Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on July 12, 2006, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
For the 10th anniversary of Montreal’s Fantasia festival of horror, fantasy and related genre films, the focus has become more international than ever. There are designated series focusing on movies from Britain, Russia and even homegrown DIY features from Canada, along with the usual roundup of fare from Asia and Europe. But the movie I’m most looking forward to seeing during my trip this year hails from the good old U.S. of A.: Lucky McKee’s THE WOODS, finally escaping from the shelf to make its North American premiere. You can see my review of this atmosphere-packed spooker here.
My trip north on Sunday actually takes less time than I expect, and I arrive in time to catch another flick that has been much-awaited by many people: the uncategorizable Funky Forest: The First Contact by Japanese directors Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime Ishimine and Shinichiro Miki. It’s a delirious conglomeration of comic sketches, interconnected vignettes and blackout gags, all done in a deadpan, ironic style that (for example) casts heartthrob Tadanobu Asano as one of the “Unpopular With Women Brothers.” Some of it is brilliant, but a little of this kind of thing goes a long way, and here it goes on and on for two and a half hours and ultimately wears out its welcome. Fortunately, the best moments, involving Cronenberg-esque mutations created via startling, seamless makeup and visual FX, appear later in the running time to reward one’s patience.
A different kind of humor is showcased in Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which manages to take two by-now worn-out subgenres—the reality show/vérité horror film and the post-Scream slasher—and breathe fresh life into both by combining their sensibilities. Nathan Baesel (previously seen as the one-armed deputy on TV’s Invasion) is terrific as Leslie, a chipper young man anxious to fulfill his life’s dream: to become a legendary serial killer of teenagers just like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. Director Scott Glosserman, who also scripted with David Stieve, posits a world where those characters are real and frames the movie’s first two acts as a documentary being shot by filmmaker Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals). Through her lens and with her guidance, we follow Leslie as he explains his plans, which encompass all the time-honored stalker-film conventions and lead to any number of knowing, often hilarious in-jokes and sly references.
Glosserman clearly has an affection for the clichés he’s sending up, resulting in a movie that can be enjoyed both by fans of the subgenre and those who think it has been run into the ground. An ensemble of performers who play it all straight, including well-chosen veterans Robert Englund (as Leslie’s “Ahab,” or Dr. Loomis-esque pursuer) and Zelda Rubinstein, aids in maintaining a sense of realism in the proceedings. The film loses a bit of momentum when Leslie embarks on his inevitable slaughter spree—Glosserman’s direction is stronger on satire than mayhem—but Behind the Mask proves that fresh ideas are far more valuable to the slasher field than simple blood-spilling explicitness. In a discussion following the screening, Glosserman confirms his interest in exploring horror on a conceptual level, and he’s clearly got the smarts to carry it off.
“And now for something completely different” seems like a good way to introduce the next film, Britain’s The Living and the Dead. In fact, having not read a thing about the movie before seeing it, I assumed from the title that it was a variation on the zombie genre, but boy, were my expectations subverted. In fact, I’m not even sure I should say much about the storyline or subject matter, because the less you know about it, the more it’s likely to blindside you with its inexorably and powerfully built sense of unease. Writer/director Simon Rumley takes a simple, easily identifiable situation (which, he reveals during the post-film Q&A;, was vaguely inspired by events in his own life) and spins it into truly dark and disturbing places.
Rumley cites Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and the cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto as influences during his talk, and while the inspirations do show during Living and the Dead’s more crazed moments, the filmmaker uses calm and quiet just as effectively. He and lead actor Leo Bill also create one of the most indelible antiheroes seen on screen in recent years; once you’ve seen him (and hopefully you’ll be able to soon, as Living and the Dead wends its way through the festival circuit and then, fingers crossed, wider release), you won’t soon forget him.
A bit of full disclosure now: In my Fantasia reports, I’m gonna be reviewing a couple of titles that I’ve actually seen at previous screenings, but miss this week due to schedule conflicts. One such movie is The Lost (pictured above), which plays Monday night with writer/director Chris Sivertson and actress Erin Brown making appearances. I caught this adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s novel at a previous NYC sneak, and this grim shocker showcases another memorable psychotic performance: Marc Senter as Ray Pye, a young sociopath who murders two girls in the opening sequences, and intimidates a couple of friends/witnesses into keeping their mouths shut. Four years later, many in their hick town know who did it but lack either the evidence or the gumption to try to bring Ray to justice. So he keeps on living life as usual—dealing drugs, seducing young women with his bad-boy demeanor—even as it becomes increasingly clear that he’s going to murderously snap again, and the results won’t be pretty.
