The Zone Horror Frightfest 2006 - Day Four

The fourth and final day of Frightfest 2006 kicked off with a strange British short film, Missed Call. An exercise in sustained suspense, it does well creating and maintaining a sense of unease and dread as a young woman finds herself being stalked in her own home and finding that she can't rely on or even trust her two-timing boyfriend, but it's let down by an inexplicable ending. Well made but in the end rather pointless.

Next up came a screening of the confrontational new Spanish film H6: Diario de un asesino / H6: Diary of a Serial Killer (2005), a first feature from artist Martín Garrido Barón. Fernando Acasco stars as Antonio Frau who, after serving 15 years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, is released and embarks on a new campaign of terror, capturing and torturing prostitutes and junkies in the run-down boarding house, a former brothel, that he's inherited from his aunt.

Maybe it was just the Frightfest Fatigue that always hits me on the Mondays, but H6 left me completely cold. It's certainly full of some of the most aggressive and shocking images that we'd seen all weekend (the rape and torture scenes are deeply disturbing) but it seems devoid of any kind of emotion or sense of purpose, thus robbing it of the impact that it should have had. One gets the impression that Barón set out to be as deliberately shocking as possible and in the process forgot to engage his audience on any level other than disgust, and consequently it was very difficult to give a damn about anyone in his film.

A late twist works very well, though it's one of the few really original moments in a film that seems content to merely recycle images and ideas lifted from other films. It looks great, thanks to the photography of Sergio Delgado, but just feels empty and uninvolving. Perhaps seeing it again under less tiring circumstances may make a difference but somehow I doubt it.

One of the little surprises in this year's "goodie bag" was a DVD copy of Mike Mort's 5 minute short Deadly Tantrum (2006) which I hadn't had time to watch - and I'm glad I didn't because it played so well in front of an audience that it would have lost a lot of its impact if I'd watched it alone. Mort came on stage to introduce the film, explaining that it was shot over a single weekend but you wouldn't know it from what you see on screen - a hilarious send up of slasher movies, it's all set in a single barn-like setting where masked and deformed maniac Geoffrey has rigged up a ridiculously elaborate death for his latest victim. But the day may be saved by the timely arrival of a cop who races against time to save the woman while fighting a running battle with Geoffrey and his collection of power tools.

Before H6, Alan Jones had promised that Barón's film would wake us up, but it was really Mort's film that blew the cobwebs away. A non-stop barrage of gags and cleverly spoofed slasher moments, Deadly Tantrum was an absolute riot and a much needed lifting of the spirits after the relentless grimness of H6.

As a huge fan of the Pang Brothers, Danny and Oxide, I was really looking forward to seeing their latest Frightfest offering Gwai wik / Re-Cycle (2006) so was very disappointed when the print turned up without subtitles and had to be cancelled. In its place came Ghost of Mae Nak (2005), a British / Thai co-production introduced by its director, Mark Duffield. Based on an old Thai legend (which has been filmed several times already) it sets out to see what would happen if the spirit of the vengeful ghost Mae Nak was still active in modern-day Bangkok.

Ghost of Mae Nak has plenty worthy of praise - it looks good and presents a view of Bangkok that doesn't just opt for the lazy "it's-full-of-sex-tourists-in-sleazy-bars" stereotype which simply isn't representative of the city at all. And the ghost of Mae Nak herself is a suitably creepy presence throughout the film.

But... Haven't we seen this story, or a variation on it, enough times already recently? Many times throughout the film I was convinced that I'd seen Ghost of Mae Nak already though I'm sure that's just down to the fact that the story is one that's been so over-used of late that all of the films that use it have merged into one. The only really distinctive feature of Ghost of Mae Nak are the inventive gore scenes, including one involving a sheet of falling glass that went down very well. but if you really want to see a decent version of the Mae Nak story, you'd be better off watching the film that seems to have inspired Duffield, Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang nak (1999).

Every year at Frighfest, I keep telling myself the same thing - that I shouldn't try to prejudge a film based on my own preconceptions and each year I do it (I'm only human...) and find those preconceptions well and truly shaken. Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water had already done it for me once this year, and Hadi Hajaig's amazing Puritan (2006) did it for me again. I don't know why I was so pessimistic about this one before it started but I had one of those odd, irrational feelings that it wasn't going to be for me. How wrong I was.

