THE ONES YOU DIDN’T BURN - SOMETHING IN THE DIRT - SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS - THEY WAIT IN THE DARK - THE LEECH - DARK GLASSES - DEADSTREAM
FrightFest Day Three Reviews: THE ONES YOU DIDN’T BURN, SOMETHING IN THE DIRT, SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS, THEY WAIT IN THE DARK, DARK GLASSES and DEADSTREAM
BritFlicks' Stuart Wright looks at THE ONES YOU DIDN’T BURN, SOMETHING IN THE DIRT, SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS, THEY WAIT IN THE DARK, THE LEECH, DARK GLASSES and DEADSTREAM, from Day Three at Arrow Video FrightFest.
THE ONES YOU DIDN’T BURN
Written & directed by Elise Finnerty
Sister and brother, Mirra and Nathan, are very different. She’s the successful career woman in the city and he’s spent a lifetime battling addiction. When we first meet him he’s contemplating one year sober. They’re returning to the family farm by the coast after the suicide of their father. Mirra wants to sell up, split the money and get back to the exciting life she’s created for herself ASAP. Nathan is less decisive about what to do next, beyond fend off the enthusiastic party demands of Greg, a friend from his youth and the heavy come on of one of his father’s farm hands Alice. So far, so very USA mumblecore a la early Kelly Reichardt.
However, the tone begins to rapidly change when Alice, accompanied by tarot card reading Scarlett, turns her attentions to Mirra. Meanwhile fragile Nathan breaks his sobriety and gets blackout drunk with Greg. Mirra 360s on selling up. Seduced by the idea – planted by Alice - that generations before, women once owned this land, she now wants to keep the farm. Egged on by Greg’s wild theories, Nathan suspects his father’s death wasn’t suicide, but his reasoning to Mirra appears to be the ramblings of the fallen addict she knows all too well.
He’s not bothered by the money or the farm, he just wants to leave, haunted by visions of a woman coming of the sea. The conspiracy to kill his father seems cut and dry to Nathan as he goes madder and madder, gets drunker and drunker, angrier and angrier. THE ONES YOU DIDN’T BURN is a low-key horror that builds to a very satisfying crescendo. Once the motives of Alice and her fellow female farmhands become clear, there’s no escaping their murderous charms and greater goal. Or is it all in Nathan’s paranoid head? There’s a huge clue in the film’s title. This is ancestral revenge, but 400 years in the making.
SOMETHING IN THE DIRT
Written by Justin Benson
Directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
Co-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are the imaginative minds behind such genre bending films as SPRING (2014) and THE ENDLESS (2018). SOMETHING IN THE DIRT is equally as bold and visionary. Set in a scummy, Laurel Canyon apartment block, right under the LAX flight path, it focuses on two men: Levi Danube (Benson) and John Daniels (Moorhead). Levi just moved in, three hours earlier. His unfurnished apartment has been inexplicably vacant for at least a decade (which is the length of time John has lived here). When they first meet Levi carries a misshapen, crystal, ashtray looking object in his hand from the apartment. This innocuous looking object will soon become the keystone to their peculiar friendship and the existential adventure they embark on. John gives Levi some furniture that his ex-left behind and while helping him move it in, the crystal levitates off the window sill and refracts light, creating a presence in the room that captivates them both so much these two relative strangers decide to make a documentary about it.
John is the controlling one of the creative partnership and Levi is the clumsy, oafish one. Just setting up a phone camera on a tripod turns into the most arduous task for him. Once they find their flow, they begin seeing patterns and linkages that seem to explain what is in the apartment. These lead them down several mind-scrambling rabbit holes about how the street system of LA was designed, the influence of the Pythagorean Brotherhood on society today and the importance of the number and year 1908. It’s crazy thinking on top of obtuse subject matter, but the intensity or John and Levi’s search for answers, coupled with the supernatural happening/presence in Levi’s apartment, mean they never quite fully understand what is going. All the while their friendship grows and then is pulled apart. Somehow a fun exercise for two men with too much time on their hands turns into something toxic and damaging, as mistrust and deceit enter the process. In some ways it has the mania of Perry Blackshear’s two hander - THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE (2015).