Sivertson and Senter here present a horror-film psychopath who’s all the scarier for being grounded in reality. No masked maniac or superpowered killing machine, Ray is the kind of guy many of us have probably known in real life: It’s clear he’s bad news, and that being around him may prove hazardous to one’s health, yet he has a charisma and cockiness that make him a center of attention and forestall any attempt to stave off the inevitable. Senter’s vivid performance is complemented by Sivertson’s down-and-dirty filmmaking, though at 115 minutes, the movie could use a bit of trimming, as it winds up hitting the same notes a few too many times. And when the lengthy climactic sequence arrives, there’s unfortunately nowhere for Ray to go except over the top into more traditional movie-psycho-land, complete with rants about Charles Manson (and when a pregnant woman is part of the setpiece, you know where that’s headed). Nonetheless, there’s palpable passion behind Sivertson and Senter’s work that makes one look forward to their next projects.
So where was I during The Lost’s Fantasia screening at the Concordia Hall? Unfortunately, I was across the street at the J.A. De Seve auditorium watching Tape No. 31, which is apparently showing here due to its status as a rare horror movie from mainland China. If that’s the case, this is the only distinctive element of Tape, a flagrant and tedious ripoff of The Blair Witch Project in which a documentary crew heads up into the (admittedly picturesque) mountains to try to capture footage of “wild men” who are supposed to dwell there. They’re soon frightened by weird noises at night, they discover weird totems on the trees, members of the group start disappearing, and so on, and so on, with writer/director “Kiefer” failing to inject any sense of excitement or tension into the proceedings. What’s worse, there’s no sense of the film’s Chinese origins or setting informing the narrative; this story could have been told anywhere (and already has, obviously). Perhaps the filmmakers were intentionally avoiding any sense of specific identity to make Tape No. 31 more palatable to the international market, but someone should have told them that Blair Witch knockoffs became passé a long time ago.
Tuesday begins with Azumi 2: Love or Death, from one of Fantasia’s favorite sons, Shusuke Kaneko, who knocked everyone out with his Gamera and Godzilla films in fests past. This time, he’s sequelizing Ryuhei Kitamura’s previous adaptation of Yu Koyama’s manga adventures focusing on the title character, a young and beautiful assassin who wields her sword-wielding skills against war-mongering lords and their squads of killers. As usual, the copious battle sequences are balanced by quieter explorations of issues of honor and (natch) love and death, and the movie is great to look at, in part due to the casting of Japanese heartthrobs Chiaki Kuriyama and Tak Sakaguchi in supporting roles. Yet from the direction to the story to the acting, Azumi 2 feels more proficient than inspired; it’s diverting enough, but lacks the verve and heart of Kaneko’s kaiju epics. There are occasional fun details, such as the costume worn by villainous Lady Kunya, which appears to date from the Madonna Dynasty, and I’m still looking forward to seeing what Kaneko does with the splatter genre in God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand, showing this Friday.
Returning to modern Japan, Black Kiss (titled Synchronicity on the actual print) is the umpteenth Asian serial-killer film in the post-Se7en era, though this one is more dramatically ambitious than most. In addition to staging a series of eye-catching death tableux, including the truly hideous evisceration of a bound man (“Frogs don’t get dissected like this,” comments one detective), director/co-writer Macoto Tezka delves deeper into the lives of a wider variety of characters than one often sees in films like this. We learn quite a bit about the life of heroine/aspiring model Asuka before she witnesses that grotesque murder, and it’s about 40 minutes before the police even enter the scene. There are all kinds of homages, from Hitchcock (a key setting is the “Bat’s Motel”) to lurid lighting right out of an Italian giallo, with enough fresh angles and a Japanese sense of place to make it more than the sum of its influences. The only disappointment lies in its central mystery; after dropping all sorts of intriguing clues, Tezka doesn’t resolve the whodunit in a satisfying manner. But there are enough shocking and tense moments to make Black Kiss worth a look for followers of serial-slayer and Asian horror cinema.
TO BE CONTINUED
