Sweet & Sanguine

The 3rd Annual Toronto After Dark Festival kicked off yesterday with a bang. The opener was the highly anticipated Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In. I finally got to see the movie that had been tearing up the Internet with positive buzz. Before the film, festival director Adam Lopez was very proud to announce that this was After Dark’s first ever completely sold out screening. We were also treated to Rod Gudino’s new short The Facts In The Case Of Mister Hollow, a fantastic art piece that overflowed with eerie detail that I can’t wait to watch again.

Twelve-year-old loner Oskar is a quiet kid, constantly bullied by the other kids at school. Then one night he meets Eli, a girl who just moved in next door and they strike up a friendship. Eli is strange. Oskar only sees her at night; she never wears a coat and says she is twelve “more or less”. He begins to suspect the impossible. Could she be a vampire?

I gotta say that I really liked Let The Right One In a LOT. I can see why people have warmed to this film on the festival circuit because it is something really special.

I’m so glad I stayed away from the trailer and just let the story unfold in front of me. Let The Right One In somehow manages to be unconventional and original, yet incredibly simple and dare I say, sweet. Like REALLY sweet. I think that’s what caught me off guard about this piece. It isn’t really a horror film at all. It’s more of a coming of age story between a boy and a “girl”… that just happens to be a vampire. The exchanges between the two leads (Kåre Hedebrant & Lina Leandersson) are an absolute joy to watch. And on the top of all that, the film is beautifully shot. There are numerous winter exteriors, yet the film has this warmth to it. It hits a few of the same notes as the dark fantasy works of Guillermo Del Toro, but somehow manages to stay even more grounded in reality. Everything about Let The Right One In just fits together so well, including a truly satisfying conclusion.

There is very little that I can find fault with. It is a very sedate film and a little slow in places, but that is easily forgivable considering the fresh ground on which it is treading. There was this odd sequence with CGI cats that seemed out of place, but other than that I can say this film had me one hundred percent.

It’s really difficult to describe a film like Let The Right One In. It’s not shocking or in-your-face, it hits you differently with a sincerity that I can’t believe has never been attempted like this before. It comes to the party with new ideas – including seeing what happens when you don’t invite a vampire in – which is a true rarity in this day and age.

Who Goes There?

For as long as there have been movies, there have been movie fans. They come in all shapes and sizes, some loving the medium as a whole and some honing in on a particular genre (I can relate). Then, there are those that focus almost all of their affection onto one single title. London, Ontario’s Todd Cameron falls into that last category. From an early age, he has been consumed with an undying appreciation for John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing. Over the past few decades, he has amassed an impressive collection of Thing memorabilia and even started an annual event in his hometown called Thing-Fest. This year (its eighth), he brought it to Toronto, with the help of Rue Morgue Magazine – who interviewed Cameron for their Thing 25th Anniversary issue last year – for a special screening at The Bloor.

I of course, couldn’t miss out on this. I am in complete agreement with Todd’s adoration of the film. It rightly deserves its place in The Fearsome Fifteen and it could be argued that The Thing is Carpenter’s greatest achievement. It also has the distinction – one that few of its eighties peers can attest to – of holding up beautifully. Rob Bottin’s legendary creature effects still leave me as awestruck as they did my nine-year-old self. The Bloor’s upstairs lobby was transformed into a makeshift museum as Cameron brought along some of his collection. Check it out.

As you can see, he's a big fan.

MC Dave Alexander asked for a show of hands from those who had yet to see The Thing and the number surprised me. I almost envy them. I’d love to be able to watch The Thing for the first time again. Rue Morgue had also lined up a special guest for the night’s proceedings – Thing cast member Thomas Waites, who played Windows. He stuck around after the screening for one of the best Q&A’s I’ve seen in a while. He was full of stories, including how he left a successful off-Broadway play with Al Pacino to shoot the film, the great camaraderie between the ensemble cast and the disappointment when the movie failed at the box office (mainly because E.T. came out that same year and the masses weren’t interested in aliens that weren’t cute and cuddly). Waites also had nothing but praise for John Carpenter, saying “He just always knew what he wanted."

Thomas Waites (Windows)

Having also been to the Bloor’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre event back in August, I could really get used to these special screening of classic films. It’s just so bone-chillingly awesome to be able to see these seminal works shown how they were originally intended. What a fantastic night!

V Is For...

