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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.
If you love all things cinematically weird, there's really nothing else like Fantastic Fest.
Held in Austin, Tex., every September at the Alamo Drafthouse theater, the annual celebration of new indie horror/sci-fi/thriller/action movies from all around the world is referred to by filmmaking sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska as "nerd summer camp," and that's spot-on. For eight days straight, genre movie fans and critics alike convene inside the Drafthouse to watch an endless stream of left-of-center films, consume large amounts of booze, eat good food, drunkenly sing karaoke, get into food fights, and do other debaucherous things you couldn't get away with at other film festivals. You'll never see winners at Cannes or Venice chugging glasses of beer while accepting their awards on stage.
While the overall quality of movies was higher than ever at this Fantastic Fest, the films weren't all new. The two best horror films I've seen this year, It Follows and The Babadook, screened there, and so did the horror-romance Spring, a Fantastic Fest standout from emerging filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead that I was all over in Toronto two weeks back.
But aside from those previously seen gems, this year's Fantastic Fest pool was shoulders-deep in memorable pics. There was Everly, in which Salma Hayek lays waste to dozens of assassins in one claustrophobic apartment for 90 minutes straight; John Wick, a throwback to violent man-on-a-mission '70s action movies starring Keanu Reeves at his most badass; and Horns, an adaptation of author Joe Hill's novel starring Daniel Radcliffe and tailor-made for teenagers looking to broaden their horror movie horizons.
But none of those films ranked with this year's best. Out of the dozens of entries I got to check out, these were the stand-outs.
ABCs of Death 2
Directors: Larry Fessenden, Todd Rohal, Marvin Kren, Jim Hosking, Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo, Julian Gilbey, Soichi Umezama, Lancelor Imasuen, Jerome Sable, Robert Boocheck, Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado, Bill Plympton, Rodney Ascher, Erik Matti, Steven Kostanski, E.L. Katz, Julian Barratt, Hajime Ohata, Vincenzo Natali, Chris Nash, Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Robert Morgan, Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper, Alejandro Brugues, Dennison Ramalho, Juan Martinez Moreno
Here's the idea behind this horror anthology franchise: give 26 different genre directors some money to shoot three-to-six minute short films about some kind of death, based on whichever letter of the alphabet they've been given. But as good as ABCs of Death (2012) is, it must be said—it's a juvenile affair. For every legitimately disturbing segment, like Jorge Michel Grau's "I is for Ingrown" and Marcel Sarmiento's remarkable "D is for Dogfight," there are two to three toilet-humor write-offs, like Noboru Iguchi's "F is for Fart" and Lee Hardcastle's admittedly fun "T is for Toilet."
Aware of that themselves, producers Tim League and Ant Timpson decided to raise the maturity levels for ABCs of Death 2. By doing so, they've assembled a far superior beast of a movie. Instead of lowbrow humor, ABCs of Death 2 features plenty of narrative ambition—in "F is for Falling," for instance, Israeli collaborators Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado (Big Bad Wolves) present a socially conscious vignette about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Which isn't to say that ABCs of Death 2 is entirely humorless. It's often funnier than its predecessor, but even the lighter segments benefit from an emphasis on creative weirdness. Robert Boocheck's "M is for Masticate" saves its ingenuous punchline for its final seconds, while Todd Rohal's wacky "P is for P-P-P-Scary" feels like Tim & Eric by way of David Lynch.
ABCs of Death 2 hits VOD on October 2, before opening in limited theaters on Halloween, via Magnet Releasing.
The Duke of Burgundy
Director: Peter Strickland
Stars: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Chiara D'Anna
This is without a doubt the sweetest, most heartwarming movie at this year's festival—even though it features bug obsessions, S&M, and one psychedelic sequence set inside a woman's vagina.
Connecting those out-there strands together, however, is a mesmerizing story of love between two women. Written and directed by Peter Strickland, the mind behind last year's Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy is as amazing to look at as it is tonally hypnotic. Chiara D'Anna plays a housekeeper who, by night, studies moths; Sidse Babett Knudsen plays D'Anna's character's tyrannical, cold-hearted employer, who also has an interest in the same flying insects. Knudsen's character barks out orders and regularly seduces D'Anna's through bondage and other erotic humiliations.
