ a piranha as a means of eviscerating an undead cowboy?

This is not a philosophical work by any stretch of the imagination, then, but if you like your films shot through with flying limbs and various other splatstick humour, then Fist of Jesus is a blessing. Cardona and Muñoz know how to have fun with their screenplays and hey, if you like this film, it turns out they’re hoping to make it into a feature-length, so by all means go and show your support at their website or at their Facebook page. Amen.

Theatre Review: The Woman in Black

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Outside of the novella itself, Susan Hill’s quintessentially British ghost story The Woman in Black is perhaps best-known to most Brutal as Hell readers via last year’s film starring Daniel Radcliffe as the unfortunate solicitor Arthur Kipps, or maybe through Nigel Kneale’s (ahem, superior) televised version from 1989, but it has also been running since the 1980s as one of the world’s longest-running stage productions. Having seen, and enjoyed both filmed versions of the story, what could the theatre offer which equalled or surpassed these? I went along to the York Theatre Royal to find out why the play boasts such longevity, in a day and age of movies which can give us flashy special effects and big budgets. And, like any good ghost story, it turns out that the terror is all in the telling.

The first thing to say about The Woman in Black stage production is that it makes a feature out of its economy. Being obviously unable to create a perfect representation of all the characters, places and objects mentioned in the novella, it pares things right back, so that all which is present on stage for the bulk of the performance is an old chest, a clothes rail and a chair – although a few more props creep in as the play moves along, and are very well used to maximise their impact. Something as simple as the projected outline of Eel Marsh House onto the backdrop provides just enough for your imagination to do the rest of the work. Careful use of lighting bolsters the effect of these small but effective touches to a surprising degree; the stage was frequently plunged into darkness, with the actors using torches or lamps in order to barely pick out the outlines of objects on the stage…

As for the actors themselves, the economy of the surroundings also extends to the cast. Largely comprising two people only – and one ghost, barely present and all the more effective for it – the story itself was rewritten by the late playwright Stephen Mallatratt so that in the stage version, we meet an older Arthur Kipps who seeks to exorcise his demons by performing the events of years previously in the form of a play. To do this, he enlists the help of a young actor. As they begin to work through Kipps’ manuscript, with the younger man taking the role of Kipps himself, the story proper unfolds.

During the first act, I found the meta-narrative style quite difficult to get into, mainly as the actor/older Kipps frequently step out of their roles as young Kipps/other characters to reflect upon what they’re doing. Some of this is played for light relief, which for me made getting into the right frame of mind to be scared a little tricky. Once the central premise was set up, I didn’t feel as though I needed to keep being reminded of it; however, by the time we had reached the second part, the momentum of the story took over and definitely carried me along with it.

So – the story gradually unfolds via the idea of someone feeling the need to tell it for the sake of their own sanity; as they tell it, via an actor, the story proper comes to the fore, The burning question here, of course, is – is it scary? At times, the answer to that is definitely yes. The play as written can’t resist lobbing in a few jump-scares to get the audience’s nerves on edge, something which I’m not fond of either on screen or on the boards, but the play is really at its best when it’s developing its more slow-burn scenes of horror. Very straightforward things scare us, really. We don’t need much – just a hint that something is incorrect, that natural laws are being messed with, that our expected patterns and rules are being subverted. A door opening seemingly of its own accord, a strange noise, a figure glimpsed out of the corner of one’s eye…all of these things can scare us, and The Woman in Black has them all. It is very effective at generating atmosphere, and holding back on the woman in black herself is absolutely the right thing to do. I will admit to getting a shiver in one scene, where Kipps has been asleep at Eel Marsh House, wakes, shines his light and catches the woman’s skeletal face looming over his. All of the tied-to-chairs shenanigans in the world can’t equal that sort of sensation, which is one of the reasons I’m so pernickety about supernatural horror. I want it done right. As much as it took me a while to get into the narrative style here, The Woman in Black does it right.

I’m not a regular theatre-goer by any means but I very much enjoyed this show; for any horror fans who would like to experience the genre through a different medium, one well-acted and realised, I’d say that catching The Woman in Black is an excellent way to spend £20. See it if you can.

‘We came to wreck everything, and ruin your life – God sent us’: twenty years of Romper Stomper

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Warning – as this retrospective contains a detailed discussion of the film, it as such CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Well, last time I checked, this website was still called Brutal As Hell – and so, it is fitting that we should take a moment to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the UK release of a film which is definitively brutal as hell. Romper Stomper – from the very get-go – is not easy viewing. Its portrayal of skinhead violence is unflinching; as such, it seems to have garnered something of a laudatory reputation amongst right-wing skins themselves. Go and look up clips from the movie or songs from the soundtrack on Youtube, and you will almost invariably find comments which rejoice in the film’s racism or see Hando and his boys as people to emulate. It’s right what they say: you should never read the bottom half of the internet…

So, let’s get this out of the way first and foremost: anyone – anywhere in the world – who sees Romper Stomper as in any way, shape or form a pro-racism or pro-racist film is a fucking idiot. No exceptions.

Ignoring the sad irony that so many of the most vocal pro-Hitler fans on the internet who bark the loudest beneath the Romper Stomper vids in question seem to be based in Russia or Eastern European countries, and as such are people Hitler would have considered sub-human, let’s think about the film for a moment. The opening scenes of the film show the boys attacking and beating a group of Vietnamese children. Children. Even the worst coward or bully would (or should) surely have a hard time seeing this behaviour as bold or praiseworthy. It isn’t intended to be suggested conduct, and you can bet your bottom dollar that director Geoffrey Wright never ever had this in mind when he filmed it. Think further; the boys, as predicted by hangers-on Megan and Tracy, do indeed ‘all end up fucked’. They lose everything of the little they have. The only way out of the gang is enlightenment – or prison, or death. Makes you want to sign up on the spot, doesn’t it? One of the film’s many razor-sharp moments of irony comes when the gang flee a retaliatory gang of Vietnamese men as the superb soundtrack starts to assert that these ‘Fourth Reich fighting men [are} living in the sewers but they’re gonna go far’. Meanwhile, at this same moment, we see their number depleted, their squat decimated and them running like rats. Make no mistake, then – Romper Stomper in no way glamorises skinhead violence. You’d have to be selective to the point of idiocy to really think so.

However, one of the film’s towering strengths is that, although it doesn’t shy away from getting up close with the philosophy and mindset of these young men and women – with a particularly potent scene as Russell Crowe’s Hando reads from Mein Kampf – the film doesn’t simply depict them as ogres. Nor does it simply whirl through an array of violent set pieces with no point. The really unsettling, and gripping thing about Romper Stomper is that it shows us real people. Sure, some of the more minor figures in the gang – Sonny Jim, Chuckles – don’t have the most vibrant inner lives, but they’re believable nonetheless. See, at the heart of this story we have a group of displaced human beings, broke, isolated and lacking any of the usual safety nets like work or family. They live hand to mouth, moving from one shitty squat to another, and they resent it. Without excusing the gang’s obsession with fighting economic migration into Footscray, Melbourne, we’re shown why it might be that they’re lashing out, and how these people have all washed up together, evidently seeking a sense of belonging from one another. You can hate what they espouse, of course you should, but by the end of the film I always find it impossible to hate the gang members – something which is a huge compliment to the writing, acting and direction. I don’t hate Hando either, despite his escalating, menacing behaviour. Considering the research and work which Crowe (who apparently still gets the odd acting job) and his fellow gang members did to prepare themselves for as realistic a gang vibe as possible, perhaps the pathos isn’t a surprise. But does that make me feel a little uncomfortable in places? Yes, because good filmmaking always has that potential.

