The Zone Horror Frightfest 2006 - Day Three

Sunday looked set to be a day of extremes, of dark and intense films that could be the most challenging single-day line-up that Frightfest has ever attempted. As I'd already seen Adam Mason and Simon Boyes' excellent Broken (2006) - you can find a full review of it here - I decided to reluctantly pass on its Sunday morning screening in favour of getting a bit more sleep! Sadly, it also meant missing the short film Snatching Time but at least when I turned up in the early afternoon I felt properly awake and alert for the new British psychological horror The Living and the Dead (2006) from director Simon Rumley, who was on hand to introduce the film, one of the most distressing and uncompromising films that Frightfest has ever shown, one that gets right under your skin and stays there showing no intention of relaxing its grip.

Set entirely within a crumbling stately home where reclusive Lord Donald Brocklebank (Roger Lloyd Pack) lives with his dying wife Nancy (Kate Fahy) and mentally ill son James (Leo Bill). When Brocklebank is called away to discuss his dire financial situation, James, desperate for his father's approval, locks his mother's wife out of the house and tries to care for her himself, setting in motion a series of events that culminates in almost Shakespearian tragedy.

Brilliant shot (it makes the most creative use of accelerated motion since Koyaanisqatsi (1983)), The Living and the Dead careens through the implosion of the Brocklebank family in considerable style, blending dazzling hallucination sequences with intense personal drama and disorientating timeframe jumps. In his intro to the film, Rumley agreed with Alan Jones' assessment that The Living and the Dead was a challenging film and he seemed unsure about how a horror audience would react to its artier aspirations. He needn't have worried - it's a brilliant, intense and deeply disturbing movie that was received, for the most part, extremely well. Rumley seemed visibly relieved when he returned to the stage with actress Kate Fahy for an enjoyable Q&A.

Before we resumed the day's entertainment, there was some sad news - the Pang Brothers' Gwai wik / Re-Cycle (2006), which I'd been very much looking forward to, had arrived without any subtitles and given its supposedly complex storyline, the organisers decided to replace it with the Thai Ghost of Mae Nak (2005), whose director, British born Mark Duffield, will be in attendance. Spirits were lifted immeasurably by the ever-wonderful David McGillivray whose double-act with Alan Jones are fast becoming a Frightfest highlight. And McGillivray was on excellent form as ever, sharp, witty and self-deprecating as Alan looked on slightly nervously as though dreading what the Brit horror legend would come out with next!

McGillivray was here to introduce the latest in his Worst Fears series of short films, In the Place of the Dead, his script directed by his regular director Keith Claxton and featuring McGillivray in a small role in the tale of an ancient djinn loose in the streets of Marrakech. The small cast of Anthony Wise, ex-Eastender Nabil Elouahabi and Holly de Jong are all excellent and the final payoff, though slightly predictable, is certainly satisfying.

The next feature of the day was the French Ils / Them (2006) and in his introduction, Alan asked us not to give away the ending and cautioned that as a consequence, reviewing it might be hard work. He has a point - although there isn't a twist as such, the final revelation is a surprise and under no circumstances let anyone tell you what's going on, but do make sure you see it. Directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud, it stars Olivia Bonamy (from previous Frightfest choice Bloody Mallory (2002)) and Michaël Cohen as a French couple working in Romania who find themselves terrorised by a group of strangers who invade their home and pursue them in a nerve-wracking game of cat-and-mouse.

By far the tensest and scariest film so far this weekend, Ils is a real find, another of those never-heard-of-it-before gems that works best if you know as little about it as possible about it beforehand. The directors make great use of shadowy, barely glimpsed figures, indistinct shapes moving in backgrounds and bizarre noises to wrong foot audiences, setting up all sorts of possibilities as to what's going on (thoughts of both ghosts and aliens ran through my mind during the film) before the disturbing truth is finally revealed.