But as The Duke of Burgundy progresses, the true nature of their roles gradually upends all of your conceptions. Strickland's simple yet intricately plotted narrative bobs and weaves, mixing up chronology and repeating moments to provide deeper context.
In the end, it's a lesbian romance whose tenderness rivals that of 2013's remarkable Blue is the Warmest Color. And with Strickland's uncanny knack for retrograding old genre movie influences, The Duke of Burgundy will play just as well in midnight showings as it will on date nights.
The Duke of Burgundy doesn't have a release date yet.
Dead Snow II: Red vs. Dead
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Stars: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Martin Starr, Ørjan Gamst, Ingrid Haas, Jocelyn DeBoer
In 2009, the horror community flipped out over Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow, the raucous horror-comedy about, what else, Nazi zombies. But it wasn't that impressive. A few enjoyably gruesome sequences aside, Dead Snow wasted its pretty brilliant premise on half-witted Evil Dead II aping. Rather than run wild with his concept, Wirkola did nothing but the obvious.
Dead Snow II: Red vs. Dead, though, is everything the first Dead Snow should have been—clever, relentlessly over-the-top, and, most important of all, creative in its gore-drenched anarchy. Instead of a siege on some dumb kids partying in a cabin, the sequel moves the zombie action all over Norway, following the first movie's lone survivor as he teams up with numb-skulled Americans who fancy themselves as professional zombie killers and an army of undead Soviets.
The jokes and viscera in Dead Snow II are non-stop, infusing some welcome Troma-Entertainment-like wackiness into what, at first, seems like the most unnecessary horror sequel since The Last Exorcism II. Not to mention, there's a gag involving a wheelchair-bound victim that made me laugh harder than anything else this year, Neighbors and 22 Jump Street included.
Dead Snow II: Red vs. Dead opens in theaters on October 10, via Well Go USA.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Stars: Addison Timlin, Gary Cole, Anthony Anderson, Spencer Treat Clark, Joshua Leonard, Edward Herrmann, Veronica Cartwright
If you've never seen the 1976 horror film The Town That Dreaded Sundown, you should get on that as soon as possible. Part faux-documentary and part old-school slasher, director Charles B. Pierce's notorious flick loosely re-imagines the real-life crimes of the "Phantom Killer," a mass murderer whose identity has never been settled upon and who killed eight people in Texarkana, Texas, in 1946.
Pierce's The Town That Dreaded Sundown certainly doesn't need a remake—and, thankfully, super-producers Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story) and Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, Insidious) felt the same way. Rather than redo Pierce's original film, they've delivered a kind-of sequel set in modern times and about a copycat killer in a Texarkana that, as a community, annually watches Pierce's movie in a public setting. The result is a meta-slasher that works as both a love letter to its predecessor and no-holds-barred revival of the kind of horror cinema that once housed names like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers.
This new Town That Dreaded Sundown's secret weapon is director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, a first-time feature filmmaker who previously directed some of American Horror Story's wildest episodes. Gomez-Rejon applies a decidedly AHS-like visual style here, shooting scenes from off-kilter sideways angles and amplifying the carnage with rapid close-ups and erratic sound cues. Suffice it to say, his The Town That Dreaded Sundown thrives on punk-rock energy.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown opens in theaters nationwide on October 16, via Orion Pictures.
Felt
Director: Jason Banker
Stars: Amy Everson, Kentucker Audley, Roxanne Knouse
The festival's best female performance, by far, goes to Felt's Amy Everson, though there's a catch—Everson basically plays herself, albeit with some fictionalized brutality.
I'll stop right there in regards to the "brutality." Essentially, writer-director Jason Banker's (Toad Road) Felt is a fascinating examination of a social misfit, Amy (Everson), whose preoccupations with death and making penises and other knick-knack oddities out of felt (including a "Fetal Hitler" doll) leave her unable to connect to other people. That changes when she meets Kenny (Kentucker Audley), a genuinely nice guy who understands her, loves her, and gets her to open up and embrace romance.