It's virtually impossible to do Puritan justice here as director Hajaig asked that no-one give away the ending, which is fair enough, but it does make it hard to talk too much about why Puritan is so good. Nick Moran stars as down-on-hi-luck writer Simon Puritan, battling alcoholism and making ends meet by staging phoney "readings", sessions where he tries to help the bereaved by posing as a medium. One day a horribly disfigured man turns up on his doorstep claiming that a woman is going to enter his life shortly and giving him the details he needs to make his "reading" seem real...

And to say much more would be doing the film a grave disservice. The plot twists and turns, neatly developing into an engaging mystery with a pay-off that may be obvious but is still satisfying. Hajaig's script is clever, literate (not many other genre films of this or any other year will make references to Nicholas Hawksmoor, Aleister Crowley and 60s psychedelic rock bands!) and above all else intelligent. It's a film that demands close attention and Hajaig keeps the plot's many machinations moving along so well that one's attention never drifts once.

Hajaig joins forces with cinematographer Peter Ellmore to create one of the best looking films of the entire weekend. The sets (by Stéphane Collonge) are gorgeous and Ellmore lights them perfectly - in his Q&A session, Hajaig refused to disclose how much the film cost but given its fiercely independent rots it won't have cost much but you'd never know that from the way it looks. It sounds fabulous too thanks to a truly wonderful score from Simon Lambros (The Last Horror Movie (2003)).

Completing the package, the cast are all outstanding - Moran is great as the morose Puritan falling in love with Ann Bridges (Georgina Rylance) who in turn turns out to be the wife of dangerous right-wing self-help guru / aspiring politician Eric Bridges (David Soul). All three actors joined Hajaig onstage after the film for a fun Q&A (Hajaig was filming everything from the stage for use in his DVD extras!). Soul was celebrating his birthday and was presented with a huge card signed by all the Frightfest attendees and Nick Moran (who ran into a sticky moment with one questioner who wanted to know the name of the American "piece of shit" he was working on in Russia but diplomatically refused - not so diplomatically I suspect it might have been Silent Partner (2005)) led the crowd in a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday, much to Soul's obvious delight and embarrassment. All four hung around for a signing afterwards.

Hajaig has achieved some excellent results with his first film, but he's to be admired even more for his devotion to the project. The film was funded by the writer / director creating a partnership and getting investors to pitch in what they could (a huge list of names appears in the end credits) and the film was made totally independently. Now, he plans to continue in the independent spirit by distributing the film himself. It'll be hard work, but he deserves success - look out for Puritan at an arthouse cinema near you sometime soon, and make sure you pop along for one of the most engaging supernatural mysteries in years.

With director Scott Glosserman not able to fly in from the States to introduce his film Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon because he'd broken his leg, the slot his introduction would have occupied was now filled with another dose of Trailer Trash - there were promos for Red Sonja (1985) (which snapped in the projector!), Death Race 2000 (1975) and some others I really can't remember (there was a hilariously awful one for Amin: The Rise and Fall (1981) at some point but they've all blurred into one by now...)

It's a shame that Glosserman wasn't able to make it to hear the uproarious reception that his film received. It begins as a mockumentary, shot in that shaky, handheld style familiar from The Blair Witch Project (1999) and its many imitators, as a group of media students follow up-and-coming serial killer Leslie Vernon as her prepares for his first rampage. Set in a world where Freddy, Jason and Michael are all real people, it brilliantly deconstructs many of the slasher clichés as the charismatic Vernon explains his methods and techniques, demonstrating how serial killers can chase running victims while simply strolling along, how to chose the right group of victims and the importance of The Survivor Girl (in this case he's got his hopes pinned on the virginal Kelly (Kate Lang Johnson) and the Ahab, the character obsessed with tracking down the killer and ending his depredations - in this case Robert Englund in a fantastic cameo as he channels the spirit of Donald Pleasance.