So – we’re given our basic set-up early on. A group of young men and a couple of molls have congregated around the charismatic Hando, and he in turn is part of a loosely-organised network of Neo-Nazi footsoldiers, dedicated primarily to scaring off the Vietnamese who are, they feel, crowding out the white areas of the city. Life already seems pretty precarious, and then the arrival of the deeply damaged, but warm-hearted Gabrielle (Jacqueline McKenzie, incredibly starring in her first film role here) starts off a spiral of events. Herself seeking love and stability, she throws herself into the centre of the gang, becoming smitten with the brutal but charming gang leader. However, he is unwilling or incapable of forming a relationship with her; the only real flashes of warmth and humanity we see from Hando are in relation to his boys, and second-in-command Davey (Daniel Pollock) in particular. Where Hando has no real interest in Gabe, Davey sees the hope of love with her, which fundamentally undermines the gang at a moment when their fortunes are balanced on a knife-edge as ‘their place’, their local pub gets bought out by a Vietnamese businessman and his sons. The resultant events play out as a modern working-class tragedy, as Gabe, Hando and Davey each try to find in one another the something which is lacking from their respective lives. The opportunity to exchange one sense of belonging for another, in effect, irrevocably undermines the existence of the gang. The centre cannot hold.

The story, as it plays out, is told with equal measures of veritas, pathos, irony – and yes, even humour. Hear me out.

As aggressive as these guys can get, as horrific as the situations are as they unfold, you cannot tell me that Romper Stomper doesn’t have its moments of deft black comedy. In fact, I’d argue that those moments, as brief as they are, are fundamentally important to the plot. They are essential in humanising the characters, making them seem more than their appearances first suggest, and in giving the characters something everyday and mundane to react to as humour takes them out of their stock characterisation for a while. Regard Sonny’s dismissal of going fruit-picking with the girls instead of waging war against the ‘Gooks’ who just gave his gang a kicking, with his pointed retort, ‘I hate the fucking country’. Or the tragicomic figure of Flea, a new recruit to the gang who looks ‘like a fucking hippy with hair that long’ – a guy who only joined up because, in his own words, he needed a job. There are even some moments of daft physical humour too which are, whisper it, quite endearing. When Gabe accidentally and then not-quite-accidentally soaks Davey as they wash dishes together, it comes across as natural and charming enough to work. Of course, all of these moments are short-lived. Humour is there, it’s important, but it’s always book-ended with something nastier or sadder. Light relief in Romper Stomper is momentary, and then we’re back into the tension – that change-around is something else which feeds into that seam of irony running all the way through the film, starting with the cold irony of immigrants telling immigrants that Australia is ‘not their country’ in the opening reels and ending with events leading up to the staggering finale, which layers ironies so effectively that I am always emotionally involved in the ending of this film.

If Romper Stomper contains strong currents of both love and hate, then, both of these emotional states are linked together by the desire for vengeance, which grows stronger and shifts around, first finding one target and then another. The gang’s need to destroy the Vietnamese who lately did so much harm to them aids and abets the abused Gabe in a plot to implicate her father Martin; his desire to avenge himself on the boys who have dared to take his daughter away escalates the tension in the gang, and when they then reject Gabe, she makes the fatal decision to avenge herself on them. Davey is spared, because he finally moves on – he goes home, back to a family he is apparently unique in having had all along – and then finds love. But, when you open a floodgate, you don’t get to control what happens. The plot descends into nightmare as the collision course between Gabe, Davey and Hando reaches its inevitable point, but finally there’s resolution. At last, the anger is dissipated. As Davey looks up at those watching him and Gabe, there is no animosity left. He has come full circle.

That touching last scene, tragically, is also the last filmed scene ever to feature Daniel ‘Davey’ Pollock, the young man whom director Wright calls ‘instinctively brilliant’ in his performance here. Pollock never got the chance to reflect on his work in Romper Stomper; he committed suicide prior to the film’s release. Whilst his best-known character was able to escape his own demons in the end, sadly, Pollock himself could not, and his death at the age of twenty-two deprived Australian cinema of one of its most promising talents. It’s hard not to think of that loss when watching this movie, but nonetheless to feel grateful for such a brilliant characterisation, particularly how the interplay works with the two other lead actors.

His fine work alongside Crowe and the rest of the cast made for a gang movie where we’re really taken into the heart of a gang: whatever we think, we know the characters we sit alongside. It is in this that I personally feel that Romper Stomper surpasses the decent, but perhaps less carefully-crafted later movies of similar subject matter, such as Made in England, which to me just has less ambiguity, lower believability, less multi-layering. That we are encouraged to relate to the deeply flawed individuals in Romper Stomper without ever sentimentalising is disconcerting, but it’s memorable and it’s powerful. And, as long as we admire cinema which is brutal as hell, we must learn to accept the journey on which it takes us, wherever it takes us.

Perhaps ultimately, whatever violence we are confronted with here, however ugly the principles which drive it, it’s coming from a root source which is all too familiar. Maybe the most unpalatable truism in this film is that it reminds us of the drive towards wanting to belong – something which we all have within us – and how it can be one of the most destructive human instincts there is. Happy twentieth then, Romper Stomper. You’ve taught your lessons well.

Thinking Outside The Box, Part 2: Female Filmmakers and ‘Underrepresentation’

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea and Annie Riordan

Keri: Happy Valentine’s Day. Is February still with us? It is? Jeez…

Anyway, so far we’ve talked about our experiences as horror fans and misconceptions relating to that – but there’s no fandom without the films themselves after all, so it’s high time we talked about life on the other side of the lens. And – wouldn’t you know? – it seems like we can’t discuss female filmmakers either, without falling foul of yet another array of received wisdom and entering into a discussion which frequently falls over itself in order to crow the loudest about under-representation. In this, the second part of our feature on women and horror, we talk about the idea that horror as a genre is not open for business for women and that it’s unfair to the women it portrays. We’ll start with something we’ve heard a great deal of over the past few years…

“Women are sidelined in the horror industry and prevented from achieving.”

Keri: actually, although Hollywood seems a tough nut to crack, independent film – which, let’s face it, is more often than not where we’re looking as horror fans – boasts a significant proportion of female directors. Recent data shows that in the last ten years of Sundance, around 1 in 3 directors were women. The picture isn’t all doom and gloom. Still, the cry often goes up that women are ‘under-represented’ in filmmaking, and ergo, that women are being prevented from reaching equality.