The film is a sappy love story, though—it's as close to a Kate Hudson movie as something Lars von Trier would make. Adding to Felt's intrigue is its unique backstory—Banker randomly met Everson a few years back and casually started filming her, and most of the film comes from that documentary-style coverage. Because of that, it's an unusually authentic look at love's darkest sides.
Felt is currently without official distribution. Hopefully that changes with the quickness.
Cub
Director: Jonas Govaerts
Stars: Maurice Luijten, Titus De Voogdt, Stef Aerts, Evelien Bosmans, Jan Hammenecker
Cub is epitome of feel-bad horror, and I loved it for that very reason. It takes serious cajones to make a film about kids that's as brutal, bleak, and corpse-ridden as Belgian first-timer Jonas Govaerts' Cub.
It starts out like a treatise on the effects of bullying. Sam (Maurice Luijten) is out on a camping trip with his fellow Boy Scout troop's members and their three older superiors, one of whom is a real mean son-of-a-bitch. Because he's introverted, Sam gets picked on and pushed around by the other kids; when Sam starts seeing the local woods' pint-sized urban legend, Kai (said to be a feral killing machine but also considered to be as real as the Easter Bunny), everyone else uses his claims as further bullying ammunition. Of course, Kai is real, and along with his hulking, homicidal guardian, Kai is ready to make Sam's tormentors all pay.
Before long, Cub abandons its bullying portrait and becomes a ferocious slasher flick. Many, many youngsters die, all graphically and right there on screen, and Jonas Govaerts establishes himself as a pulls-no-punches horror director to watch.
Cub is currently without distribution.
Goodnight Mommy
Directors: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Stars: Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz, Susanne Wuest
Whenever Goodnight Mommy officially opens in theaters, expect thousands of women to get their tubed tied. It's the most convincing argument against birthing children this side of Jersey Shore and Big Brother. The debut from Austrian aunt/nephew team Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, Goodnight Mommy has "future cult favorite" status written all over it. It also has a pair of pre-teen twins who rival those bloodied-up girls in The Shining and those under-seen creepers in Robert Mulligan's 1972 adaptation of Thomas Tryon's The Other.
Nine-year-old twins Elias and Lukas Schwarz star two young brothers who rarely ever leave their isolated countryside home, playing only with each other and living with their single mother—their father, you eventually learn, left after some kind of traumatic accident. One day, their mother (Susanne Wuest) returns home after a few days away, but there's something off about her. Her face is covered in adhesive bandages, and her demeanor has shifted from loving to standoffish and quietly malevolent.
How Elias and Lukas go about challenging their guardian's true identity gives Goodnight Mommy its subtle and slightly off-balance creepiness, and what they do once they get their answer is what will get people squirming. (Teaser: lips and Super Glue meet, and it isn't pretty.)
Goodnight Mommy will be released by Radius-TWC, though a release date has yet to be confirmed.
When Animals Dream
Director: Jonas Alexander Arnby
Stars: Sonia Suhl, Lars Mikkelsen, Sonja Richter, Jakob Oftebro
This is the best-kept secret at this year's Fantastic Fest. Of the 27 movies I saw at the festival, Danish filmmaker Jonas Alexander Arnby's When Animals Dream caught me the most off-guard, mainly because its initial plot synopsis suggested that it'd potentially be a snoozy monster movie in which the monster rarely, if ever, shows up on screen.
In reality, When Animals Dream is an amazing hybrid of Teen Wolf and Sweden's adolescent vampire tale Let the Right One In. It centers on 16-year-old Marie (the terrific Sonia Suhl), an awkward girl whose coming-of-age unexpectedly involves accepting the fact that she comes from a line of werewolves. The townsfolk all hate her family, her male co-workers are douchebags who treat her like feces, and now she has to somehow quell her urges to devour human flesh.
I didn't hear a single critic talking about When Animals Dream during the festival, which is a shame—it's exactly the kind of inconspicuous genre film discovery for which events like Fantastic Fest were designed.
When Animals Dream is currently without distribution.
