Permanent Midnight: Aubrey Plaza and Mary Elizabeth Winstead Get Weird at Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival

Permanent Midnight is a weekly Complex Pop Culture column where senior staff writer, and resident genre fiction fanatic, Matt Barone will put the spotlight on the best new indie horror/sci-fi/weirdo cinema, twisted novels, and other below-the-radar oddities.

By design, film festivals are, as the Tribeca Film Festival’s clever organizers noted in this year’s fest’s slogan, the ultimate binge-watch opportunity. Typically anywhere between four days to a week long, indie movie celebrations like Sundance, SXSW, and the Toronto International Film Festival give critics and ticket-buyers alike numerous chances to claim “first” like cinephile equivalents to Internet comments section trolls. I’m heading back to TIFF in early September, and there I’ll be able to post early first-look reviews for splashy Hollywood fall releases like Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer, Robert Downey Jr.’s non-superhero drama The Judge, and The Drop, a.k.a. the late, great James Gandolfini’s last movie.

And then, two weeks later, I’ll be in Austin, TX, for the always raucous Fantastic Fest, where the next waves of independent genre flicks from across the globe screen inside the Alamo Drafthouse theater. Unlike, say, TIFF, Fantastic Fest thrives specifically on horror, science fiction, and oddities with titles like Septic Man and Mutant Girls Squad; more often than not, you’ll catch some batshit little genre movie from somewhere like South Korea or France at Fantastic Fest but then never hear from it again. There aren’t any Oscar hopes for past FF highlights like The ABC’s of Death, Cheap Thrills, and The House of the Devil, though, frankly, there should be, and that’s a rant I’ll save for a later date. That being the case, though, a week spent indulging in all of Fantastic Fest’s sick and twisted pleasures alongside hundreds of like-minded genre movie lovers brings both endless discovery and exclusivity. Your part of a loyal, passion-driven club.

Now, take Fantastic Fest’s week-length duration, add nearly two more weeks to that, and relocate the cinematic madness to Montreal. The result: the Canadian city’s annual Fantasia International Film Festival, a sprawling, 19-day-long party that makes Fantastic Fest’s already large slate seem minuscule by comparison. With a lineup made up of SXSW’s Midnighters section standouts, bizarre films that’ll end up in Austin in September, and a ton of world premieres, Fantasia has, in many ways, evolved into the dedicated genre cinema fan’s Mecca. In the past, Fantasia hosted the North American unveilings of enduring films like Shaun of the Dead and Inglourious Basterds, but its most regarded as a meeting ground for the underdogs of fringe moviemaking, some of whom used Fantasia’s initial exposure as career-launching platforms. For example, before he made this year’s successful wide release Oculus, writer-director Mike Flanagan debuted his DIY, crowd-funded first feature, Absentia, at Fantasia.

Based on the Fantasia 2014 movies I’ve seen so far, the options for “the next Mike Flanagan” are vast. This year’s edition began on July 17 and runs through August 5, and the film roster is, to say the least, daunting, but also diesel in terms of quality. For this week’s Permanent Midnight, I’ve singled out the best of the fest’s first week; next Friday, I’ll follow this up with the remainder of the strongest Fantasia movies. By all accounts, it’s been a gruesome and depraved, but also seriously exciting, binge-watching experience. On your end, consider it a primer for what’s on tap in the world of independent genre fare.

Director: Jeff Baena

Stars: Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, Molly Shannon, John C. Reilly, Matthew Gray Gubler, Paul Reiser, Cheryl Hines, Anna Kendrick

The world doesn’t need yet another zombie movie, nor another zombie comedy, but you know what the world does need right now? A zombie comedy starring the singularly odd Aubrey Plaza as reanimated, flesh-craving corpse.

That’s the bottom-line sales pitch for writer-director Jeff Baena’s Life After Beth, a quirky little genre subverter that breathes much-needed life into two mostly stagnant kinds of movies: the aforementioned zombie cinema and rom-coms. Dane DeHaan (Chronicle and recently Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2) plays a guy whose girlfriend, Beth (Plaza), dies from a snakebite, leaving him emotionally devastated. Inexplicably, though, Beth comes back, though claiming memory loss at first and not requesting human brains or entrails.