Okay, so let’s think along those lines for a moment. Rightly speaking then, as women make up 51% of the population, slightly more than half of all directors should have their chromosomes laid out in an XX pattern. Somehow we need to rectify this situation, or face an unfair, corrupt industry stretching away forever into the future. But if we continue along this path – and if we’re concerned for equality and representation, then we shouldn’t simply stop at gender – what about securing proportionality for people of different ethnic backgrounds? Or gay people? Or bisexual people? Or Muslims? Or transgendered people? or those with a disability? Once you begin to refract everything through this kind of lens, it has the potential to go on forever. There will always be some minority which isn’t fulfilling some quota or other. The search for a completely representative demographic is endless, and as such provides an endless, easy supply of grievances. And, if we reached this utopia of perfect and fair representation in the arts, what exactly would it mean?

Let’s get back to women in the horror industry. How would the genre benefit by a more proportionate number of women directors? Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University’s School of Theatre, Television and Film says that women are far less likely to work in the horror genre at all, and that the lack of women working in film generally ‘impoverishes our culture’: by extension, more women directors would make for more women on screen, and more believable characterisation of women.

Let’s take a moment here to apologise to the male horror directors who have been more than capable of creating and directing a wealth of legendary female characters over the years, even whilst impeded by having a different gender to them: Carrie White, Rosemary Woodhouse, Ellen Ripley, Uxía Cambarro, May Canady, Baby Firefly and Lola Stone, to name but a few. Does it necessarily follow that men are unable to write, or empathise with female characters? It seems a very disparaging thing to assume. In fact, if you call yourself a horror fan, chances are you are a fan of creative works which have been almost exclusively created by men – and presumably you’ve enjoyed them just fine. Nor does being a woman director automatically make you more inclined to craft well-delineated female characters on screen: some of you might have heard of Doris Wishman…a facetious example maybe, but one worth making nonetheless.

Anyway, according to Lauzen’s beliefs, a lack of female horror directors should mean we have a lack of women in horror movies. Is this the case? Using our 2012 Top 10 lists on Brutal As Hell (which at present lists nine women writers and only four men – we really should strive for better representation), alongside a straw poll on Twitter, I looked at the horror films of last year which people rated the best. Without a shadow of a doubt, the most votes were for American Mary, a film directed by two women with a female protagonist; other films which figured highly were The Cabin in the Woods and Berberian Sound Studio, each directed by men. Were they therefore lacking in female characters? Well, Berberian Sound Studio stars a man, but lists twenty-three female cast members to fourteen men; The Cabin in the Woods contained three guys and two girls…so far, it isn’t looking as though we are lacking for women in horror movies. I found a similar story wherever I looked. It simply isn’t the case that horror is female character-deficient. As stated in the last article on this topic and supported by Dr Brigid Cherry’s research, horror is far more all-encompassing than many other genres of film.

Annie: The horror film industry has proven itself time and again to be an excellent springboard too, launching the career of many an actress and director (directoress?) alike. Don’t believe me? Go to IMDb and scroll through the credits of Rene Zellweger, Jennifer Aniston, Naomi Watts, Meg Ryan, Sissy Spacek, Drew Barrymore, Sharon Stone, Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver. And those are just the actresses. Once upon a time, Kathryn Bigelow – acclaimed director of The Hurt Locker and the currently controversial Zero Dark Thirty – shot a little vampire film called Near Dark back in 1987, which was considered an instant gem of the genre. Not much was made of the fact that the director was a female. Nobody cared, because the movie was so fucking amazing, it didn’t make a single shit-worth of difference. Oh, and then there’s Mary Harron, who shot a film called American Psycho. Ever hear of it? You’d better say yes if you want to be taken seriously as a horror film fan. Everyone’s seen it, everyone loves to quote it, who remembers that the director was female? And more importantly, who gives a fuck? It was an excellent film, therefore the gender of the director matters about as much as the gender of the person who brewed the coffee I had at Dunkin Donuts the other day. The end result was good, so who cares?

Keri: Ah, but what about what happens to women in horror movies?

“Women are always the victims in horror movies. We need to combat that misogyny by giving the world strong, empowered female characters in films.”

Keri: look, women certainly are not always the victims, nowhere near, but even if they were, horror is horror because it’s unfair and it’s nasty. End of story. It has no obligation whatsoever to satisfy whatever notions of equality are current in a culture. In fact, I’d say it’s the opposite: horror is where our worst fears and preoccupations are toyed with. That of course includes situations where people are victimised, and women of course get victimised.

Annie: Yes, women are quite often the victims in horror films. I’m not going to debate that fact. But is this necessarily misogynistic? I think not. The most basic rule of writing fiction is this: you must have a protagonist and an antagonist. You must make the antagonist ultimately despicable, someone you want to see fall, whether that fall is metaphorical or literal. And really, what is more cowardly and despicable than someone who victimizes those who are smaller, weaker and/or defenceless? This is why horror films often offer the catalyst of a slain pet to start the ball rolling. “That bastard killed Fluffy! I want to see him die!”

But we must also remember that the term “Final Girl” exists for a reason too. Girls are victimized in horror, yes. But they’re also usually the ones who triumph, overcome their fears, discover the reserve of strength within themselves they never knew existed and tap it, unleashing the proverbial “can of whoopass” on the one who has, so far, assumed them to be an easy target.

Sidney Prescott (Scream) not only lived to the end, but taunted her attacker with emasculating insults before blowing his head off. Marti Gaines (Hell Night) fixed her own fucking car before using it as a murder weapon. Meg Penny (The Blob, remake) the town cheerleader, grabbed a machine gun and went Rambo. And then there’s films like Teeth and Hostel 2, both of which feature the thus far victimized girl castrating their male tormentors and feeding their dicks to their own dogs, turning Man’s Best Friend into the garbage disposal, the most vaginal appliance in the woman’s heretofore accepted domain: the kitchen.

Would horror movies be as palatable if all of the victims were men? No, because it’s generally considered an even match which inspires no true sense of conflict. If you want to watch men fight to the death, watch UFC. If you want empowerment, watch a slasher. It’s no coincidence that horror film fans are, for the most part, a non-violent bunch. Our viewing experiences are cathartic, and our frustrations worked out in watching the repeated story of David and Goliath, especially when David turns out to be Daisy.

Keri: This perception that horror is in some way misogynistic invariably leads onto discussions of the ‘male gaze’, neatly entrenching the idea that the default audience for horror is male along the way – but we already debunked that bullshit last time. Anyway, this ‘male gaze’ notion basically insinuates that people watching these awful situations unfold in films enjoy partaking in them. It is deeply insulting to everyone involved. Find me one person who ‘gets off’ on scenes of rape and violence in horror and I’ll find you five hundred who don’t. If you see films in these terms and wonder about the titillating aspects of rape and murder, perhaps you’re the one with the problem…it is an attitude which also ignores a massive swathe of horrors which contain nothing of the sort.

The idea that horror is going to be subject to redress by a vocal minority who don’t understand what the genre is fills me with foreboding. Horror is not an equal opportunities arena. Its dissection by feminist film studies and people who want to engineer ‘strong, empowered female characters’ whilst seeing more ‘female directors’ who they presumably feel would give a fairer voice to women seems to miss the entire fucking point of the genre.

I hate even talking in these terms. It’s not how I see the world.

Funnily enough, though, even in a sub-genre like slashers, which is renowned for predominantly carving up girls, the picture is more complex than you might expect. In his book Teenage Wasteland: the Slasher Movie Uncut, author Justin Kerswell discovered that during what he calls ‘the golden age’ of slasher movies between 1978 – 1984, there were more male victims on screen than women.