Almost entirely blood-free and surprisingly low on violence, Ils instead opts for almost unbearable tension and suspense which the directors maintain brilliantly throughout. Once the weirdness begins (with a strange, incomprehensible phone call), it simply never lets up. There's little here that's new (it takes cues from Haute tension / Switchblade Romance (2003) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) but the strength of the direction helps to keep it fresh and the uncertainty as to what's actually going on ensures that interest never falters for a second. Ils was the first film of the weekend to rival the mighty El laberinto del fauno / Pan's Labyrinth for the coveted film-of-the-weekend honour.

As ever with Frightfest, the organisers try to cram in as many unannounced extras as they can. Today they had director Chris Graham on hand to introduce a promo for his forthcoming British / New Zealand co-production The Ferryman (2006) which sadly looks like it could be a generic slasher set on a yacht, with some talk of "an evil as timeless as fear itself" thrown in for good measure. Maybe it's just the context of it being shown amid so many great genre films, but this short taster did absolutely nothing for me I'm afraid.

Much more fun was a brand-new trailer for Hot Fuzz (2006), the new comedy from the Shaun of the Dead (2004) team, with director Edgar Wright on hand to introduce it. The new trailer features just the one scene but as it’s a hilarious riff on a gag from Shaun it was greeted with uproarious laughter and certainly makes this send-up of cop shows seem even more enticing than it had before.

Another guest was composer Simon Boswell (Phenomena (1985), Demoni 2 (1986), Deliria (1987) and lots more) who was here to promote his forthcoming album Close Your Eyes, a collection of songs built around fragments from his film scores. He brought with him the first promo video from the album, Tripping the Dark Fantastic, directed by Richard Stanley of Hardware (1990) and Dust Devil (1992) and featuring Boswell's partner, actress Lysette Anthony (who was in the audience) and Italian horror legend Dario Argento - who proves conclusively that he's a far better director than he is an actor!

Next up, another instalment of Trailer Trash and easily the best so far - alongside the likes of Demon Seed (1977), the Blaxploitation Exorcist clone Abby (1974) and Brit-horror giallo Assault (1971), there were two more insane Hong Kong offerings - one for the sex / horror / comedy hybrid Liu zhai hua nong yue / Home for the Intimate Ghosts (1991) and another for a film I'm now madly in love with and want to see right now - Jiang shi fu xing zi / Vampire Kids (1991) featuring a pack of tiny hopping vampires and the astonishing violence meted out to them! Wonderful stuff...

Onwards and upwards to the fourth film of the day, the German Rohtenburg (2006), advertised in the Frightfest publicity as Grimm Love but bearing the on-screen title Butterfly: A Grim Lovestory. Based on the notorious Armen Meiwes and Bernd Brandes case, the film has been banned in Germany, allegedly as the courts have ruled that the film infringes Weiwes' human rights!

What could and should have been a straightforward study of one of the most bizarre crimes of recent years - in 2001, Meiwes advertised on the internet for a willing victim to satisfy his cannibalism fantasies - turns out to be something of a mess. The scenes of the fictionalised characters of Oliver Hartwin (Thomas Kretschmann in the Miewes role) and Simon Grobeck (Thomas Huber) is well done, though perhaps predictably it offers little insight into why these men committed the crime that they did, but for reasons not entirely clear at the moment writer T.S. Faull and director Martin Weisz opted to tack on a major sub-plot about American student Katie Armstrong (Mission: Impossible III's (2006) Keri Russell) researching the case and searching for the videotape that the men made of the incident.

The film moves back and forth between the two storylines but the thread starring Russell seems entirely superfluous, adding absolutely nothing to the story at all - indeed we never even get a resolution to Katie's story. The film would have been a lot better without her (Kretschmann and Huber are excellent and the "murder" itself grew the loudest and most agonised audience groans of the weekend) and it seems so strange that the makers thought this storyline would add anything to an already macabre and fascinating tale. Perhaps they had an eye on the US market (the film appears to have been shot in English) and felt that they needed a recognisable American star to help sell it there. Who knows...? A disappointment then, albeit a rather well made one that would benefit from some extensive re-editing to remove the student and concentrate exclusively on the two men.

