I is for Incantation (2022)

After Grotesque and Hellgate, I needed to watch something that had a good chance of being halfway decent. I remembered the Taiwanese film Incantation getting a little buzz when it recently hit Netflix so here we are.

Mother Li Ronan (Hsuan-yen Tsai) goes to extremes to protect her daughter from a curse she contracted years earlier.

Yeah, this was pretty solid and serviceable as both Asian horror and found footage. The lore is dense and believable, especially when you factor in the story was inspired by a real family in the 2000s that thought they were possessed by angry spirits.

Hsuan-yen Tsai as Li Ronan in Incantation

I think the found footage angle works for the most part. I mean, it's no Noroi: The Curse, but the story is good enough to warrant the format. And in true Asian horror fashion, there are some decent scare set pieces, including the one in the shrine of the priest and his wife. 

I'd say Incantation's main detractor is it's a little long in the tooth. It holds off showing what is actually inside the “infamous” tunnel for a little too long. It's one of those cursed films where you get the idea that said curse is stronger than everyone involved so the third act is you just waiting for it to kill everyone off.

Overall, worth a watch and certainly a breath of fresh air from the stale dreck I took in the least few days. And as soon as I say that, tomorrow we have a movie about a shark whisperer...

The Sadness

There were of course many reasons that prompted last weekend's getaway to Montreal, but chief among them was Fantasia's North American premiere of Rob Jabbaz's The Sadness. Shot in Taipei's summer of 2020 during the delayed onset of Covid-19, this title has been rapidly growing infamy for its extreme violence. I became aware of it after Rue Morgue put in on the cover of their Jul/Aug issue and then leaned shortly after, rather fortuitously, that it was screening during my visit. Then, months later, stuffed high up in the balcony at the Imperial, I finally took in The Sadness.

Citizens in Taipei fight to survive during an outbreak that compels those infected to torture, murder and rape.

So is it worth all the hype? For the most part, yes. I mean, you know how things go when movies get talked up as they do - Fantasia even put a disclaimer on their listing - your imagination is always worse than the real thing. Having said that, The Sadness was no doubt a Category 3 title (Hong Kong's much maligned version of NC-17) peppered with bloodstained set pieces that kept the tension going once all hell broke loose. Not only was it gory, violent and transgressive, but also well made with solid performances by Regina Lei and Berant Zhu. A lot of the tension is built on these two trying to find each other again after the movie's gentle and relatable opening scene of their morning ritual.  

Also memorable was the axe-wielding company man played by Tzu-Chiang Wang. Jabbaz revealed in the Q&A that Wang is a well-known character actor in Taiwan (he referenced Harry Dean Stanton as a Western equivalent) so I'd say it was pretty ballsy for him to have taken such a lecherous role. In amongst all this were the obvious parallels between The Alvin and Corona viruses, as well as some political satire that's pretty transparent no matter what corner of the globe you hail from.

Listening to the gasps and sighs of disgust happening around me during The Sadness' most talked about scene, I realized that it had been a while since I had experienced such a thing. It gave me pause, as it seemed like during the aughts there was some nerve shredding title grazing my eyeballs every year. Now, not so much and if I'm being honest, I don't think the machine allows the shit that tips the scales of taste to be made anymore. I mean, a Canadian had to basically flee to Taiwan and use completely independent money (his producer Jeff Huang is, among other things, a crypto tycoon) to get something like The Sadness made. I can't even imagine other Category 3 films like Red to Kill and Untold Story even being shot in this day and age. Some people might say this is a good thing. I am not one of those people.

While I may no longer actively seek out the sinewy fringes of shock cinema, knowing it is still there comforts me because lacking the video store experience, I still want the idea of the forbidden to exist in some form or another.

축하합니다

A big Congrats to Bong Joon-ho for crushing it last night at the Oscars.

Director Bong Joon-ho wins the Oscars.

His 2019 film Parasite (and my fave of last year) took home four Awards last night, including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and even Best Picture, the first international film to ever do so. A terrific night!

Ooh-Zoo-Mah-Kee

I heard some terrific news this weekend. Adult Swim's Toonami is adapting Junji Ito's bonkers manga Uzumaki into a four-part anime miniseries. Check out the trailer below.

