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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.
In last week’s column, I wrote about the best movies that screened during Montreal's Fantasia International Film Fest’s first week. The highlights: Aubrey Plaza as a zombie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s variation of the thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, the latest Michael Shannon gloom-fest, and a supernatural gem presented through web-cams and Skype video chats. This week, in Permanent Midnight’s Fantasia round two, the star power has decreased but the overall quality remains the same. We're not completely sans big names, though. First up, there's Shailene Woodley like you've never seen her before...
2.White Bird in a Blizzard
Director: Gregg Araki
Stars: Shailene Woodley, Christopher Meloni, Eva Green, Shiloh Fernandez, Thomas Jane, Gabourey Sidibe, Angela Bassett
Not unlike the recent YA tearjerker The Fault in Our Stars, veteran indie filmmaker Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard stars Shailene Woodley as a wise-beyond-her-years teenager. Also similar to Fault, her character narrates the whole film with filters off. Once you get into White Bird in a Blizzard’s ‘80s-set subject matter, however, its genre roots becomes clearer. Katrina, or "Kat" (Woodley), is a sexually exploratory, foul-mouthed suburban rebel whose mother, Eve (Eva Green), disappears one day, leaving Kat and her nice-guy dad (Christopher Meloni) with several questions but few answers. It’s a coming-of-age story that’s never sweet, a sort-of thriller that goes for R-rated whimsy over whodunit mystery.
Araki, whose hard-bubblegum visual sensibilities always counterbalance his films’ heavy topics (see: Mysterious Skin, Kaboom), matches White Bird in a Blizzard's ongoing ‘80s pop soundtrack with a dreamlike mood. And it’s all strongly grounded by Woodley, the best actor of her generation. Guided by Araki’s unadulterated style, Woodley holds nothing back, shedding both her figurative skin and literal clothes to portray an amalgamation of her The Descendants, The Spectacular Now, and The Fault in Our Stars characters. Also stellar here is, unsurprisingly, Eva Green, Hollywood’s boldest actress and White Bird in a Blizzard’s enigmatic conflict-catalyst, a troubled woman lashing out against domestication while losing her mind.
A teen drama on its surface, White Bird in a Blizzard gradually reveals its Fantasia-worthy qualifications. It’s a ghost story, but one in which the specter is that of a young woman’s formative years.
3.Among the Living
Directors: Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo
Stars: Théo Fernandez, Damien Ferdel, Zacharie Chasseriaud, Béatrice Dalle, Francis Renaud
These dudes have earned a little disappointment.
Prior to Among the Living, French collaborators Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo made just two movies together, but one of them is Inside, the best horror film of the last ten years. Inside is the kind of uncompromisingly hardcore genre movie seekers like myself live for. Like horror/thriller aficionados must’ve pined for new John Carpenter films back in the ‘80s, I view Maury and Bustillo as this generation’s most exciting horror filmmakers. New movies from them feel like "Anaconda" for Barbies.
Yet, unlike Jay Z fans who swear Magna Carta Holy Grail bangs, I’m not a liar. When Maury and Bustillo's third movie, Among the Living, premiered at SXSW in March, I left the theater underwhelmed. Not to mention, repulsed by some WTF freakazoid's junk.
The co-directors' largely flawed attempt to make an Amblin-like film that’s also Inside-caliber brutal, Among the Living is all over the place. To contrast against the three doomed pre-teen protagonists, there’s Klarence. He's a tall, lanky, deformed albino whose father was exposed to hazardous radiation while serving in the military before Klarence's conception (At least that's what the murky opening sequence suggests). The audacious filmmakers eventually show Klarence in the buff, and it isn't pretty. Like his bald head, he's completely hairless, right down to his groin, where… Well, picture a stuffed mushroom, but instead of something appetizing, there's a tiny penis tucked into it. And then picture that stuffed mushroom running around and trying to murder little kids.
At SXSW, I was hoping for Stephen King’s It meets Inside, but Among the Living isn't that. Five months later, however, now that it's screening at Fantasia, I’ve grown to appreciate what Maury and Bustillo tried to do. Although there’s much lost in their French-to-American translation of Spielberg's '80s Amblin style, Among the Living is their demented effort to honor movies like The Goonies through horror. Yup, Klarence is their answer to Sloth—they'd just rather he killed Chunk.
4.Creep
Director: Patrick Brice
Stars: Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice
A found-footage horror movie starring mumblecore funnyman Mark Duplass? You better believe it. Creep might sound lame, but, damn, is it effective.
Duplass plays Josef, an eccentric guy who hires a cameraman (played by Creep director Patrick Brice), via Craigslist, to film him for a day as a parting gift to his unborn son, since Josef's dying of cancer. That grim set-up quickly lightens up, with Creep going for uncomfortable, dark laughs early on and falling into Duplass' comfort zone perfectly. Gradually, Josef show signs that he's a bit cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and Creep confidently eases into a first-person POV, legitimately unnerving Fatal Attraction riff.
Brice and Duplass (who co-wrote the script together and improvised much of the dialogue) balance the comedy and suspense, often nailing both tones at the same time. Though, once Creep's slam-dunk of a finale happens, the laughter ends and Brice's peculiar little film sticks with you. You'll be too scared shitless to ever call Duplass "that mumblecore guy" again.
5.Housebound
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Stars: Morgana O'Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru, Cameron Rhodes, Millen Baird, Ross Harper, Bruce Hopkins, Ryan Lampp, Ian Mune, Wallace Chapman
There's a reason why the god Peter Jackson cosigns this movie. It's the best Kiwi horror movie since Jackson's own Dead Alive (1992).
