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FRIGHTFEST 2002 FESTIVAL REPORT
Day two of Frightfest 2002 kicked off with another pair of short films, beginning with the latest offering from Razor Blade Smile [1998] director Jake West, the twisted crime thriller / love story Whacked. Photographed by Jim Solan, the director of yesterday's Pissboy, it's a taut, dynamic and enjoyably weird short boasting some excellent performances. Which is a lot more than can be said for the second of the day's short films, Ruby [2002], the latest from Adam Mason. Why Frightfest should continue patronising Mason is something of a mystery -the first year saw them screening his tedious The Thirteenth Sign [2000] while last year's Dust [2001] was by far and away the worst film of the entire weekend. This year, we thankfully only had to sit through a few minutes of his inane drivel. Nadja Brand stars [either as herself or as Ruby, it isn't terribly clear], first of all railing against an internet critic who gave Dust a good drubbing [Frightfest is given a plug] before suddenly turning the tables on her paedophile partner by gorily hacking off chunks of his flesh. The film ends giving the impression that Brand and Mason were venting their spleen on the Frightfest crowd that had so roundly rejected Dust last year, with Brand screaming into the camera "This is what you wanted to see!" while forcing the camera to keep focussed on the gore. Another muddled, pretentious and virtually unwatchable piece of nonsense from Mason. The first feature of the day was one of my favourite films of the last few years, Richard Kelly's extraordinary and unclassifiable Donnie Darko [2001]. Fresh, inventive and aptly described by Alan Jones as one of the most important films in recent years, Donnie Darko really is quite incredible, and seeing it on the big screen was a real treat. Donnie is a disturbed young teen which a strange outlook on life. He's visited periodically by a mutant, six foot tall rabbit called Frank who saves his life when he lures him outside one night just as the engine from a jet airliner crashes through the roof of his house. And then things start to get really weird... Moving, intelligent and crying out to be watched over and over again, Donnie Darko announces first time writer-director Kelly as a real talent to watch for in the future. He manages to make a movie about teen angst that actually makes you care about its protagonists [no mean feat], forging bizarre but believable and likeable characters that are acted brilliantly by the cast. Kelly's use of sound is reminiscent of David Lynch and his choice of 80s-period songs is exemplary, particularly a fantastic reworking by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews of Tears For Fears Mad World which accompanies a deeply moving montage near the climax. Donnie Darko is going to be one of those films around which an enduring cult will gather in the coming years. It's bewildering ending leaves scope for multiple interpretations - quite appropriate given the film's interest in parallel universes - that will keep its steadily growing army of fans debating for a long time to come. A truly remarkable film and one of the most inventive and original things we're going to see all weekend. Another short film came next, the 3 minute Sacrifice from John Richards. It starts with what looks like a Wicker Man inspired ritual in a Welsh village church, a baby ominously being offered to a naked woman on an altar, apparently to be sacrificed. The ending however reveals the truth which is hilariously unexpected. The Pang Brothers' The Eye was up next and proved once again that when it comes to supernatural horror, no-one is doing better than the Orientals at the moment. Mun has been blind since the age of two but undergoes a corneal transplant that restores her sight, but at a cost - not everyone she can now see are still alive... The Pangs had previously helmed the high-octane crime thriller Bangkok Dangerous [1999] and The Eye is their first horror film - let's hope it's not to be their last. Aided enormously by Angelica Lee's excellent central performance, The Pangs have taken elements from The Sixth Sense [1999] and The Mothman Prophecies [2001] and created something that seems new and original. Rarely for this sort of thing, the ghosts are genuinely frightening - the old man in the lift is particularly creepy but the terrifying ghost in the classroom, demanding to know why Mun is sitting in her chair, provided the most potent scare of the weekend. What sets The Eye apart from the many other supernatural horrors currently pouring out of the east is the attention the Pang brothers pay to their characters. The film simply wouldn't work if Mun hadn't have been such a well drawn and sensitively acted character. We needed to believe fully in her before we could believe fully in what she was experiencing and the brothers, together with Lee, do a commendable job. The apocalyptic climax is as astonishing as it is unexpected, perfectly complementing the equally unpredictable beginning which caused some consternation among the crowd - the shock opening has been specially modified for the DVD release and has the same heart-stopping effect on the small screen! Look out for some of the directorial subtleties - the ghostly figures seen lurking at the edge of the frame, or the distorted face reflected in the windows of a speeding train. Probably the most unsettling moment of the weekend so far was to be found in a hilarious collection of trailers and advertisements dug up from the Prince Charles' vaults which were screened as a curtain-raiser to the latest instalment of the Halloween saga. Mid-way through this mixed bag of coming attractions [for the Val Guest sex comedy The Au Pair Girls [1972] and a very strange one for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope [1978 - though the trailer is curiously copyrighted 1976]] comes a road safety advert featuring 60s and 70s radio DJ Jimmy Saville, who will mean little to non-UK readers but who is well know to British TV viewers for his