“Female filmmakers need extra support to get noticed.”

Keri: How? We all know it’s tough out there. Getting off the ground, getting funding, getting your product known…these issues affect everyone in the horror genre, not just women. The indie movie market is always going to be fucking brutal because times are hard and cash is scarce. But how do you say outright that women are being prevented from success purely because they’re women? The focus is all off. Why don’t we concentrate on promoting films which are good, rather than concerning ourselves with quotas?

Annie: female filmmakers need support to get noticed? Ida Lupino didn’t think so.

In 1953, Lupino directed the film noir/psycho-thriller “The Hitch-Hiker” which she also wrote, based on the true story of serial killer Billy Cook. She made no big deal out of the fact that she was female. True, she was already established as an actress, but she made films because she wanted to, not because she was told that she couldn’t because she was a girl.

Director Audrey Ewell spent two years immersed in the primarily male dominated black metal scene of Norway with her co-director/life partner Aaron Aites to make the documentary “Until The Light Takes Us.” Her sex was, and remains, a non-issue, both among the films fans and the musicians themselves. This despite the fact that the metal music community is also considered to be an exclusively male scene, closed to girls who cannot possibly appreciate the ferocity and nihilism of metal. Apparently, both Keri and myself missed that memo…

There have always been female directors in the film industry, stretching back to 1896 (Alice Guy Blache – The Cabbage Fairy). The fact that not much has been made of their sex should be viewed as an attribute, in that the director wants to be seen as artists, storytellers, and filmmakers first and foremost.

Ultimately, and in my usual and crude manner, I don’t think that the sex of the director is an issue, unless the female director in question is filming said movie with a camera held in her labia.

Keri:…and lest we get told we don’t know what we’re talking about because we’re not filmmakers ourselves, let’s hear from some female directors, shall we? Director Devi Snively told me, “I think it sets us all back when we limit ourselves according to sex stereotypes. Nonetheless, I mostly just ignore it all. I’m not one to pigeon-hole myself. If others feel the need to, that’s their issue. I believe the work should speak for itself and the work isn’t just me. I’ve got a team that includes men and women of varying ages. Our stories have laughs and romance, suspense and the macabre. We can throw labels around, or we can make movies. I prefer to make movies personally.”

Back in 2010 when I spoke to the Soska sisters – long before American Mary was a going concern – they corroborated this viewpoint. Jen Soska told me, “simply because a film is made by a woman we shouldn’t think it’s wonderful or crap. We should let the work speak for itself. If a man makes a movie and it’s shit, everyone jumps on him. I’ve seen women make crap and have their work protected because it was apparently some great accomplishment that the poor dear even tried. Now, don’t get me wrong. I have a great deal of respect for any man or woman who has the balls to go out and make a film. It’s rough and you deserve a lot of credit for pulling it off. However, I’m a feminist who believes women shouldn’t be cut breaks because of their gender. Even if it’s positive, it’s still sexist.”

From a personal point of view, I don’t give a damn about the gender of the person who directs any film I review – I’d rather they all listed themselves first initial + last name, if it comes down to it, so that I can concentrate on whether the film is any good, nothing else. That would be genuine equality. What we get instead is an assemblage of people who will promote the hell out of anything directed by a woman, screeching from the rooftops about ’empowerment’ with seemingly no concept that they’re actually being sexist and skewing quality control by focusing on gender politics at the cost of all else.

Furthermore, people need to be honest about the level of interest which can be generated, simply because a filmmaker is a woman. I’ve mentioned Jen and Sylvia Soska; as much as I am inclined to agree with Jen’s take on gender bias, I am absolutely certain that the fact we have twin sisters directing has granted them exposure which would otherwise be impossible to come by. Everyone knows who they are in the horror genre. Does everyone know Jon and Howard Ford? They’re insanely talented filmmakers, but then they’re brothers, not sisters…

If you persist in asserting that films made by women are being overlooked or if you’re saying that films made by women need to divided from all the other films out there because they aren’t competing on the same terms, what you’re doing is entrenching difference, selecting films simply on the basis of the gender of the people who worked on them. Why? It suggests they aren’t equal. It suggests women’s films need special help. If they’re as good as anything else out there, they don’t need to be considered separately or differently. If you push it just because it suits your agenda, aren’t you then in danger of overlooking better films? Aren’t you creating a false positive?

But then, a lot of people out there (often the ones who crow loudest about unfairness and discrimination) seem to have a schizophrenic attitude to their gender. They claim mistreatment and demand equality, but can’t seem to help making their appearance an important part of their online identities. They don’t want people to judge them on their looks, but they invite it. It’s one reason that I’m very careful to avoid doing the same thing – I don’t think my face is really relevant to what I do or how I do it. I have no interest in concealing my gender, my age or my appearance, but no interest in pushing these to the fore when what I’m actually doing is writing about horror. I would never like to think that I was one of these champions of feminism who absolutely requires a bikini/soaked in blood avatar or topic-irrelevant cleavage shots to get noticed. I actually have no issue with any of these things, not at all. But let’s be honest about them, eh? Shit or get off the pot. However you dress it up, you’re seeking attention based on your looks, so accept this openly, or don’t fucking do it. Hypocrisy is such an ugly thing…

Essentially, myself, Annie, and many others don’t feel that we benefit at all by sequestering ourselves into little huddles of conformity. Rather than feeling that horror is an unfair arena, one closed to female fans and filmmakers alike, we call bullshit. It isn’t what we’ve experienced, it isn’t what we know, and any suggestion that the genre needs an overhaul because it is inherently sexist smacks of opportunism, as well as missing the point. You can play divide and conquer if you want to, and you can band together to bewail unfairness if you must, but do it well away from us, and don’t be surprised by the backlash, because you do not speak for us.

State of the Indie Address: An Interview with Director Dom Portalla

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

It’s always a pleasure for us at Brutal as Hell to get to talk to indie directors about their work; it’s important too, because as often as we deal with the finished product here at the site, it pays to dig a little deeper sometimes and think about the motivations of the good folk who put the films together. With that in mind, after reviewing the short film Nicky late last year I was keen to speak to its director – Dom Portalla – about his experiences in the business so far.

BAH: Your short film, Nicky, came into being thanks to a chance viewing of a photograph…can you tell us more about this?

Ken Flott, who wrote the original short story and plays the lead character in the film, came across a photo on foundmagazine.com back in 2006. Pictured in it was a little boy in a white tuxedo standing in front of a women’s restroom, likely taken during the 70s if you were to gage by the condition of the photo or all of the gnarly wood paneling that’s behind him. For whatever reason, Ken felt compelled to start writing a short story in the first person that described the picture, the boy and his relationship to him, which ended up being a very dense 45 pages when all was said and done. The two of us were shooting our first feature film, “Duality”, at the time and Ken was posting the story as he went, chapter by chapter online. I was enamoured with the material from the jump and when Ken finally finished it, I suggested that it might make for a really amazing film some day. He agreed and it took us about six years to finally get around to it, but here we are…

BAH: How pleased are you with Nicky, and what has the feedback been like so far? Where next for the film?

