Via Spooky Movie.
Sure, the Spooky Movie International Horror Festival may be the regions only horror film festival, but it’s been going strong for nine consecutive years for a reason: it’s a damn fun festival. From the schlocky to the truly, uh, spooky, the annual festival screens some of the best indie horror films from around the world, along with sometimes entertaining, sometimes silly amateur films. Not everything that screens at Spooky Movie will be your bag, but there’s diversity in the kind of horror they program. Quite simply, there’s something for everyone.
With more than 40 shorts and features programmed for this year’s festival, we screened a handful ahead the festival, which runs until October 18 at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Md. You can find out more about the festival, and to get tickets, here. And now, reviews!
Exists
Via Spooky Movie.
If you’re getting pretty sick of the found footage gimmick by now, you have two people blame: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, the directors of 1999’s landmark film The Blair Witch Project. The film was a catalyst for the found footage sub-genre, which has since beaten a dead horse to a bloody pulp by now. But what happens when one of those directors returns to the very sub-genre he helped spawn? Do we give him a pass? Sure.
On one hand, Exists, Sánchez’s Big Foot found footage film doesn’t really do much to revive the found footage sub-genre, but it is a masterfully crafted, sometimes terrifying found footage film. The plot, pulled from a hat of horror film cliches, revolves around a group of young twenty-somethings venturing to a remote cabin in the woods for a weekend of predictable debauchery. Of course, there’s something out in the woods, seemingly bent on ruining their weekend. Though riddled with predictable clichés, Sanchez effectively keeps the pace brisk right from the get go when the group accidentally hits some sort of creature that quickly gets away before they can get a good look. From there, the tension is immediately established and it doesn’t let up as the creature—Big Foot—stalks and picks them off, one by one. Exists doesn’t do much to revive your faith in found footage-style movies, but it certainly delivers on high-octane thrills and a few genuinely terrifying moments, which as all you can really ask for.
Screens tonight at 7:10 p.m., with a post-screening Q+A with director Eduardo Sanchez and writer Jamie Nash, moderated by director Jeff Krulik. Tickets here.
Call Girl of Cthulhu
Via Spooky Movie.
For anyone with any familiarity of the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft, you know that there’s hardly any humor injected into his writing. A majority of his short stories, novellas, and novels revolve around the myth of a fictional deity called “Cthulhu” and a mysterious, sinister cult that surrounds his existence. His writing is often visceral, terrifyingly descriptive, and punishingly sinister. And yet, a majority of Lovecraft-inspired films tend to lean toward a more tongue-in-cheek humorous tone. Films like Re-Animator, Castle Freak, and The Last Lovecraft and others rely on schlock to conjure up horrified laughs, rather than adhering to Lovecraft’s pitch-black sinister style. Of course, there are some faithful adaptions (John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, being one of them), but it still baffles me how Lovecraft’s adaptations have turned into a kind comical farce.
Enter Call Girl of Cthulhu, a schlocky, over-the-top horror-comedy about a young artist, Carter, who falls in love with a call girl, Riley, who happens to have a strange birthmark on her ass that attracts the attention of the members of a Cthulhu cult who believe she’s destined to be the bride of the dark, tentacled deity and bear his child. Here’s the thing: Call Girl of Cthulhu is a schlocky, admirable homage to outrageous horror films of the ’80s and ’90s, which makes it worth checking out. I just wished someone would step up and make a straight Lovecraft adaptation that’s as bleak and horrifying as his writing.
Screens tonight at 9:45 p.m. followed by a post-screening with filmmakers Chris LaMartina and Jimmy George. Tickets here.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Via Spooky Movie.
Alert: writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour’s beautifully shot, haunting A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is perhaps the best film (at least that i’ve seen) playing at this year’s Spooky Movie festival.
Set in a desolate, sparse Iranian ghost town, the broken, flawed residents are unaware that they’re quietly and meticulously being stalked by a mysterious, lonely vampire. Amirpour’s film, gorgeously shot in stark black-and-white favors a minimalist plot, instead relying on building a sense of mood and atmosphere. The nameless vampire (credited only as The Girl), quietly stalks her prey, but oozes a sense of loneliness and yearning throughout. A kind of spiritual companion to Jim Jarmusch’s melancholy vampire drama Only Lovers Left Alive, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the most innovative and striking film at this year’s fest.
Screens tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. Tickets here.
Suburban Gothic
Via Spooky Movie.
Director Richard Bates, Jr. brought his delightfully twisted Excision to Spooky Movie in 2012, and returns this year with a more light-hearted horror-comedy in Suburban Gothic. Starring a host of recognizable faces including star Matthew Gray Gubler, Kat Dennings, and Ray Wise, the film follows a well-rounded MBA grad, Raymond, who’s forced to move back home after he fails to find work in the city.
Of course, things get spooky for Raymond as some vengeful spirits begin terrorizing his small suburban town and he teams up with a spunky bartender (Dennings) to solve the mystery and save the town. Suburban Gothic is far lighter than Bates Jr.’s Excision—with a decidedly more teen-friendly vibe. This doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but instead gives it more of a slapstick-esque vibe, akin to old, harmless horror-comedies of the ’60s. It’s fluffy and enjoyable, but don’t expect to jump out of your seat.
Screens Saturday at 7:10 p.m. Tickets here.
The Babadook
Via Spooky Movie.
I didn’t watch The Babadook. After rave reviews from Sundance and other festivals, it’s easily my most anticipated horror film of the year. But, for some reason, IFC—the film’s distributor—is being tight about the film, so Spooky Movie is your only chance to see it until it opens theatrically in late November. This is me doing my best attempt to tell you to see a film I have not seen.
The Australian horror flick, written and directed by Jennifer Kent, has something to do with a widowed mother who is haunted by some sort of entity called “The Babadook” after a mysterious children’s book bearing the same name turns up on her doorstep. Slant Magazine writes that “tts horrors go beyond any single raggedy phantom, reaching back to the primordial fear of death and loss: of a child, of a loved one, of one’s own sense of self,” while Film.com called it a “an impressively chilling exercise in old-school restraint.” It’s pretty much gotten rave reviews across the board, so you should probably go see it. Also, this trailer. Jesus.
Screens Saturday at 9:45 p.m. Tickets here.
The Hills Have Eyes
Via Vanguard Films.
Each year, longtime local legend Count Gore de Val closes out the festival with a screening of a classic horror film. This year, he’s picked a real gem in Wes Craven’s 1977 classic The Hills Have Eyes
The film follows a family headed out West to California, only to be detoured when their RV breaks down in the Nevada desert. Unbeknownst to them, they’re being stalked by a clan of deformed cannibalistic mutants. Craven’s classic is an old school exercise in visceral, no-frills horror. If you haven’t seen it, here’s your chance to see it the way it was meant to be seen: on the big screen.
Screens Saturday, October 18 at 9:30 p.m. Tickets here.