Starting off as a standard haunted house picture but morphing into something much stranger, Housebound thrives on the lead performance from actress Morgana O'Reilly. She's fantastic as Kylie, a criminal placed under house arrest at her mother's home; her deadpan reactions to every instance of weird shit are A+. As in, the teddy bear with a life and mean-spirited sarcasm of its own; the large figure covered in a white sheet; and the secret passageways that resembles those seen in Wes Craven's underrated 1991 flick The People Under the Stairs.
Housebound routinely upends your expectations. It eventually reveals itself to be a different kind of horror-comedy than it began as and saves its gory carnage for its bonkers finale.
6.Starry Eyes
Director: Dennis Widmyer, Kevin Kolsch
Stars: Alexandra Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Fabianne Therese, Noah Segan, Shane Coffey, Natalie Castillo, Pat Healy, Marc Senter, Maria Olsen, Lou Dezseran
Starry Eyes is the Roman Polanski/David Lynch/Satan threesome we've all been desiring.
At times phantasmagoric and/or flat-out brutal, Starry Eyes is one of the strongest horror debuts in years. Steeped in '80s influences, the first collaboration from directors Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch is also quite funny, satirizing Hollywood starlets through the guise of Sara Walker (an impressive Alexandra Essoe), a wannabe actress living in L.A. and desperate to become a star. Her willingness to do whatever it takes drives Sara to audition for a horror flick called The Silver Scream being made by some obviously insidious people who are ready to exploit her vulnerability. In this case, interpret "exploit" as "use occultism to turn her into a homicidal maniac whose body heinously deteriorates."
P.S. If you've seen Irreversible, you know what the fucked-up movie did for fire extinguishers—well, Starry Eyes does the same for dumbbells.
7.The Man in the Orange Jacket
Director: Arik Karapetian
Stars:Maxim Lazarev, Aris Rozentals, Anta Aizupe
Imagine High Tension filtered through Lars von Trier's nihilism. That's how The Man in the Orange Jacket, Latvia’s first-ever horror movie, has been described, putting it in the same breath as one of the new millennium's best horror films and art-house cinema’s most polarizing director. No pressure on first-time director Arik Karapetian to deliver on that promise, though.
Good news: While it’s not as amazing as that sales pitch implied, The Man in the Orange Jacket is sufficiently f'd-up. Within the first 10 minutes, Karapetian's nameless protagonist, a factory worker who's just been fired, slaughters his wealthy boss and the employer's sexy young mistress. But then, just like that, the blood stops flowing; instead of a cinematic butcher shop, The Man in the Orange Jacket turns into a psychological creepshow. As the killer tries making himself at home in the dead guy's mansion, his guilt sparks Lost Highway-level hallucinogenic freak-outs. And, when two call girls swim in the indoor pool, he pisses into the water and fantasizes about murdering them. So, yeah, there's your von Trier.
8.Preservation
Director: Christopher Denham
Stars: Wrenn Schmidt, Aaron Staton, Pablo Schreiber
On paper, Preservation sounds as familiar as survival horror movies come. You've got the group of friends who venture out into the woods, the masked assailants who pick them off one by one, and the unexpectedly tough "final girl" who gives the bad guys the blood-drenched business. The thing about Preservation, though, is that writer-director Christopher Denham knows you're going to think that way once you hear about the film's premise, and he capitalizes on that awareness.
Sharing tons of self-aware DNA with last year's You're Next, Preservation lays its conventional pieces out early on and then subverts them all. The villains' identities and motivations aren't what you'd anticipate; the payoffs, while definitely satisfying, aren't heightened or played for rapturous audience reactions; and the previously mentioned "final girl," played strongly by Boardwalk Empire actress Wrenn Schmidt, evolves in ways you won't see coming—if you do, you're seeing the blunt object she's smashing into your face.
9.The Desert
Director: Christoph Behl
Stars: Victoria Almeida, Lautaro Delgado, Lucas Lagré
Ever watched a zombie movie and thought, “I wish there weren't so many damn zombies”? Well, step right up and enjoy Argentinian filmmaker Christoph Behl's The Desert. It has a lot in common with The Walking Dead whenever AMC’s juggernaut series tries, *cringe*, to develop its mostly ho-hum characters, except that Behl’s film only has three protagonists, not 3,765. And, more importantly, The Desert’s still-breathing trio are all worth your time. You don’t need zombies to show up and make things interesting.
The Desert is a relationship drama set after an undead apocalypse. Along with their friend, Jonathan (William Prociuk), lovers Ana (Victoria Almeida) and Axel (Lautaro Delgado) are riding out the world’s end inside a boarded-up, fortified bunker. Though Axel is his best friend, Jonathan’s in love with Ana, which is good for Ana, since Axel’s a budding sociopath who covers his body with tattoos of flies and obsessively watches Ana’s confessional videos. Eventually, they bring a fourth housemate into the fold: a young zombie whom they name “Pythagoras” (for all you Greek philosophy heads out there) and treat like a painter’s canvas and a boxer’s heavy bag. In other words, they draw crappy artwork on him whenever they're not pounding on his undead face.
The Desert is a quiet character study minus what we’ve come to expect from zombie cinema—e.g., grotesque-looking ghouls chowing down on skin and entrails like they’re free catering. Which, to its strength, gives Behl’s unique riff on modern horror’s most popular monster an identity all its own.