Man, that music by Colin Stetson is fucking perfect. As we know, Uzumaki was made into a feature in 2000, and though it had unsettling visuals in spades, I think this anime may best capture Ito's unrivalled forays into cosmic madness. The miniseries is set to be released in 2020.

Fantasia 2018: Part One

All told I saw fifteen films this year at Fantasia, ranging from retro martial arts to Kiwi comedy to upcoming horrors. Here were some of the highlights in case you are keeping score at home.

Probably my fave of the trip was Justin P. Lange's The Dark. I heard comparisons to Let The Right One In prior to the screening and they are apt. However, I'd say the dynamic between the two leads (Nadia Alexander & Toby Nichols) was a little different, as were the events that got them there. This equally sweet and sanguine effort was right up my alley.

Lee Chang-hee's The Vanished was a terrific thriller from South Korea. It walks a fine line between conventional and supernatural with a narrative that unfolds flawlessly, yet still has room for levity courtesy of a Columbo-esque gumshoe played by Kim Kang-woo. Just when I thought the movie might be spinning its wheels in the third act, it hit me with a fantastic conclusion that tied everything together.

Brazillian director Dennison Ramalho has wowed me over the years with his short films Love For Mother Only, Ninjas & ABC 2's J is for Jesus, but The Nightshifter was his first foray into long form. Wonderfully obtuse to start, the film actually became increasingly more conventional as it progressed. It wouldn't surprise me if an American studio remade this by the end of the decade.

On the science-fiction side of things was Isaac Ezban's Parallel. This was some smart and engaging stuff that was heavily aided by the visual stylings of cinematographer Karim Hussein. I really loved that the filmmakers took the fascinating theory of the Mandela Effect and fashioned it into a feature long concept.

Filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov was back at Fantasia this year with three films, but the one I caught was Profile. Using the same “screen reality” format employed in his Unfriended series, this one featured far more serious subject matter. This film was as tense as it was topical. I really dig this evolution of found footage and its fresh way of telling stories. Considering how much time we spend in front of our computer screens these days, I feel there is real strength in the familiarity of its narratives. 

Lastly, I wanted to give a shout-out to a pair of comrades who had their films play at Fantasia. My Little Terrors cohort Justin McConnell premiered his new feature Lifechanger and Jen Wexler screened her backwoods slasher The Ranger.

It was a terrific week in terms of film, as well as festival events, but more on those tomorrow.

Short of the Week #12: Junk Head

I mentioned a film yesterday that played What the Film Fest called Junk Head. It is a stop-motion animated opus from Japanese filmmaker Takahide Hori. Essentially made by just Hori himself over the course of five years, it is an amazing achievement of dark wonder and whimsy. Below is the 2014 short that started it all and became the first chapter of his two-hour epic. Enjoy!

Bless The Child

On Saturday, Blood in the Snow screened two creepy kid flicks, the first of which being Jennifer Phillips' debut effort, Blood Child.

After suffering a miscarriage in Singapore, Ashley (Alyx Melone) with the help of her maid Siti (Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie) make a pact with a witch doctor to bring forth a “ghost child”. But as time goes by, it becomes increasingly difficult to control, especially when Ashley becomes pregnant again.

I am hoping that Phillips is the beginning of a new cycle of bringing lesser known South East Asian folklore to the West (much like up-and-comer Larica Pereira did with her short film Tik-Tik last year). I found the whole concept of the ghost child fascinating, especially when Phillips explained at the Q&A that this is an actual practice in Singapore. When not filtered through the lens of a studio (like say last year's The Forest), delving into these customs comes off as a lot more sincere.

Alyx Melone as Ashley in Blood Child.

Blood Child was definitely at its strongest when it was dwelling on its lore. It was when Phillips fell back on generic horror conventions – and the usual trappings and logic gaps that plague these kind of supernatural thrillers – that it was less interesting to me. I liked it well enough though, even if it did end rather abruptly in a manner I wasn't crazy about.