Chris Sivertson's The Lost (2005) is the first attempt to film the work of Jack Ketchum (real name Dallas Mayr), the cult horror novelist (who turns up in the small role of a bartender near the beginning of the film) and his based on his 2001 book of the same name. Marc Senter stars as small-town psychotic Ray Pye who leads his friends Tim (Alex Frost) and Jennifer (Shay Astar) in the senseless killings of two young women camping in the woods (one of them softcore porn star Misty Mundae acting under her real name Erin Brown). Four years laterm the two cops who investigated the case are still convinced that Pye was the killer but can't find enough evidence - until Pye meets new girl in town Katherine (Robin Sydney), setting in motion a chain of events that will end in some of the most intense violence so far this weekend.

The charting of Pye's descent from madness into something altogether more disturbing is brilliantly handled by Sivertson (editor of the wonderful May (2002), whose director Lucky McKee acted as producer here), taking time to establish the characters and allow Senter - who gives an extraordinary performance - enough space to create a well-rounded portrayal of psychosis the likes of which we haven't seen on screen for a very long time.

The finale is jaw-dropping - at some festivals, the Sharon Tate inspired forced removal of a foetus prompted walkouts but it's just a part of the most in-your-face and extreme sequence I've seen in a while. But the film has more to offer than just confrontational violence and the script stays remarkably close to Ketchum's multi-layered original, making it as satisfying emotionally and intellectually as it is viscerally. It makes no excuses for Pye's behaviour, refusing the safety net of a back story telling of how he was abused or witnessed a traumatic event - he's just a psychotic who gets off on the way he behaves, making him a far more unsettling character than any of those in most films of its ilk.

Unrelentingly dark and upsetting, The Lost will struggle to find an audience - it won't play well at your local multiplex and sadly one suspects that its destined for a few more festival screenings before DVD beckons. I'd really like to be proved wrong as this is one of the best American horror films of recent years and deserves the widest possible audience. Fans of Ketchum will need no persuading to see it - but for those unfamiliar with his work, if you have a taste for the furthest extremes of screen ultra-violence do whatever it takes to see this masterpiece.

The Lost is a tough act to follow, but Kim Chapiron's Sheitan (2006), the second French film of the day, was more than up to the task in hand. Completely mad from beginning to end, it's hilarious, shocking and deeply weird - in other words, the perfect way to finish a Saturday night (although thanks to an earlier signing by the ever-enthusiastic and accomodating Guillermo del Toro caused events to overrun and it was more like Sunday morning when the film began). A group of clubbers find themselves being invited to the remote country home of a young girl they pick up in a bar and fall foul of the very strange family they find there.

No synopsis will ever do this crazy gem justice - the story jumps around all over the place, constantly springing surprises and skating along the edge of cliché while just avoiding crossing that line. Totally unexpected and never predictable, it's a wild blend of humour (Vincent Cassel is hilarious as jovial hick Joseph), surrealism and hardcore violence. Some of the material is likely to cause jitters among various censorship bodies (the astonishing moment when local girl Jeanne (Julie-Marie Parmetier) starts masturbating a dog is unlikely to survive in many prints!).

The script pitches in with some barbed banter between its Muslim, Christian and Pagan protagonists and there's a handful of references to classical Greek mythology - the nightclub is called Styxx which, like the mythical river, here acts as the main character's entrance into the underworld (the plot is set in motion by an attack on teenager Bart at the club) and when the group arrive at the remote house where their fates will be sealed, they meet a dog named Cerberus, guarding the gateway to the underworld into which they are about to be immersed.

Sunday more than lived up to its promise as being the most intense of Frightfest 2006's four days with only Grimm Love disappointing. It's raised the bar for the final day which will have a tough job living up to all this - but with Spanish serial killers, Thai ghosts, British horror, American mockumentaries and Korean monsters on offer, it might just do it.
KEVIN LYONS