Things are going to start getting nuts around here again. Toronto After Dark begins this Friday and I will be onhand to transcribe all the bloody goodness. The opening film - the Swedish vampire flick Let The Right One In - is one I have been waiting to see for many months now. To celebrate this bloodsucking opener, this week's Coverbox Wednesday is dedicated to the oldest and most profilic of all horror genres. Drink Up.

Quarantine

You know I’ve been raving about the Spanish flick [REC] for almost a year now, so what did I think of the American remake Quarantine?

A TV news reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) riding along with a group of firemen respond to a call at an old apartment complex. Once inside, they realize that they have walked into the middle of a zombie outbreak.

I’d say that, for the most part, Quarantine is a success. The original movie is followed very closely, with a few more bits added in here and there. This could have been to reach the Hollywood mandated ninety minutes, but since [REC] directors Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza penned Quarantine as well, I imagine these were things they wanted to do originally and couldn’t due to budget restraints. A few of these new pieces worked well and some didn’t. As for the original ‘spikes’, Quarantine handles them for the most part with the same level of raw excellence. Man, if it just wasn’t for that damn camerawork though.

Which brings me to Quarantine’s main weakness. Balagueró & Plaza’s precision during the original was almost surgical in what they showed you with the eyepiece, while still making it seem spontaneous. Their US counterpart John Erick Dowdle seemed to be doing his best ‘Paul Greengrass-on-speed’ impression and just wasn’t as skilled. I could grin and bear it because I knew the story backwards, forwards and upside down, but I imagine to a new viewer this will get frustrating. I think mass audiences’ appreciation of this technique peaked with Cloverfield, so Quarantine may be a little late to the party. I guess we’ll see when the numbers come in. All I know is that I’m weary of checking out Dowdle’s earlier work The Poughkeepsie Tapes if it’s all going to be like that. And I don’t know whose decision it was to speed up the camera during certain parts, but it was completely unnecessary and came off as amateurish.

As for Jennifer Carpenter, I thought she was great in this. She really went for it one hundred percent, breaking away from her crass persona we all know from TV’s Dexter. I think she must have been channelling Marilyn Burns for the third act - which is where Quarantine really hits its stride - as she becomes a hysterical mess. I can only imagine the amount of energy it took to keep that level up for multiple takes. There are tons more familiar faces in this movie, as well. Jay Hernandez (Hostel) and Johnathan Schaech (Doom Generation) appear as firemen and Dania Ramirez (Maya from Heroes) and Rade Serbedzija (Snatch’s Boris the Blade) play some of the building’s inhabitants. It also seems that Doug Jones (Hellboy, FF2) is now the go-to-guy anytime someone in the industry needs a thin man.

Looking at it from the perspective of the original – which I know is unfair, but considering the near flawless film I believe [REC] to be, it is unavoidable – I don’t feel that Quarantine is as intense or as raw as its predecessor, but if you are new to this little roller coaster of a project, you’ll likely enjoy the ride. I will never understand some of the marketing choices, but I think if audiences aren’t annoyed by the chaotic camerawork, Quarantine should do quite well.

Trapped In A Bad Movie

I remember seeing the cover for Steel Trap continually pop up on horror websites and thought it looked intriguing. Then I saw it being pushed at the Festival Of Fear, so I figured it had to be at least SOMEWHAT decent right? RIGHT?!

Six New Year’s Eve revellers are invited to a private party in an abandoned office building for a mysterious game. Their host is unknown, but when the guests start dying, it is clear they may not live to see the morning.

From the cover and synopsis, Steel Trap is advertised as Saw meets Cube. The problem is that it has neither the devilish moxie of the former or the dark production design of the latter. It is a movie of badly strung together ideas that were really not that great to begin with. Within minutes - even if I had ignored the painful opening party scene – I could tell Steel Trap was going to be horrendous… and not in a good way. We all know there are good bad movies out there. Take a stinker like Anchor Bay’s The Cook, for instance. It’s awful, but mildly entertaining in spite of this. And it had lesbians! Steel Trap is not good bad.

The must-miss event of the season!

Nevertheless, I thought I’d just wait it out until they got to the traps and then it might be okay. WRONG! You want to know why? Because there are NO FUCKING TRAPS! This movie is ninety minutes long and the closest thing to a trap is an elevator with tin foil teeth. It’s like walking into a peeler with no strippers in it. Like WTF?! And you know what’s worse? For something on the Dimension Extreme label, Steel Trap has a conspicuous lack of gore. When you put Steel Trap up against Inside, Broken and Diary Of The Dead, it reminds me of that old Sesame Street jingle ‘one of these things’. Maybe they thought no one would notice. Not fucking likely. And the dialogue… Oh, the dialogue. I couldn’t believe some of the shit that was coming out of people’s mouths.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Cooking a la Kane?”
“Do I LOOK like a fucking housewife?”
“No. You look like a fucking slut.”
“Oh, I am Wade. I am.”