Something I found unique was the pairing of the housewife and the maid. In most horror films, the maid would be played as an antagonist, but this duo were intrinsically linked by the pact they had made. Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie accomplished a lot with very little dialogue beyond “yes ma'am” and I spent most of the film trying to place why the lead Alyx Melone seemed so familiar. It finally dawned on me that she possessed both the looks of fellow Canuck Tristan Risk and the mannerisms of Heather Lankenkamp. Everyone else in the film just seemed to be circling in an ineffectual orbit around these two the whole film.

Cast & crew of Blood Child. Photo courtesy of Joe MK.

I think the core of Blood Child, built around its compelling folk tale and two strong leads, was solid, even if some of the interstitials fell flat at times. I'm all for the effort though. We need an infusion of new things that go bump in the night beyond the usual revolving door of CGI apparitions, flesh eaters and dudes in animal masks.

Japan Gonna Pump... You up!

Last Saturday for its third year in a row, The Royal Cinema hosted the What The Film Festival.

A satellite event of the Laser Blast Film Society, the WTFF caters to the eclectic and experimental. Programmer Peter Kuplowsky scowers the globe for stuff outside the mainstream and this year gave us three such examples in Shinichi Fukazawa's Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell, Kentucker Audley's Sylvio and Michael Reich's She's Allergic To Cats.

Due to a family engagement, I was only able to catch the first show, but what a time it was.

You may have heard this movie referred to as the Japanese Evil Dead and that is pretty accurate. However, though there were many bits and pieces that were ripped right out of Raimi's beloved splat-stick trilogy, Fukazawa did make this his own thing by mixing in traditional Asian ghost story tropes and the aforementioned bodybuilding obsession. It did take a while to get going, but once the vengeful spirit was unleashed, the balls-to-the-wall inventiveness took over.

Here's blood in your eye! (sorry, couldn't resist)

As a huge Sam Raimi fan, it was impossible for me to not find this incredibly endearing. Body Builder was as fun as it was gory with a delightful everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to practical effects. Shot mostly in confined spaces, you could tell how difficult and time consuming - much like Evil Dead - some of these sequences must have been to shoot. It's the kind of DIY filmmaking that not only entertains, but also inspires.

Writer/Director & also lead actor Shinichi Fukazawa.

It is sad to think that this movie almost did not see the light of day. It was shot in 1995, but not fully put together for another fifteen years. It was then only available underground on DVD-R until UK company TerraCotta finally did an official release this year. I feel the world of splatter cinema is now a little redder for it.

Best Horror of 2016

Here we are at the finish line of a year that if you're like me probably glad to see the ass-end of. So many shitty things in the news that it's hard to comprehend them all. I wish things had been better because for me personally, it was a pretty good year. My second short film Lively scored Canadian distribution and I produced two more that will hopefully see the light of day in 2017. I finished my long-gestating feature script and joined the programming teams of three different film festivals. Not too shabby. But we're here to talk movies...

It has been an up-and-down year and if I'm honest, a lot of the most resonant pieces of genre I've ingested have been outside of film (Limetown, Life Is Strange, Inside, Black Mirror, Channel Zero), but that's not to say there weren't some fantastic horror movies released. I would normally offer up five titles, but since I put The Witch on 2015's list, I can only nominate four that went above and beyond.

Raw
France, Dir: Julia Ducournau

Bold and veracious, this deserved every bit of praise it received at this year's Midnight Madness. Putting aside the circus of the premiere's “medical emergencies” its importance to the genre should not be overlooked. Using the platform of a coming-of-age film, Raw is every bit as evocative as modern classics Let The Right One In and Ginger Snaps.

Under The Shadow
Iranian/UK, Dir: Babak Anvari

This Persian powerhouse really took me by surprise when I saw it back in April. The comparisons to Jennifer Kent's The Babadook are valid, but I would propose that Anvari's film is even better pound-for-pound as it relies less on its production design to deliver the creeps. As if the backdrop of war-torn Iran wasn't unsettling enough, the addition of a supernatural element leads to almost unbearable amounts of tension. This is a terrific piece of horror filmmaking.

The Invitation
USA, Dir: Karyn Kusama

I adore this movie and have not seen suspense this well utilized in a long time. This movie took something as benign as a dinner party and through sharp writing and pace managed to keep me on the edge of my seat. I knew the what, but my anticipation of the when, why and how kept me razor focused. I'm so impressed by how well this movie is put together, as even something as small as where someone stood during a scene caused me so much anxiety.