long-running "dreams-come-true" TV show Jim'll Fix It [1975 - 1994]. This jaw-dropping piece features Saville sporting one of his more ludicrous haircuts slimily smarming up to a young girl in a hospital bed whose face has been horribly disfigured in a car crash! Halloween: Resurrection is the eighth instalment in the series and picks up a few years after Halloween H2O [1998], deftly, if clumsily and not entirely convincingly, explaining how Michael Myers had survived and how Laurie Strode is now incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital dreading her little brother's return. The first ten minutes - which finds director Rick Rosenthal back in the hospital milieu he explored in Halloween II [1981] - are rather good, but sadly it soon falls apart with the arrival of Busta Rhymes as an internet entrepreneur who is planning a live webcast from the old Myers house in Haddonfield. Predictably, Michael returns home and the body count begins to rise... Tired, dull and predictable, Halloween: Resurrection really is scrapping the bottom of the barrel and it's now long past time to let Michael hang up his knife and enjoy a well deserved retirement. The webcast idea may have worked had Rosenthal been able to make his mind up how he was going to present the film - he constantly jumps back and forth between straight narrative, Blair Witch Project style shakycam footage, Big Brother inspired voyeurism and even, briefly, the split screen technique seen in Mike Figgis' Timecode [2000]. Sticking to any one of these techniques would have been enough, but Rosenthal constantly jumps backwards and forwards to little effect. The 'surprise' ending [yeah, like we didn't see that one coming...] suggests that this time next year, we'll be settling down for chapter nine - not a very palatable thought at all. After a short animated science fiction film, the well made but uninvolving Daddy by Stephen Cavalier, we came to the first of the weekend's two films starring Robin Williams. Normally it would take the proverbial team of wild horses to drag me into any cinema showing anything starring Williams, but this one, One Hour Photo, had the distinction of being the first feature film for seventeen years from Mark Romanek, director of the fabulous Static [1985], who has spent the intervening years making rock promos for the likes of Madonna, Nine Inch Nails and R.E.M. It just goes to show how ridiculous petty prejudices can be - not only is One Hour Photo an awesome piece of work, it's also Williams' best performance to date. He plays the sad and lonely Sy Parrish, an employee for eleven years at a one hour photo concession. Having no friends or family of his own, Sy has 'borrowed' one, the Yorkins whose photographs he has been processing for many years. Plastering the walls of his apartment with a collection of the family's photographs, Sy soon starts to stalk Nina Yorkin and constructs a whole fantasy life around the family, coming to see himself as the kindly Uncle Sy. But when another customer's photos reveal the truth about Nina's husband Will, Sy's vision of the perfect family crumbles and he starts to plan his revenge... Williams is an absolute revelation here - compelling and utterly believable he pulls off the performance of a lifetime, making us both care for Sy and fear him at the same time. His subtle underplaying makes Sy one of the most creepy and unforgettable screen psychos ever - the increasingly tiresome Michael Myers just doesn't come close! Indeed, he's so good that only a few minutes into the film, you completely forget that you're even watching Williams - he's almost unrecognisable here and let's hope that his recent taste for darker roles keeps in him in gainful employment for the rest of his career. It will always be a mystery why Romanek took so long to get another feature off the ground but the wait has certainly been worth it. Commendably, Romanek avoids the usual clichés brought to features by those who have spent too much time in the promo industry - there's none of the frenetic cross-cutting or desperate camera angles we're used to here, just good old-fashioned storytelling, beautifully shot and hauntingly acted. This really is something very special indeed. Day two of Frightfest ended with the British / French / US co-production My Little Eye, the second film of the day to use a webcast as its central conceit. Director Marc Evans was on hand to be interviewed from the stage by Alan Jones and introduced it as an "experiment in unpleasantness." A group of five young people retire to a remote and snowbound house where they have to live together for six months under the constant scrutiny of a battery of webcams - if any one of them leaves, they will all forfeit the one million dollar prize money. But as the experiment comes to an end they begin to suspect that they've been set up for something they could never even have dreamed of... Shot entirely by a the surveillance cameras dotted around the house and from a few hidden lenses inside household objects - most creepily from inside a torch - My Little Eye looks quite unlike anything else we've seen so far this weekend. It was an experiment that Evans himself admitted restricted him - there are no cutaway shots or POVs for example - but he still manages to make one of the tensest and most unsettling films of the weekend. It's impossible to discuss the film in any detail without giving away the salient plot twists but suffice to say that it's a must-see film that has trailed controversy behind it over the last few months. It had premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival but apparently distributors Universal have got cold feet and are unsure about releasing it. Which would be a tragedy as this is definitely a film that deserves
the widest possible audience. Deeply unsettling, its startling imagery stays
with you long after it's fantastically twisty ending. Evans said during his
interview that he had another horror film lined up as his next project - I for
one am waiting with bated breath.
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