I love the flick and am really proud of what we were able to accomplish with it in such a short time span. We’d originally talked about possibly adapting it into a feature length movie, but opted to go with a short subject instead for two major reasons: firstly, we wanted to experiment with crowdfunding (Indiegogo, specifically) in order to learn the dos and don’ts of that platform with DSLR cameras, and secondly, we wanted to have the flexibility of working within a very limited budget and time-frame. Based on the overall positive feedback we’ve been getting, I feel like we were successful on both accounts.

As far as what’s next for the film, we’ve completed our first wave of festival submissions, so we are hoping to take the film around the country over the course of the next few months. We are also holding our Boston Premiere on February 7th at the Kendall Square Cinema, which is probably my favorite independent film theater in the state of Massachusetts.

BAH: I gather that it was always your ambition to be a filmmaker: how does the reality of your chosen career match up with the expectations you had?

I think that in order to be successful in this business you have to put aside all expectations, be that of fame, fortune or accolade, and really just love the process of making films. If you’re not a person who absolutely needs to be making films from deep down in your bones, than it’s probably not something that you should be doing. Early on, I was a bit naïve in that I thought all I had to do was tell stories that were really personal to me, try my absolute hardest, and the rest of the story would write itself. The world of indie cinema has changed exponentially since some of my heroes made their way into the industry and since the time that I began seriously pursuing this as a career, I’ve learned how difficult it is to stand out amongst all of the white noise that’s out there. Ultimately, I continue to make movies because otherwise, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. In continuing to write, work with actors, and explore all aspects of my craft, my expectations of how gratifying this all is has been met and exceeded tenfold. And in going through this process time and again, the rest of the story is writing itself.

BAH: Are there any films or filmmakers that have had a significant influence on your own work?

Early on, it was definitely Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino. In as much as their work inspired me, I was maybe even more influenced by their stories of breaking into the business. I identified with those guys immensely having been a video store clerk (a job that basically doesn’t really even exist anymore) who had seen everything, had a lot of opinions on movies and wanted to create something they could identify with themselves. I especially loved their specific attention to detail of language and dialogue, which when done wrong can be incredibly pretentious, but when done right is fucking poetry. Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick have also been filmmakers who helped shape my view of the power of cinema, as a medium which can transcend entertainment and really become art.

BAH: What do you think of the state of play of indie cinema today, and how do you think the scene could be improved?

I think at a time where technology has reached the point where anyone empowered to pick up a camera and make a movie can do so, you should be seeing a lot more truly independent films out in the market. The powers that be seem to play it safe these days though, when they should be taking more risks. Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch, Ed Burns, those guys were risks. If you’ve got a 12 million dollar budget and a cast of A-list celebrities and you’re calling your film “independent”, it sort of seems like you’re hedging your bets. There are a lot of very interesting filmmakers out there putting their work together with spit and glue who have audiences that are waiting to find them.

BAH: Finally, what’s next for you? What are your plans for 2013?

We’ll be finding “Nicky” a home on the festival circuit and we’ll finish developing our third feature film, “Saint Joey”, which is another project we’ve had in the works for years now and is easily the most ambitious script I’ve ever put to paper. If everything goes according to plan, you may even see the wheels turning with that before the end of the year!

Thanks to Dom Portalla

http://doorelevenproductions.com/

Horror in Short: Unlocking Charlie (2011)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to suffer from anxiety, there’s a fair chance that it’s also involved a degree of agoraphobia: after all, if people and unfamiliar situations fuck you up, then going out into the world where these things exist in spades is not likely to be a fun experience. With that in mind, meet Charlie (Tom Maguire). Charlie finds it next to impossible to get outside his own front door, and the attentions of his friendly, pretty neighbour Molly (Grace Kelley) might be tempting, but agoraphobia is as agoraphobia does. It’s only when he finds out that Molly is moving on that he feels a real impetus to do something, even despite himself. Part of this is out of a genuine, warm interest in her, but there’s a level of expediency to it too. After all, if he never gets out, how is he ever going to meet anyone? Even when she asks him out, he can’t shake his hesitancy.

Things are about to get worse for him though…

Just like Nicky, the last short film we featured here at the site (which is reviewed here), Unlocking Charlie focuses very much upon the plight of one man. It’s never easy to translate the experience of anxiety onto the screen – because it is such a personal, such an internalised state – but director Stephen Crilly manages to communicate something of it here without reverting to simply filming someone obviously hyperventilating for five minutes. He does this with the help of a decent performance by Maguire (who is, incidentally, easy on the eye, which never hurts) and the generation of genuine characters in there too, as you do feel for Charlie – and for Molly, who is only halfway to understanding what is going on with her neighbour and as such, feels hurt by the rejection neither of them can help.

So far then so good – but thus far, horror hasn’t figured too highly in proceedings. Unlocking Charlie does throw a curveball in there, though, utilising the tried-and-tested horror trope of the doppelgänger in an understated way, but one which adds an extra dimension to what’s evidently a crisis point in Charlie’s life. Light-touch it might be, but making Charlie the literal embodiment of the ‘own worst enemy’ idea is a nice touch and adds a new dimension to what would otherwise be a snippet of human drama.

Whilst Unlocking Charlie isn’t reinventing the format of the short film here, what it does do it does rather well in the as-ever limited time and budgetary constraints it has.

You can find the Facebook page for Unlocking Charlie here.

DVD Review: The Bloody Judge (1970)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Review by Keri O’Shea

Jess Franco was (and is) ready to turn his hand to just about anything, so it should come as little surprise to find that he did, back in 1970, make a film all about the turbulent history of 17th Century Britain. In many ways, The Bloody Judge is rather an anomalous Franco film: it evidently has a budget, for one thing, the locations, sets and costumes are generally really good and it’s…linear, never devolving into the soft-focus confusion which, well, I rather like, but doesn’t usually do much for the plot. That said, the Hand of Jess is still at play here. Once you’ve seen the lovely Maria Rohm engaged in some frankly unorthodox lady torture, you’ll know you’re home. If anything, the slight schizophrenia at the heart of the film which sees it trying to be both a historical epic and a panoply of buxom wenches weakens its impact overall, but unusually, we get to hear from Franco (and star Christopher Lee) in a documentary included in the extras, and it makes the reasons for this a lot clearer.

The film takes place in the year 1685, the time of the so-called ‘Bloody Assizes’ here in this green and pleasant land: the king, James II, was at risk of being overthrown by the Duke of Monmouth and his supporters, and so he meted out very tough justice against any known or suspected Monmouth sympathisers via the Assize Courts and, in particular, one Judge Jeffreys, played here with customary gravitas by Christopher Lee. Jeffreys was renowned for his loyalty to the Crown and his readiness to hang traitors. In this version of the story, he also has to deal with prisoners accused of witchcraft. A young woman called Alicia Grey (Margaret Lee) is brought before him on this charge, so he orders a ‘thorough examination’ (carried out by Franco regular Howard Vernon, in possibly the world’s largest belt) which determines her guilt, natch. Alicia’s sister Mary (Rohm) petitions for her release, but it’s no good: Jeffreys will not be moved. However, their paths are destined to cross again, when she beings a relationship with the son of a powerful man and throws in her lot with the rebels. Intrigue, violence and vengeance of course ensue.