Train To Busan
South Korea, Dir: Yeon Sang-ho

Let's all admit it. We're all a little bored of zombies now that they've passed their saturation point. Yet even despite this, Train To Busan still manages to be all kinds of awesome. There's an energy to this movie that you can feel when you watch it with a crowd. While it's true that the unique location provides some freshness, it's also the colourful characters (and there are a lot of them) that really give life to this movie. I think you may be as surprised as I was by how much heart it has -- where did all these feels come from???

Honourable Mentions

If you had said to me a year ago, “Hey Jay, your best of list next year is going to include a Polish musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid” I'd have asked what you were smoking and if I could have some. However, that is absolutely the case. Agnieszka Smoczynska's The Lure is tremendous. Even on a second viewing I was amazed by how much confidence and swagger Smoczynska shows in her debut! The Lure is an absolute joy!

This year, I finally got to see The Void. It was thankfully exactly what I was hoping for. It rose beyond homage to actually exist as one of those crazy creature fests we grew up watching in the eighties. I'm extremely proud of Steve Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie for what they accomplished here.

I was glad to lay my eyeballs on some cool indies this year, most notably Perry Blackshear's They Look Like People and Billy O'Brien's I Am Not A Serial Killer. Both were able to portray mental illness in a tangible and non-sensationalized way while weaving some fine storytelling.

I was also really impressed with 10 Cloverfield Lane. Dan Trachtenberg directed the shit out of this movie. His three leads (John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher Jr. - what a year for that guy with Hush and The Belko Experiment also on his 2016 resume) put in some of the best performances this year in my opinion. Say what you want about where the movie eventually goes, but this was a super taut thriller.

Lastly, I just wanted to bring up what a solid year it was for genre-related documentaries. In addition to the uber-creepy Beware the Slenderman, we also had a pair of great docs about the medium itself in The Frankenstein Complex and 24 x 36.

Moving onto the negative side of things, I am afraid I saw an unusually large number of things I didn't care for this year like the mind-numbingly dumb Yoga Hosers, the mind-numbingly gross The Greasy Strangler and that unconvincing not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is bore Safe Neighbourhood. For the latter, I'm not usually in the minority when it comes to these things, but now I get the mindset of those people who sat in the corner and rolled their eyes at the praise heaped on Cabin In The Woods and You're Next. Except those two movies were awesome. Safe 'Hood can ess a dee.

However, nothing came close to my dislike for Mickey Keating's Darling. It is a mess in concept, in tone and almost everything else. It has been a while since I've seen something so unapologetically pretentious and I'm not having any of it.

So, that's another three-sixty-five down. Have a great New Year and I'll see you back here next week to rundown all the horror goodies coming up in 2017. 

It's Everything I've Ever Wanted!

After a super busy Friday & Saturday, I'm being extremely lazy today and all I could find to post is this wonderfully Japanese gameplay trailer for School Girl Zombie Hunter. Enjoy!

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Hello all. Winter has finally arrived here, so naturally I'm now nestled under a million blankets. Here's what I've got for you this week.

Park City At Midnight.

Well, 2017 is almost upon us which means that Sundance is not far away. This week, the Midnight selections for the festival were announced. Here are three for which I am looking forward.

Sundance has played several horror documentaries in the past, and this edition will see the premiere of Alex Phillippe's 78/52, an exhaustive exploration of one of horror's most iconic sequences - the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

From Australia comes Damien Power's Killing Ground. This flick, about a couple of campers who come across a child wandering in the wilderness, premiered in Melbourne last summer to positive reviews, so colour me intrigued.

The female-centric anthology XX will finally have its premiere in Park City this year. Featuring diabolical tales from Karyn Kusama (Jennifer's Body), Roxanne Benjamin (Southbound), Jovanka Vuckovic (The Captured Bird) & Annie Clark aka St, Vincent, I am really excited to see how this one turned out.

The Kids Aren't All Right.

A solid short I caught at Fantasia this year has made its way online. Here below is Tim Hyten's Snake Bite.

Spicy Meatball.