Their love re-ignites under extreme duress, blood starts spilling, and the end-of-the-world is soon nigh—yet Life After Beth never leans too heavily toward its darker sides. With DeHaan as the requisite straight-man, offsetting the film’s widespread strangeness, Baena’s living-dead comedy, the best of its kind since Shaun of the Dead, keeps its screwball tendencies front and center. It’s never too sappy nor too gross, checking both boxes enough to legitimize its romance and horror without stacking either deck too high.

Director: John McNaughton

Stars: Samantha Morton, Michael Shannon, Peter Fonda, Natasha Calis, Charlie Tahan

Admittedly, the minimal good will I’m tossing upon The Harvest has to do with its director, John McNaughton, because, frankly, it’s great to have the guy back behind the camera. He’s been relatively M.I.A. since his last notable movie, the infamously sleazy Denise Richards/Neve Campbell erotic thriller Wild Things, but, for me, he’ll always be vital thanks to 1986’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. If you’ve never seen Henry, do so immediately, but do so knowing that its bleakness and realistic depictions of homicide will ruin your day, if not entire week.

With The Harvest, it’s clear that McNaughton’s trying to elicit a similarly disturbed reaction from audiences—it’s just too bad that his efforts to turn this pitch-black domestic nightmare into a modern-day fairytale gets the best of him. Samantha Morton, at peak Mommie Dearest-level crazy, and Michael Shannon, atypically tender and toned down, play Katherine and Richard, the loving though oppressive parents of the sickly Andy (Charlie Tahan), whose worsening condition makes mom and dad keep him confined indoors. He’s home-schooled, and for entertainment, his parents have started a corn garden outside his bedroom window. But in comes new neighbor Maryann (Natasha Calis), who befriends Andy through that window and instantly sends Katherine into a tailspin of overprotectiveness and physical retaliation.

There’s a lot to The Harvest than that, and what power McNaughton’s comeback film does have comes in its latter half, when Katherine and Richard’s motivations become more objectionable. McNaughton is still great with actors, getting knockout performances from everyone on-board, but the perhaps out-of-touch director has a bad ear for musical scores—too often, The Harvest’s harshest moments get undercut by a cheesy soundtrack that sounds as if it’s been lifted straight out of a Lifetime Movie. As a result, The Harvest, which McNaughton probably hoped would tap into Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer’s darkness, isn’t unlike Henry recut with music from a poor man’s Danny Elfman.

Director: Leo Gabriadze

Stars: Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki

Horror fans, there’s a new trend afoot: movies presented entirely through computer screens. Earlier this year, The Den kickstarted the pattern with a surprisingly effective look at how online chatrooms can lead to torturous murder business; the Elijah Wood-led and Rear Window-inspired Open Windows, meanwhile, played at SXSW (as well as Fantasia) but proved inferior by being too self-aware for its own good. Cybernatural, which premiered earlier this week at Fantasia, is the best of the bunch. Frankly, it’s good enough to put the growing characters-seen-via-Skype conceit to permanent rest.

The story plays out in one night, with six high school friends casually Skyping, Facebooking, and chatrooming together with web cams on the one-year anniversary of classmate Laura’s horrific suicide in the school's parking lot. A seventh online user shows up claiming to be the dead girl, and the main girl, Blaire (Teen Wolf's Shelley Hennig), backtracks and confirms that said user is in fact using the dead girl’s accounts, and whenever Blaire Google-searches Laura’s name, the Wikipedia page for “demonic possession” is the first search result. And then people start dying.

How they get eliminated is part of Cybernatural’s clever, often brutal appeal. As written by Nelson Greaves, director Leo Gabriadze’s seemingly gimmicky horror flick nicely gives its characters depth and believable motivations as the supernatural shit hits the laptop monitors. What could’ve been a hokey ploy to marry found-footage with technological modernism is a huge surprise with mainstream potential if it leaves Fantasia under the right distributor’s control.

Director: Riley Stearns

Stars: Leland Orser, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Ellis, Lance Reddick, Jon Gries, Leonard Earl Howze, Beth Grant

Faults, to put it simply, is a weird one. One could describe it as Martha Marcy May Marlene as remixed by the Coen Brothers at their funniest. Frankly, though, it's the kind of film that's best served by little pre-viewing spoilers or in-depth awareness.