The success of Witchfinder General, made in 1968, spawned a host of films which hoped to do as well out of similar subject matter and historical settings, and I think it’s fair to say that The Bloody Judge is one of those films. It feels similar in lots of ways: the immoveable and cruel figure doling out torment and execution, the background of political upheaval, and the troubled love affair which links both of these together seem oddly familiar…this isn’t to say that he Bloody Judge is a failure, just that its influences are pretty transparent. It is definitely interesting to see Franco doing a straight film, as well: he may be playing fast and loose with historical accuracy by suggesting that the English ever burned witches, for instance (and he ain’t on his own there) but there’s lots here to commend him. It makes you wonder how differently his career might have panned out if he’d always had access to these kinds of budgets and actors. Maybe his eccentricities have been at least partly born out of sheer necessity when trying to make films on next to no money. Perhaps in a parallel universe somewhere, Stanley Kubrick has gone down in history as a hack and Franco is being revered in Film Studies classes around the globe…

I’ve never seen Christopher Lee turn in a bad performance and he’s as reliable as ever here, really getting into the opportunity to portray a historical figure. His interest in historical accuracy led to some grumbles about some of the inclusions in the film, i.e. the nudity which crept in, but on listening to Franco in the ‘Bloody Jess’ documentary included on the disc, it seems that the bewilderingly pan-European nature of the project may be at least partly to blame for the twists and turns. (It could also be that what we are seeing here is a print comprising of many different prints, some more ‘clothed’ than others. Certainly the film changes to German language at a few points, which suggests a few sources have been used.) According to Franco, every new producer hailing from a different European country who arrived on set put pressure on him to make various inclusions. This is why we go from historical drama, to a bit of soft core, to torture horror, and back to historical drama again, which makes the tone of the film a bit bewildering.

Still, decent performances, decent locations (actually Spain and Portugal) and an interesting historical setting make The Bloody Judge a worthwhile film overall. Rohm and Lee light up the screen when they’re on it, and there’s enough going on to be entertaining.

The Mediumrare Entertainment release comes with extras in the shape of the theatrical trailer, deleted and alternative scenes, chapters, and what was originally a Blue Underground documentary featuring interviews with both Christopher Lee and Jess Franco (who have worked on seven films together). I’d say the documentary is as worthwhile as the film itself, as it’s a pleasure to hear both men describing their experiences on-set, and Franco’s disparagement for the multitude of stupid re-titles his films have been given over the years (The Bloody Judge became Night of the Blood Monster in the US, for pity’s sake) would certainly strike a chord with many of us here at Brutal As Hell, as we’re still seeing a lot of this; it seems not much has changed in the last forty-odd years, eh?

The Bloody Judge will be released by Mediumrare on January 21st, 2013.

DVD Review: Room 237

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

The Shining is a personal favourite of mine, and remains one of the strongest horror films I’ve seen – a film which retains its impact, even after many viewings. It’s safe to say I’m not on my own in that respect, as the presence of the documentary film Room 237 attests. However, straightforward behind-the-scenes documentary this is not. What we have here instead is something of a Da Vinci Code for a horror classic. Proceed with a healthy pinch of salt at hand.

The makers of Room 237 have interviewed five film writers – if you would care to Google them, they are Jay Weidner, John Fell Ryan, Juli Kearns, Geoffrey Cocks and Bill Blakemore – each with certain levels of eccentricity, who each hold certain beliefs about the significance of The Shining, and details which form part of the film. We don’t see them, we only hear them, as they expound their theories over the relevant scenes (and scenes from a host of other films, television and newsreel, including a hell of a lot of shots from Demons because, you know, a cinema.) What I will say for Room 237 is that it strikes out on its own in terms of its format, and carries a certain level of engagement because of this novelty. It has an oddly-distancing vibe, though, this effect of a voice putting forward a theory, over soft music and turned-down scenes from the film. High-octane it ain’t. Where the gentle tone of the film meets its match, though, is in the theories being expounded here.

Did you realise that The Shining is actually all about the ill-treatment of the Native Americans? Or an examination of the Holocaust? Or a treatise on the general evil of, and I quote, “white folk”? You’ll also find out that Stanley Kubrick’s face appears in the clouds during the aerial scene at the start of the film, and that Kubrick himself was essentially a seer who knew everything about humanity, because The Shining has something to say about, and again I quote, “everything that exists”. Oh, fuck, I forgot that it’s also a template for the faked moon landings. I find myself genuinely at a loss as to whether the filmmakers are teasing us, or teasing their interviewees, but I will say this: I found myself howling with laughter in places, though never feeling quite sure if I was supposed to be laughing. But then again – why not re-record the audio on one of the sections where a young child interrupts his dad’s discussion? Is that because money was tight, or out of a sense of wickedness? The jury’s out on that one.

The head-scratching moments here are many. There are, to be sure, some genuinely interesting examples of mirroring and similarities, particularly between The Shining and other Kubrick films, and the commentators drew my attention to little visual tics which I had not noticed before, even during all of the times I’ve seen the film. At some points, there’s also evidence that at least some of these visual tics were put there intentionally by Kubrick. However, ultimately this slow-mo po-mo documentary works on the po-mo premise that, even if the author of a creative work did not mean to say something, theorists can prove they said it anyway. After years of seeing my favourite novels reclaimed and dissected by queer theorists and radical feminism, to name but two of the worst culprits, I have acutely limited patience with this approach. What I can say for sure about Room 237 is that it’s introduced me to a group of people who plain do not watch films in the same way as me, or most of us.

More than that, in places I felt like I was being made privy to a complex, cogent but warped version of reality as built up by someone delusional. The level of extrapolation which followed from noticing Danny had the number 42 on his shirt sleeve, for instance, led on to a slightly worrying fanaticism with tracing the number in different places through the film and then showing that this related to 1942 and thus to the Holocaust. The problem is that so much of this stuff can be knocked down as easily as it’s built up: it all depends on a tremendous narrowness of vision, noticing the things which suit you in huge detail but overlooking hundreds of other details which might compromise what you think. Also – and I’m no theorist, to be sure, but – if something’s subliminal, how in the hell do you know it’s there?

Essentially then, Room 237 is an at-times intriguing piece of film, though as much for its window into the mind of a certain type of film analyst as for anything else it does. It at least goes to show that The Shining continues to exert a massive hold over its admirers. Still, you have to wonder how people can be willing to read so much into the film, and yet be completely unwilling to accept it’s a horror movie…

Room 237 will be released by Metrodome on February 11th 2013.

UPDATE: The release date has now been changed to 11th March.