You know how sometimes you don't realize how much you've missed something, until it shows up again? Well, that's what happened to me when the trailer for Yoshi Nishimura's Kodoku: Meatball Machine arrived this week.

I love this stuff. Always have, always will.

Zombie Night 2016

As  has always been the tradition at Toronto After Dark, Saturday night belongs to the undead. 2016's edition brought us flesh eaters from the UK and South Korea in The Rezort and Train To Busan, respectively.

The Rezort came first, and the easiest way to describe it is Jurassic Park with zombies. Coming a few years after society has regained control of a worldwide outbreak, well-to-do types pay to vacation on an island where you can shoot up shackled zombies. That is, until a zombie-rights hacker shuts down the system and lets them loose on the inhabitants.

This movie was nothing to write home about, but considering its juicy setup and lush locale (Majorca) it would've been really hard to screw it up. The characters were fairly stock, but the zombies looked great and they got shot up a lot. Like, a lot. If you're cruising Netflix and looking for something to scratch that undead itch, you could do a LOT worse, trust me.

Moving onto the real meat, the second film was Sang-ho Yeon's Train To Busan. I actually watched this a few months ago when it played a limited run here, but I had no qualms about seeing it again at TAD, as it's a super fun ride. It's basically about a zombie outbreak making its way onto a train travelling from Seoul to Busan. If you dig zombie movies, this has basically everything you'd want and once that train leaves the station, it doesn't let up.

Yoo Gong in Train To Busan.

With its confined spaces, I thought the unique setting of the commuter train added a layer of tension that worked really well. And you're in luck if you like your zombies fast, as these fuckers are bad-ass. Going from still to feral death machines in mere seconds, I really liked the crunching and kinetic physicality of this particular brand of ghoul. With some digital assistance there were some really striking images of mass numbers tearing towards their prey, and fortunately never looked as cartoony as it did in World War Z.

More importantly, and frankly impressively, Train To Busan featured an unusually high number of likable characters to root for. The comic timing and dialogue was on point and there were some exchanges that were funny and touching in equal measure. You can tell you've won over an audience, when there are audible gasps and exclamations when people start falling to the zombie horde. Utilizing a really terrific cast, most notably Dong-seok Ma, Yu-mi Jeong and Kim (damn that kid can cry), Yeon was really able to tug at the heartstrings.

Dong-seok Ma in Train To Busan.

Yeon (in this as well as Seoul Station, his other project this year) also injected some social commentary into his zombie tale, as class struggle and paranoia were ever present. His message was more prevalent in Station (and its homeless population metaphor) but Yeon didn't shy away from humanity's uglier attributes here either.

This is a must watch in my opinion. It delivered on its premise and built tension not only from its snarling antagonists, but also the constant endangerment of characters we had grown to like. All aboard Train To Busan!

J-Horror Showdown

This year's Midnight Madness concluded on Saturday with a classic confrontation between the two horror icons from The Ring and The Grudge franchises, Sadako vs. Kayako.

After a pair of young women discover and watch the cursed video tape, they seek the help of a pair of ghost hunters who hatch a scheme to pit Sadako against another local vengeful spirit, Kayako.

These type of event pictures are nothing new, as its been almost seventy years since Abbott & Costello first met Frankenstein. Even in Japanese cinema, Godzilla once fought King Kong, so I suppose that now that Sadako & Kayako are now pop culture icons (they even recently threw out the first pitch at a Japanese baseball game) its seems this match-up was inevitable in much the same way as Freddy vs. Jason was in this neck of the woods.

I have to say Sadako vs. Kayako was surprisingly entertaining. For what could have been a cheap gimmick, it was actually pretty well put together. Director Kôji Shiraishi (of Noroi: The Curse fame) was in on the joke and made this effort incredibly easy to digest. I liked the evolution of the lore surrounding the cursed video tape in that it had become a well known urban legend, to the point that one character had become so obsessed with Sadako that he was offering a reward to anyone who could acquire it for him. I'm not sure why the death countdown was inexplicably changed from the seven days to two, but I can assume it just better served the script.