The film switches mid-way through to a "proper" film but it doesn't jar the way a similar change of viewpoint came close to ruining The Last Broadcast (1998). Instead, Glosserman uses the switch to then mount a slasher that uses all of the rules that he's just established but cleverly inverts them (Kelly turns out to not be as virginal as she seems, all the tricks Vernon taught the camera crew are used against him and the Survivor Girl turns out to be... well, you'll need to watch it and find out for yourselves).

Playing to a crowd that had grown up watching slasher movies, Behind the Mask proved to be one of the best received films of the whole weekend. Every joke hit its target, the cameos (Zelda Rubinstein from the Poltergeist films, Glosserman himself and a blink-and-you'll-miss-him appearance from Kane "Jason" Hodder as a resident of Elm Street!) were a nice touch and the script sparkled with clever dialogue. You'll find plenty of gushing reviews on sites across the internet - and this time you really can believe the hype. You'll find yourself squirming in delight as your favourite slasher movie clichés are mercilessly skewered and make sure you stay through the credits for a final "shock" that is completely obvious but somehow just so right.

Maintaining the high from Behind the Mask was a tall order but Gwoemul / The Host (2006), the final film of Frightfest 2006, made that tricky task look ridiculously easy. Like El laberinto del fauno / Pan's Labyrinth, this wild Korean monster movie from Joon-ho Bong (Salinui chueok / Memories of Murder (2003), Namgeuk-ilgi / Antarctic Journal (2005)) was the talk of Cannes and it's not hard to see why. Mixing humour and giant monster action it pits the residents of Seoul against a mutant tadpole that emerges from the Han River after feeding on discarded formaldehyde and goes on the rampage. It abducts the teenage daughter of the dim-witted Gang-du (he's so dim even a lobotomy doesn't slow him down) and he teams up with his much more resourceful family to find her before it's too late.

From the jaw-dropping first appearance of the tadpole-beast (it lays waste to a riverside picnic site in a fashion that would have Godzilla glowing radioactive green with envy) to the rather tragic finale, Gwoemul is wonderful. The creature, mostly CGI but very well done, is an unusual beast, swinging along by its tale under bridges and snatching passersby with its prehensile tail. Like a lot of the director's previous work, it shifts back and forth from deadly seriousness to the blackest comedy in the bat of an eyelid and isn't ashamed to tug at the heartstrings at the end. Bong doesn't take the easy option, recognising the giant monster movie clichés and deftly sidestepping them at every turn - every time you think you know where he's taking his complicated story, he decides to veer off in an entirely different direction. Audience recognition characters are killed off, others are sidelined for great stretches and the notional hero is a man who ignores the needs of his teenage daughter, eats endlessly and can barely stay awake even when the family are in their greatest peril! With the exception of some noticeably terrible fire effects near the end, the effects are generally excellent too.

This version of Gwoemul is allegedly the longest available and I know that some found it a bit too long, but personally I could take as much film as the brilliant Bong can deliver so the longer the better. Personally, my attention never wavered for a second, no mean feat after 20 plus films in four days! It was the perfect end to the weekend and a film that I'll be queuing up to see again as soon as it gets a wider release.

And that was that - another Frightfest, another cracking line up of films. Before the now traditional round-up of the Good, The Bad and the Indifferent, a few thank yous: to JP (creator of the Frightfest brochure comic strip) and Stuart for making the between-film chats so interesting and hilarious; to Greg Day for his part in sorting out the ticketing for me; to Kim for making me feel guilty that I was enjoying myself when I should have been doing an EOFFTV update (cheers Kim!); and of course to Ian Rattray, Paul McEvoy and Alan Jones for another fantastic weekend's entertainment.

And so, the final assessment:

The Good: The Hound of the Baskervilles; Twins of Evil; Pan's Labyrinth; Hatchet; Frostbite; Isolation; Earthlings; See No Evil; Broken (I know, I wasn't there to see it but I had seen it before and loved it so it still counts!); The Living and the Dead; Them; The Lost; Sheitan; Puritan; Behind the Mask; The Host

The Bad: Countess Dracula (sorry, I know it has its fans but I just can't see the appeal...); Adrift; The Ghost of Mae Nak

The Indifferent: The Marsh; Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror; Grimm Love (it might have made it to Good if they'd ditched that stupid American student storyline); H6: Diary of a Serial Killer
KEVIN LYONS