A Year in Horror – Keri’s Take on 2012

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

So long then, 2012. As we come to the end of another year, a few of us here at Brutal As Hell have already taken time out to reflect on the year in genre film. If you haven’t already done so, check out Nia’s end-of-year review here and Ben’s low-down on the good, the bad and the ugly here. One thing is apparent from reading through both of my co-writers’ articles, though, and that’s what a hectic year it’s been for film fans. All in all, it’s been a bloody good year too. Whilst I wasn’t able to get out to as many festivals as I’d have hoped and thus sadly missed out on a lot of the most hotly-debated films of the year while they were being hotly-debated, much of that which I have seen has given me hope that indie cinema in particular still has the ideas and still has the enthusiasm – it’s not all found footage and sexual assault after all. Hallelujah. Still, as with any year, you’re never going to be pleased all the time. In fact, sometimes, you’re going to be downright appalled, bored or pissed off. Such is the gamut of emotions we get as film fans, which is why I’m going to approach my own review of the year from the perspective of some of those emotional states – positive and negative – which I’ve been through in 2012. This will mean at times I discuss elements of the plot which could contain mild spoilers. So, without further ado…

Most enthralling – The Cabin in the Woods

This is a film I simply did not expect to like. Although, by some miracle considering I am an internet user, I managed to go into the screening of The Cabin in the Woods without really knowing anything about what I was about to see, I had heard one slightly ominous prefix being bandied around, and that prefix was ‘meta-‘. If ever a small word could fill you with dread…I had a horrible feeling I was about to see another Scream, a film which wrongly thought it could look down its nose at the horror genre from a vantage point of smug superiority. I wondered if Joss Whedon was going to attempt to do the same thing. In actuality, The Cabin in the Woods showed that you can be genre-aware and self-referential without ever coming across as sneering, and crafted an original story out of a whole host of recognisable elements. Loaded with fine detail, but working perfectly as an overarching story, this film had me hooked. If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t seen it yet, I recommend it. You can also check out Britt Hayes’ review here and Steph’s rather-less glowing review here. Hey, let it never be said that we all sing from the same hymn sheet here…

Most confusing – Prometheus

Regardless of whether a film is set in space, or on another planet, or has robots, or monsters, or any combination of same, it should still have a convincing internal logic. It needn’t answer every question it raises, of course not, but you still want to believe that the writers themselves could answer them – that there exists some cogency somewhere in the proceedings. Prometheus, whether by a process of re-writes or by sheer oversight, has so many plot holes that all of its many dazzling features were laid completely flat for me. Now, I hear that there’s another film on the way, and perhaps this film will help to clear up some of the questions raised in Prometheus, but it will not be able to fix everything. Personally, I could have taken less of the glorious alien vistas and a bit more of a workable narrative: I just wasn’t suitably blinded by science fiction, and came out of the cinema with an array of questions which I really don’t think anyone involved with the film could answer. If you don’t mind the spoilers, this discussion of the film is essentially all of the things I wanted to know, too.

Most convincing – Antiviral

My film of the year (check out my full-length review here), Antiviral is a massively impressive début feature from Brandon Cronenberg, bringing us a world made eerie by its toxic familiarity. To create this effective and chilling horror story, all Cronenberg has had to do is create a vision of celebrity culture which is, perhaps, just one notch up on what we currently have. The notion of ‘biological communion’ with the stars and the sickness which pervades through the film literally as well as figuratively makes this a grim, depressing but ultimately engaging watch, and its closing line of dialogue is unsurpassed this year. If this is the level of expertise we can expect from Brandon Cronenberg than I would not be at all surprised if he becomes one of my favourite working directors. Let’s hope we see more from him soon, and that this brilliant film gets seen by enough people.

Most irritating – American Mary

Why yes, not only do we not sing from the same hymn sheet at this site, we have at times thought of changing the site name from Brutal As Hell to Contrary As Fuck. Being completely honest though, ‘irritation’ is the emotion I chiefly associate with American Mary at this stage, as much for the levels of adoration being expressed everywhere towards the film and its directors (which wouldn’t go amiss in the dystopian world of Antiviral) as for the film’s own flaws. The more I’ve thought about these flaws, the more disappointed I am that so few fans and/or reviewers have discussed them at all. Whilst I can see some value in American (or rather Hungarian-Canadian) Mary, I simply cannot get past its huge hurdles: the sheer inconceivability of the student-teacher relationship, the speed date rape, the clumsy use of rape as a plot device full stop, the wilful or otherwise misunderstanding of the subject matter and its ‘shock value’, but most of all, that protracted and egotistical Soskas cameo. Someone needed to say that no, appearing in the film for such a long period of time to no plot purpose would not be ‘rad’, it would derail any momentum and believability which the film might have built up – such as how it had attempted to humanise people in the body modification scene and then, for instance, shows one of the people who supposedly belong to this culture attacking and biting a dancer. So much for consenting adults, eh?

Most mind-blowing – Bobby Yeah

Bobby Yeah is an experience that I cannot liken to anything else. Using the medium of stop-motion animation is a smart move for filmmakers who want to bring their peculiarly batshit insane vision to audiences, and director Robert Morgan has let his imagination run absolute riot in this unique short film. What’s it about? Bloody hell, it’s not easy to explain. Essentially, a little ne’er-do-well can’t resist literally pressing buttons. And, when he does, his curiosity is rewarded with a series of run-ins with increasingly weird creatures. To be honest, this film was one of those foremost in my mind when we decided to really resurrect the Horror in Short section here on the site, because it is absolutely criminal that a film of this calibre should not be more widely seen. Fans of the surreal should track it down, and then do what is the almost inevitable next step – get someone else to see it. It’s like the video tape in Ring only without the ill-effects, as long as you’re not in a mentally-altered state when you see it of course…

Most disappointing – The Innkeepers

As a proviso, I am horribly, horribly picky about supernatural horror. Where I can forgive or at least overlook flaws in other horror genres, provided I think the intentions are earnest, when it comes to good old-fashioned ghost stories I immediately turn into Statler and Waldorf. This is only because I love a good scare so much. Promise me this and fail to live up to it, and I take great umbrage. Promise me a ghost story, then weigh me down with irritating characters (Claire was beyond punchable), acres of inane conversation and a weak script, and I will lose interest long before any of the interesting attempts at fright occur. Throwing clichés in there for good measure, like the contrived appearance of the female ghost? Please don’t. I had similar problems with Sinister: for me, when up against dross like the Paranormal Activity movies, good supernatural horror needs to be great. It needs to show the world how it’s done. For me, The Innkeepers just didn’t. So, so frustrating.

Most amusing – John Dies At The End

If anyone could bring the hilarious, complex world of David Wong’s novel of the same name to the screen then it’s Don Coscarelli. We know he has form: one of his best and best-loved films, Bubba Ho Tep, owes its inception to the writing of Joe R. Lansdale, an author who has a fair few things in common with Wong, not least the mordant and savvy way he writes about strange things happening to ordinary guys. Well, John and David are definitely ordinary guys and strange things are definitely happening to them…it’s all linked to this mind-altering, dimension-scrambling drug they encounter, see. They call it ‘the sauce’, and it means things will never be the same again. I adored the novel, but I was anxious about how its multi-layered wit and complex subject matter would work in a movie. I needn’t have worried: it works brilliantly, and better still, it’s just as funny as I’d hoped it would be. John and David deserve to take their place amongst the best slacker heroes cinema has to offer, and this is a film which deserves a cult following, not least because it’s entirely in earnest and doesn’t seem to have set out to get one. But don’t just take my word for it – have a look at Ben’s glowing review here.