Like THE ENDLESS, SOMETHING IN THE DIRT is light on exposition, but heavy on the cerebral work you have to do as the audience. It's almost like you’re being asked to solve the supernatural mystery of the apartment with them at times. Consequently, it’s an intense watch, bolstered by Benson and Moorhead’s masterful performances and rarely static camerawork. The film features some of their filmmaker friends in a few of the minor roles: THE BLACK PHONE writer C Robert Cargill is a radio host, award-winning Kenyan-American director Wanjiru Njendu is Levi’s Parole Officer, star of EVERYBODY DIES BY THE END, Vinny Curran makes a brief appearance and whole bunch of others too. Reaffirmed in the end credits that say: “This is film is dedicated to making movies with your buddies.”
There’s a naturalistic, working things out as they go sense to John and Levi’s dialogue, but it never comes across as anything less than considered. The ideas discussed are far too exacting and specific to be improvised. John is deeply religious, in an apocalyptical sense. He is sure what they’re doing has meaning. Whereas Levi is a loser just trying to find any sort of meaning from a tragic life that, and there’s always reasons to doubt this story teller, is marred by the suicide of his sister, almost six years in a mental health facility and the early death of his parents.
The action occasionally flashes forward to the traditional talking heads documentary they went on to make, plus they use archive footage of John and Levi as kids, as the time and space of the drama you’ve been watching fractures. Especially once they introduce the notion of John and Levi recreating what they witnessed for the documentary. What are we watching now? The drama or a recreational? Not always obvious, but no less compelling as a result. The finale is powerfully sad, and like Icarus flew too close to the sun, Levi – literally - flies too close to the moon. It’s a big and bold end to SOMETHING IN THE DIRT and John satisfies himself that Levi is with God now and died having given his mundane life some purpose, but for John, he’s not done searching.
SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS
Co-written by Erik Bloomquist & Carson Bloomquist
Directed by Erik Bloomquist
It’s the 1980s and Camp Briarbrook is winding down for the summer. The final stage performance is complete. The last of the children are packed to leave and the counsellors are excited to enjoy their night of letting their hair down. Gilbert McCallister (SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION’s William Sadler,) has owned the campsite for 40+ years and his daughter Heather (Cara Buono, Mrs Wheeler in STRANGER THINGS) helps him run it. Her two grown up sons are also involved but lovestruck Peter (Spencer List) the youngest McCallister brother is more trouble than he’s worth at times and all the other counsellors know, were he not family, he’d be in trouble for how he behaves. Early doors it seems like nice guy Danny (played by the director Erik Bloomquist) is finally going to get up the courage to ask Kellie out, but before that humiliating experience can happen, Peter leads the counsellors in a Bloody Mary type ceremony to awaken the restless of spirit of Nurse Agatha – a former camp nurse who is said to haunt the woods that surround Briarbrook.
Suffice to say it works, but while you’re waiting for it take full effect, nice guy Danny reveals himself to be a damaged, toxic man when he bludgeons Kellie to death for rejecting him. Experienced counsellor Mike steps in and in the panic and horror of the moment stabs Danny to death. It’s a pivotal moment for the film as it introduces panic and confusion to this once quiet idyll in the woods. When Officer Matthews turns up, he’s not angry about the two deaths, he’s inexplicably furious that Peter would call on Nurse Agatha. This moment subverts all expectations again and reveals to Peter that his life growing up on the camp with scary ghost stories about Agatha were true all along.
SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS continues to play with your expectations from hereon in. Vulnerable children lost in the corn fields unable to get home become possessed by Agatha and turn on the counsellors in a horrific fashion over and over as pressure mounts on Gilbert and Heather to tell the real truth so that they might be able work out how to stop the supernatural force that is picking them off one by one. Producer Adam Weppler, with the Kiefer Sutherland LOST BOYS mullet, is the horny, but sleazy counsellor, Dylan. His performance is entertaining in the way that he flip flops over whatever girl is nearest to him and then is equally all about the self when it comes to saving his own bacon. The rules of these type of horror films means that death is punishment – gasoline fire at the hands of precocious kid Dennis (Coulter Ibanez) who is as evil, once possessed, as he was needy at the start. The humour, given the body count, is dark and twisted, but there’s a brightness of tone that avoids the high death count ever feeling too grim. This is not a film to be taken too seriously. It’s GREMLINS/THE GOONIES levels of scares with a lot more gore and violence to bump it up to an R rating.
THEY WAIT IN THE DARK
Written by Sarah McGuire, Chris Bylsma and Meagan Flynn
Directed by Patrick Rea
Amy (Sarah McGuire) and her adopted ten-year-old son Adrian return to her abandoned, run-down family home. On the way there she gets much needed help from a waitress in a diner – Amy’s best friend from High School, Jenny. The house brings back scary memories of child abuse. Images of young Amy looking down on her dead mother, throat slashed are repeated in the first half of the film. These old demons are the least of her problems. Her partner Judith (Laurie Catherine Winkel) is tracking her down to get Adrian back.
Judith’s introduction is a powerful scene and tells you everything you need to know about this no nonsense, kick ass woman. A trucker cat calls her and she taxes him with the aid of her trusty, military grade folding knife. Amy seems vulnerable and Judith – the villain of the peace - appears to be closing in fast. Adrian adds to Amy’s woes when he begins witnessing supernatural phenomenon. She assumes it’s the ghosts of her memories, until it becomes obvious it is ignoring Adrian and singling her out for punishment, but for what?
That would be a huge spoiler. It’s enough to conclude that THEY WAIT IN THE DARK starts off like a social-realist drama, takes you down a supernatural blind alley or two while giving off noir thriller vibes once the true nature of Amy, Judith and Adrian’s relationship (and the identity of the ghostly apparition in the house) is revealed. Let’s just say that Adrian is going to need a lot of therapy to work his head around his three mummy issues that are going to traumatise him for the rest of this life.
THE LEECH
Written & directed by Eric Pennycoff
THE LEECH is no creature feature a la Juan Piquer Simón’s SLUGS. Eric Pennycoff’s second feature is in reference to the pejorative meaning of the word – “a person who clings to another for personal gain, especially without giving anything in return, and usually with the implication or effect of exhausting the other's resources; parasite”. For his sophomore movie Pennycoff has cast both Jeremy Gardner (as Terry) and Taylor Zaudtke (as Lexi) from his debut feature SADISTIC INTENTIONS (2018) and pairs them with SEQUENCE BREAK’s Graham Skipper (as Father David).
Father David is a priest without a flock but his faith is strong and he has a heart of gold. Hedonistic, but homeless arseholes Terry and Lexi take advantage of his good nature and make his home, their home too. What starts out as a tale about giving people second chances soon begins a test of faith like a house share equivalent of the Book of Job. Where God smited Job in many extreme ways, Terry and Lexi simply taunt Father David with loud heavy metal, and tempt him with booze, drugs and sex. The experience wears down the priest’s love for all God’s children and makes him a guest in his own home.
Gardner is fantastic as the relentless, brazen waster who, like a toddler, constantly brushes up against – and often crosses - the boundaries of what’s acceptable to Father David and what is not. Eventually, pushed too far, and fuelled by paranoid fears that his life as a priest stands for nothing, Father David drops his kind pretence and goes all out Old Testament on the unwanted houseguests. Doubt in God is natural, but it would seem from THE LEECH that once you fear God, you’re compelled to prove yourself in very extreme ways. Father David, shame on you.