Even though the tone of the movie was rather light and comedic, there was still room for some fun scares as Sadako and Kayako continued their modus operandi of being able to strike from anywhere. It is a testament to their design that no matter how ridiculous they become (they spent their time in Toronto getting their hair done, and visiting the candy store Sweet Jesus), their appearance and accompanying audio cues still manage to put people on edge.

The highlight of the movie for me were the pair of ghost hunters that come onto the scene when all seems lost. I immediately recognized Masanobu Ando from his appearance as the psychotic Kazuo in 2000's Battle Royale and he and his young blind sidekick Tamao's (Mai Kikuchi) blunt force humour were pretty great. The ending of the movie was rather abrupt, but the aftermath of what happened when Sadako and Kayako were pitted against each other made for some crazy visuals.

Sadako (Runa Endo) & Kayako (Elly Namani) haunt the Ryerson Theatre.

It was a solid year at Midnight Madness with some real crowd pleasers in Free Fire and The Belko Experiment, as well as those that revitalized their respective subgenres like Raw and The Girl With All the Gifts.

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Hey kids. Hope you enjoying your weekend, as there are only a few left this summer. Here's a few video nuggets before I shoot off to the city today.

Uninvited Guests.

Toronto artist (and sometime filmmaker) Matthew Therrien recently went down the YouTube horror short rabbit hole and was inspired to create his own one evening for zero dollars. Here below, is Houseguests.

I think it's pretty effective, and starts with the great nugget (as most good shorts do) of what would you do if you went to take a piss in the night and there was someone in your bed when you came back? Plus, Therrien got to plug some of his own artwork in the short, too.

Land of the Rising Scare.

I found this neat video from last month that I wanted to share. See below how The Film Theorists broke down what makes Japanese horror so scary and compelling. They bring up some really accurate points about the differences between Western and Eastern horror. Enjoy.

Road To Nowhere.

The retro slasher Lake Nowhere from Christopher Phelps & Maxim Van Scoy dropped this week on VOD. Click here to rent it from Vimeo for a couple of bones. Here's the trailer below.

Never Trust A Demon.

Next up, was the highly anticipated supernatural tale from South Korea, The Wailing.

Random acts of violence in a small town have the constabulary baffled. When the daughter of head investigator Jong-Goo (Do Wan Kwak) starts to exhibit the same symptoms, he races against time to find the cause.

This is a strange review to write because I feel like this one now will be a lot different than the one I would have written yesterday. Both past and present me would have said it was a solid movie, but the former would have said its overwhelming Cannes buzz was a tad overrated. But let's back up.

The Wailing has that mix of comedy, horror and drama that is uniquely Korean. It reminded me a little of 2006's The Host, in that the family is the narrative strength. Director Hong-jin Na spends a good amount of time getting you invested in them so that when the supernatural element is injected, you actually care about their fate. The performances were great all around. There are a lot of scenes that required extreme emotion, especially from the young daughter (Kim Hwan-hee) and she was a force to be reckoned with.

Kim Hawn-hee & Do Wan Kwak in the Wailing

The first half was very enjoyable, but it started to get a little muddled the longer it went on and was not helped by its hundred-and-fifty-six minute running time. After watching the film, there were a lot of things that didn't add up for me. After doing some research, I filled in some of the blanks, but that's not really an ideal scenario. I mean, I like to think that I'm not an idiot, so if I have to have an important misdirection explained to me, I choose to put that on the film. But, I (kind of) get it now, so everything's cool.

Overall, The Wailing is a fine film, but don't feel bad if you find yourself scratching your head afterwards about the details.

TCAF 2016

This weekend I checked out the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It happens at the Reference Library downtown every year and showcases hundreds of comic artists from around the globe. So much art at once can be a little overwhelming, but I always come away with some really awesome finds.

In addition to picking the above new works from my friends Trevor Henderson & Jenn Woodall, I was also glad to see that Ero-Guro artist Shintaro Kago was in town for the weekend debuting his newest anthology comic, Tract.

Artist Shintaro Kago

After using my limited Japanese while getting my book signed, I discovered Kago does personalized portraits. Using this handy guide, Kago will draw you being dispatched in a number of different ways.

I've since seen one done of a friend of mine, and the likeness was pretty uncanny. How awesome is that?!