Most disturbing – Resolution

I hope that my full review here will adequately explain just why Resolution was so effective and innovative. It’s rare that a film can move so easily from what seems at first to be a comedic premise to something altogether more sinister, and so the fact that it does shows great skill on behalf of the writers/directors and the actors involved. To put it another way; it’s very unusual that I can bear with a film which incorporates ‘found footage’, so overused and tedious has this motif become. Resolution not only uses it as an interesting framework rather than a cost-effective cop-out, but makes it absolutely integral to the plot and – get this – makes it scary again. The more I’ve thought about the film’s ending over the past few months – an ending which I wasn’t wholly satisfied with at the time – the more I can accept it as a deft, still-questioning moment of anxious closure. Definitely one of the high points of the cinematic calendar, it’s a film which has made its mark on me, and I really hope it gets the attention it rightly deserves.

DVD Review: Midnight Son (2011)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Jacob is twenty-four years old, works the night shift as a security guard and – he’s sickening for something. He seems bemused by the physical symptoms which are laying him so low; he has a skin condition, he says, but he eats well and yet his doctor tells him he’s malnutritioned. Perhaps his physical symptoms stem from his general alienation from other people, affecting him psychosomatically, making him feel ill at ease. Whatever the cause, when he seeks to break out of his isolated existence by reaching out to a similarly disaffected soul by the name of Mary, he’s forced to confront his condition as his relationship with her grows. But what is his condition? Mary jokingly asks him if he’s a vampire. Well…maybe. At the very least, as his symptoms start to take him to some very dark places, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to sustain the reality and normality he craves alongside the something else he craves…

Films which explore the humanity of vampires are nothing new; we’ve had, ahem, a very successful uber-franchise in recent years which has taken most of the vampirism out of vampirism for the purposes of examining the relationships at the core of the story. Well, Midnight Son – with all due apologies for making the comparison I just did – shows that vampires can be both monstrous and inexplicable as well as essentially humane. This isn’t a bloodless movie thankfully, however the blood-craving itself is approached obliquely. What we don’t get in this film is any epic back-story about how Jacob came to be what he is, usually inevitably going back to the days of ruffled collars and velvet: in fact, Jacob doesn’t really seem to know what he is, or how he came to be that way. In a nice self-referential moment, we see him going to his local video rental store to check out some vampire movies, before attempting some of what he sees in the bathroom mirror (and what do you know? Crucifixes don’t work). Perhaps a fairer comparison for Midnight Son would be to Romero’s Martin, another film with a sympathetic male protagonist whose condition is ambiguous, even more so than Jacob in fact. But, the sense of lack of clarity regarding the vampirism-or-not allows us to develop a strong interest in the predicaments of the characters facing this issue.

Ambiguity is one of the film’s key strengths, then. But how it works is by framing the other key strength of the film, namely the developing relationship between Jacob and Mary, played by Zak Kilberg and Maya Parish respectively. Zak Kilberg certainly carries off the ‘elegantly wasted’ aesthetic nicely, looking both believably ill and interestingly frail throughout, where Mary’s coke-snorting habit lends a hard edge to her beauty which makes her just as appealing to watch. Together, as they go through the earliest stages of their relationship they’re awkward as hell and thus believable, not to mention rather sweet. I enjoyed seeing how earnestly they seemed to want to get along, and how their natural-seeming conversations ran. Their (significantly) always-abortive attempts to sleep together also permit an original if low-key twist, bringing a revelatory moment for Jacob, and this moves the film’s plot on nicely. Everything here is slow-burn though, and moves along at a dreamlike pace. Just as Jacob is ill and detached from things happening around him, so I felt as a viewer, albeit with a sense of dread, as the movie coolly escalates towards its end point.

…which I expected to be a moment of catastrophe. It wasn’t, and I thought it all concluded in a satisfactorily bittersweet way.

My major bone of contention with a movie I otherwise found very effective was the effect of introducing a certain set of characters who, whilst adding an element of risk to the film which it definitely needed so that it could conclude, felt rather unbelievable and unpolished in comparison to Jacob and Mary, as did the plot line which initially brings Jacob into contact with Marcus. I liked where it went, but certainly not where it started. That said, as a fucked up love story with some engaging sinister touches, I think Midnight Son is a success; it’s an interesting development upon a theme which you might be forgiven for thinking has been done to death.

The UK DVD release by Monster Pictures comes with a host of extras, including interviews with the cast, music featured in the film, deleted scenes and the theatrical trailer.

Midnight Son will be released in the UK on February 13th, 2013, from Monster Pictures.

Horror in Short Review: Nicky (2012)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

As feature length movies grow increasingly longer, short films serve a purpose beyond themselves – and that is to remind the film-going world that a moving story can be told in a fraction of the time which many features feel they now need. This is the case with Nicky, the third film by director/writer Dom Portalla, whose own feature The Darkness Within was reviewed by Marc last year. In common with The Darkness Within, Nicky focuses on the psychological rather than the visceral, but the story at its core is no less disturbing. The film explores the enormity of personal tragedy, and the fact that Nicky focuses on the impact which this tragedy has on an individual makes it far more harrowing than even the nastiest horror could hope to express.

Our nameless lead character and narrator (played by Ken Flott) is a man living with the fallout from the disappearance of his little brother – the Nicky of the title – many years before. The unresolved sense of loss has cast a shadow over his life ever since, trapping him in a kind of stasis, unable to move on. He refuses invitations to socialise, two marriages have failed – and all the time, just out of his line of vision or when he’s between sleeping and waking, he sees Nicky, just as he was on the day of his disappearance. It’s clear that our lead has to do something, or something has to happen. His life is half-lived, and he can’t go on in this manner. So, when he finds out about something which could help him to find out what did happen to his brother, he takes the opportunity to try and get the closure he needs…

This is a strong effort from Portalla – who realises that it’s possible to balance tension with pathos when you get your focus right. Key here is the performance of Ken Flott, who developed the idea for the story and also collaborated on the screenplay; Nicky is in many ways a character study of our narrator, and he is kept in very close focus throughout, albeit at times obliquely. Flott’s character often appears in profile, for instance, which gives the impression that his state of mind is hidden and adds to the feeling of distance between him and the other characters he encounters. He’s present, but he’s also absent. The fact that he isn’t named is important here too, especially as someone else’s name hangs so heavily over the story; his own identity has been lost, as he tries to find out what happened to another person. His plight isn’t over-expressed, but yet we get a surprisingly complex character, someone whose inner life you can believe in.

As to if and when the narrator finds the answers he seeks, the pace of reveal here is effective and engaging, and it kept me guessing throughout. Coming in at just under thirty minutes, it’s testament to the film’s writing that it made such good use of the timescale it had, utilising ambitious editing and a script which manages to be sardonic in places, and genuinely moving in others. That said, there were a couple of moments where a brand of surreal, almost black comedy crept in, and I wasn’t so sure that this fitted with the general vibe of the film. Sure, it aided the distancing effect present throughout the film, but it did jar a little with me. It was the simply-expressed emotion which I thought made up the stronger aspect of the script: the line “they unfortunately live forever” summed up so much about what is at the heart of this film – the rawness of grief. In fact, the brief nod to horror which is present in the resolution – however necessary it is to the plot – is where the film is at its weakest, because here it is most easily-linked to horror tropes it exceeds elsewhere. As a psychological study with darkness at its heart however, it is a superb short film.

Here’s a sneak preview of Nicky, which is currently on the festival circuit.

And look out for an interview with director Dom Portalla in the near future here at Brutal As Hell…