DARK GLASSES
Directed by Dario Argento
Written by Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini
DARK GLASSES introduces the beautiful Diane (Ilenia Pastorelli) during a solar eclipse. Everyone is out in the streets looking up at the skies. She’s a high-end call girl, just like the anonymous woman we see leaving a hotel. She doesn’t make it very far before the giallo stalwart of the mysterious killer in leather gloves pounces to garrote her in broad daylight. Not for the last time in the movie Argento’s camera lingers on the neck as it is destroyed. All the police have to go on is the colour of the van he drove off in. Cut to the killer spraying the van a new colour.
Diane is soon the next potential victim but she makes it to her car in time and drives off. However, the determined killer pursues her in his van until she crashes into oncoming traffic, killing the parents of seven-year-old Chin and blinding herself in the process. For reasons unknown, at this stage, the killer turns all his attention onto finishing off Diane. Meanwhile Diane befriends Chin out of guilt for killing his parents and together he can be her eyes as the killer closes in. The narrative logic gets a little lost in the reeds once it all becomes about Diane. The police are continually inept, which is pretty handy for a killer so out in the open – and yet we don’t see his face, or have we?
The lurid, bloody kills will not disappoint Argento fans who’ve come for the claret. A dog chewing on neck ligaments and sinewy is a particularly uncomfortable and visceral death. These violent moments are when DARK GLASSES is at its best. As is Arnaud Robotini’s Carpenteresque synth score. Argento’s use of daylight is alive with warm yellows and bright sunshine. It’s a nice juxtaposition to the blind lead’s perpetual darkness. It is the thriller side of DARK GLASSES that weakens the movie. It lacks any real tension or all out crazy you might expect from a modern giallo. Although a sudden attack of water snakes isn’t something most audiences will anticipate. The killer out to get you storyline seems pretty meat and potatoes, even for a giallo, and when the identity and reason is revealed it’s all a little too neat and tidy; and disappointing given you’ve probably seen it coming for most of the movie.
DEADSTREAM
Written & directed by Joseph Winter & Vanessa Winter
DEADSTREAM is a nervous wreck of the film. Such is the accuracy of Joseph & Vanessa Winter’s attempt to capture the relentless energy surge of a fallen Youtuber doing everything he can to win his audience back (and more importantly, monetise his content). Shaun Ruddy played by co-writer/director Joseph Winter is facing up to one true fear – ghosts. The opening montage efficiently and effectively brings you up to speed with the crassness of some of Shaun’s dumb/daring stunts in pursuit of eyeballs. From inciting police to chase him to floating through river rapids in a dinghy like Moses in a basket. It’s clear that there’s nothing he won’t try.
Now he’s desperate enough to go into a haunted house. Legend has it a woman called Mildred Pratt hung herself and now haunts the place. His set up is state of the art – GoPro for his POV and one looking at his face for all the reaction shots – and an iPad with windows to the many other GoPro’s he has set up in each room. The very nature of a streamers participative role of taking the audience into the heart of the action takes the notion of found footage horror to the next level.
If PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2007) is staring at a screen unnerved and waiting for a jump scare, DEADSTREAM goes off road to try and meets the scare head on. In some ways the Winters have made a film that combines the tropes of found footage with the kinetic energy of Sam Raimi’s THE EVIL DEAD (1981). Much of this is down to Joseph’s heart attack of a performance. He’s brilliant both in terms of how he responds to the scares and the way he interacts with, and includes the online audience. It’s a lot to juggle for the actor. The benefit for the viewer is that you yourself feel like you’ve tuned into the livestream.
Naturally he comes face to face with Mildred but not how you’d imagine. The Winters never forget they’re making a horror movie out of live streaming, not live streaming as an artifice to cheaply shoot a horror film. Practical and CGI effects for the creatures/ghosts keep the supernatural landscape lively. Again THE EVIL DEAD feels like a strong influence on these elements and in the levity that punctuates the periods between scares. DEADSTREAM is a smart, funny horror that has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing where it is going to take Shaun Ruddy next. It’s probably hell.