Steel Trap is a failure on every level. The story is laughable, the ending ridiculous and the movie just doesn’t deliver on ANYTHING it promises. I was seriously fighting sleep towards the end. I haven’t kept up with the Saw franchise, but I’m sure even the upcoming fifth flick will be miles more entertaining than this dreck.

Olé!

Due to the lingering aftermath of the Toronto Fest and the upcoming After Dark, I completely forgot that Spain’s Sitges Festival is on right now. It has been going for fourty some years, which has to make it the longest running genre festival out there. Its line-up is always impressive, sporting all the finest titles from Fantasia and TIFF, as well as unleashing a crop of new offerings. Here's a whole bunch that caught my eye while sifting through their website. Click on the film titles for their full synopsis and trailer.

Transsiberian – Brad Anderson’s last two efforts (Session 9 & The Machinist) were nothing short of awesome, so I have high hopes for this little thriller starring Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer and Ben Kingsley.

The Hideout – Years ago, I saw this great Italian film called The House With The Windows That Laugh. It was wonderfully atmospheric and even though director Pupi Avati has made several films in the interim, The Hideout is the first time I’ve heard his name since. This movie has been compared to The Orphanage, so that is all I need to make note of it.

Fighter – Chocolate whet my appetite for more estrogen fuelled martial arts action, so I welcome this one with open arms.

Able – This is a German low budget virus film. I loves me a good plague.

Splinter – I just heard about this one recently when the poster was revealed. I’m always in the mood for a full-on gorefest.

Surveillance – Jennifer Lynch returns after the whole Boxing Helena debacle with her first film in fifteen years. I’m onboard with the premise, so hopefully she can deliver on it.

Ramírez – I was glad to hear this wasn’t another one of Ulli Lommel’s God-awful serial killer direct-to-DVD movies. This Spanish offering sounds like a fresh mix of a few different genres.

Hansel & Gretel – Killer kids are certainly coming back into style these days. This Korean spin on the old tale looks incredibly stylish.

Eden Lake – This one has been on my radar for a while. At first it just looked like your average High Tension clone, but this movie may have legs from what I've heard.

The Broken – This Lena Headey vehicle premiered at Sundance earlier this year and I’m still waiting for it to come to my neighbourhood.

Dorothy – What would a genre festival be without the French? This thriller set in Ireland about a psychiatrist with a very, very insane patient looks very intriguing.

Dead Space – I can’t wait to play the video game and the animated comic drawn by Ben “30 Days Of Night” Templesmith is bleeping great. Anything more to add to the canon of this moody universe is okay by me.

Dance Of The Dead – This is another one that has been on my radar for ages. When oh when will it come out?

The Objective – Daniel Myrick (the first half of the Blair Witch duo) returns with this thriller set in the Middle East. This just barely missed being at Toronto After Dark this year. Dang.

Seventh Moon – Eduardo Sanchez (the other half of the Blair Witch duo) goes back to what he does best – spirits and forests and, hopefully, scaring the bejesus out of us.

So, as you can see, there is no shortage of titles here. Sitges is next on my list of festivals to visit and hopefully that fleeting dream becomes a reality soon.

Are You Infected?

The US remake of the awesome Spanish film [REC] entitled Quarantine releases this Friday. Usually I wouldn't get excited about a rehash of something done perfectly the first time around, but this time I think lightning may strike twice. I thought about doing zombies for this installment of Coverbox Wednesday - that would have been infinitely easier - but I felt that was a bit obvious. Instead, I pulled out a few outbreak/infection movies. Hope to see you on the right side of the plastic curtain...

Maybe you can help a brother out with this last one because I can't remember the name of it for the life of me. It was a low budget horror movie I got from my store that I believe was from the early eighties. The hook is there is a virus that kills you when you fall asleep. I remember a scene at the end with a guy and a girl hiding away in this old cabin trying to keep each other awake. The guy finally does fall asleep and there's this cool (or at least I remember it being cool) stop-motion sequence where the guy's head pretty much melts away ala Evil Dead. Does ANYONE know the name of this movie?