Know this much: veteran character actor Leland Orser plays Ansel Roth, a celebrated expert on mind control and cult practices who's wallowing in a self-dug pit of deprecation. He's able to break out of the funk when a husband and wife team offer to pay him big bucks to find their daughter, Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), save her from the dangerous cult she's been enraptured by, and "deprogram" her back into being their loving, normal child. Which Ansel does...sort of. Locking himself into a hotel room with Claire, Ansel begins to suspect that Claire's family might be just as sinister as the cult.

Faults has the feel of a cinematic stage play, one in which Orser and Winstead get it on in an unpredictable battle of wits. First-time writer-director Riley Stearns tightly volleys around from laughs to creepiness, with a constant sense of mystery and subtle dread giving way to a well-earned surprise ending.

Director: Charlie McDowell

Stars: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson

The One I Love is a difficult film to write about without giving up its goods, but let's give it a shot here. A fantastical spin on the tired romantic comedy genre, first-time director Charlie McDowell's film... Dammit, "fantastical" is somewhat of a spoiler. OK, let's start over—beginning like many other rom-coms, The One I Love unfolds in ways that will make fans of Rod Serling and his timeless Twilight Zone series want to stand up and... Whoops, an even bigger failure to remain tight-lipped there.

Hopefully, though, you're intrigued now. And if you are, here's the nutshell plot set-up for McDowell's funny, original, and refreshingly ambitious riff on a familiar kind of comedy movie. Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) are struggling to keep their marriage intact, so on the recommendation of their therapist (Ted Danson), they head to a secluded house surrounded by gorgeous scenery to have alone time and work through their problems. And from there, McDowell and screenwriter Justin Lader use creative means to grapple with love's inevitable twilight phase, when those once-burning flames fizzle out and complacency breeds contempt.

To see why "fantastical" and "Twilight Zone" apply, keep an eye out for The One I Love when it opens theatrically on August 22.

Director: Leigh Janiak

Stars: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway

Before it officially opens on September 12, get excited about this eye-opening, expertly crafted debut feature, which first claimed my affections at SXSW in March. The eye-opening debut of filmmaker Leigh Janiak, Honeymoon is an ingenious, genre-merging sneak attack.

Newlyweds Bea (Game of Thrones’ Rose Leslie) and Paul (Penny Dreadful’s Harry Treadaway) are spending their post-wedding private time together in a small, cozy cottage tucked away deep in the woods; heir trip starts off romantic and pleasant enough, until one night when Bea disappears out of their bedroom and is found by Paul in the woods, naked and in shock. In the days following, she acts increasingly weirder, writing bizarrely mundane journal entries and forgetting key details about their relationship; even worse, Bea's body starts betraying her.

An intimate, quietly disturbing two-person show throughout, Honeymoon puts its characters first and the genre elements second, but when the freaky stuff kicks in, it's white-knuckle caliber.

Director: Brendan Steere

Stars: Tracy Willet, Marcin Paluch, Tom Martin, Alyssa Kempinski

The trick to no-budget filmmaking, aspiring directors, is to just go for it. Even if there are only peanuts, duct tape, and some dude’s mom’s handy-cam available, be as audacious and ambitious as possible. In other words, be a lot like Animosity writer-director Brendan Steere, who made this inventive, punishingly bleak, overstuffed, but fascinating and pulverizing horror flick as his thesis project at the School of Visual Arts.

You’d never be able to tell, though. Making the most out of his humble resources, Steere’s shot a vastly impressive student film, an exhibition of mature direction and the kind of anything-goes mentality you’ll find at a festival like Fantasia or Austin’s Fantastic Fest. He’s also got an ace leading lady in star Tracy Willet, who endures enough physical and emotional torment throughout Animosity’s nearly two-hour duration to make all other “final girls” applaud. She plays Carrie, a movie composer who works from home inside she and her husband’s new woodland estate, whose neighbors include a humorless creeper who carries a shotgun around like it’s his man-purse, a teenage boy who’s been shot, and an invisible fence that keeps certain people on its property.

Animosity is kitchen-sink horror—at times, it’s The Last House on the Left, while in other stretches it’s either ‘70s exploitation revisited, mad scientist weird, or a slasher flick, sometimes all of those at once. Steere’s occasionally wide-eyes get the best of him; he crams more plot turns into this overlong debut than his inexperience can handle. Yet, to his credit, the film’s head-scratching moments uphold Animosity’s powerfully dark mood and directorial polish. He’s a new-age grindhouse prodigy.