Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world, starts here in Austin in just two days! Over the next several days, I’m previewing the movies I plan on seeing and blogging about over the course of the week long festival.
DAY SIX
Beto has his fair share of problems. He has oozing lesions all over his body, maggots infest his wounds and he must inject himself with embalming fluid just to keep moving. It’s no wonder he watches longingly as people exercise their able, undiseased bodies at the gym where he works a security guard. While they strive to improve their physical selves, it’s all Beto can do to maintain some sort of presence in his increasingly isolated world. When he quits his job because he’s unable to hide his accelerating sickness, his boss Luly takes a sudden interest in him. Though he’s embarrassed to do so, he allows her to penetrate his loneliness and grants himself one last glimpse of a life where his body hasn’t completely fallen apart.
Director Sebastian Hofmann’s feature film debut is a stunning mixture of grotesque banality and beautiful meditation on the disturbing loss of self that comes with death. Tropes tried and true are subverted in ways that repurpose the impact of familiar horror conventions so that they are both negated and intensified. Alluringly lethargic and containing scant dialogue, HALLEY traps viewers inside Beto’s grisly life (or afterlife, as it were), a challenging yet consistently compelling experience.
The power of the film lies as much in the impressive performance of Alberto Trujillo as it does with Hoffman’s unflinching camera. Without Trujillo, Beto wouldn’t draw the strong and sometimes confusing audience sympathies needed for the film to avoid becoming simply gross body horror. Fortunately for us, the elements combine to make HALLEY a truly unique, dramatic and downright disturbing entry in the Fantastic Fest lineup. (Brian Kelley)
Strap yourselves in, kids, because this is a crazy one. Having made a name for himself as the director of stuntman documentary ACTION BOYS, Jung Byung-gil returns with his first narrative feature and he seems determined to put every stuntman from his doc in some sort of grave mortal peril.
Detective Choi is a broken man, a tough guy cop whose lasting legacy is to be the one who almost captured a vicious serial killer ten years earlier. His failure left him physically and mentally scarred while the killer was left to walk free. He may have though that was as bad as it could get, but it’s about to get a whole lot worse thanks to a quirk of the Korean legal system which sets a statute of limitations on murder cases. And that time limit arrives with a shocking new bestseller on its heels – a book whose author claims to be the killer.
The book of course sparks a media frenzy, with Choi and the families of the dead left to watch impotently as the killer becomes a massive media darling. But the fact that the law can’t touch him doesn’t mean Choi and the others can’t …
CONFESSION OF MURDER is a gonzo exercise in excess, a film that pays only scant attention to plausibility and character development while choosing to instead leap from one seemingly un-toppable set piece to the next which, of course, immediately tops the one previous. Loaded with top notch action, the sort of heightened melodrama we’ve come to expect and love from Korea, and a handful of truly magnetic performances from its leads, CONFESSION OF MURDER is simply fabulous entertainment. (Todd Brown)
Hentai Kamen: Forbidden Super Hero
Aside from his unusual parentage, Kyosuke Shikijo is just like everybody else. Or at least he would like to be. He struggles to be accepted by his peers. He can’t seem to make an impression on the girl he likes. He is ordinary. Average. Nondescript, even. But then everything changes… Aiko, the object of Kyosuke’s desire, is taken hostage by robbers and he acts to save her. But when reaching for a mask to cover his identity, he mistakenly grabs a pair of used women’s panties and the odor triggers a strange reaction, the thirst for justice imparted by his father’s policeman genes mingling with the perversion of his mother’s dominatrix genes, transforming him into a new superhero. The Hentai Kamen (Pervert Mask) is born!
Writer-director Yuichi Fukuda (whose KID’S POLICE is also screening at the festival) tackles the popular cult manga with hilarious results, the scantily clad—and incredibly buff—hero subduing his opponents through a series of outlandishly sexualized wrestling poses that invariably end with his scrotum pressed against the villain’s face. Yes, it’s one joke that gets repeated a lot but it’s a DAMN FUNNY JOKE and Fukuda works it for everything its worth.
Leading man Ryohei Suzuki—who also stars in the big budget hero flick GATCHAMAN, thereby providing your moment of cognitive disconnect for the day—is utterly fearless and brings a surprising sense of gravity to the part. Kyosuke’s debilitating fear is that he might actually be normal, and his awkwardness around Aiko provides a sincere charm that elevates the film above its supremely trashy origins. A crowd pleaser that took the New York Asian Film Festival’s Audience Award, HK is not to be missed. (Todd Brown)
There’s a predator loose in Buenos Aires, a beautiful woman prowling the streets and subways of the city luring her all-too-willing victims with the promise of sex. Of course, her targets realize far too late that the climax of their encounter will not be happy at all. The trail of bodies she leaves behind threatens to lead the police to her door but the titular she-wolf is so lost in her fractured psyche that the threat to her own safety barely seems to register.
A blistering, punk rock take on the Euro-sleaze movies of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, rising director Tamae Garateguy puts a woman’s touch on her gritty black & white offering for a unique spin with this erotic thriller. Caught between the opposing forces of the cop who wants to bring her down and the young man she feels genuine emotion for – and therefore cannot kill – the unnamed killer is presented in all her fractured complexity by a trio of utterly fearless performers driven ever further by the fiercely talented Garateguy.
Though the director wears her influences on her sleeve, there’s something far richer and more complex going on here than the exploitation that the sleaze tag suggests. A restless experimental bent and the twisted psychology of her main character combine to create a rich and complex exploration of what fuels the urge to kill (and the consequences of those urges), and it all wraps up in one truly badass package. (Todd Brown)
Following the loss of his wife and young son, actor Siu-Ho Chin moves into a mysterious public housing tower. Despite the comfortable, self-contained nature of the facility (there’s a noodle shop, seamstress and monk on site), there’s something that doesn’t quite put Chin at ease. The residents all seem to be harboring some dark secrets from their past, like a pot that could boil over at any moment. When a lovelorn widow attempts an ancient ritual to resurrect her dead husband, all hell literally breaks loose. It’s not long before old vendettas are drudged up and ghosts, vampires and other various demonic spirits come into play.
Directed with surgical precision by pop star Juno Mak, RIGOR MORTIS pays homage to the classic ‘80s Hong Kong horror-comedy series MR. VAMPIRE. The film reunites some of the original cast members but offers a totally unique story. Meticulous art direction serves to build a creepy atmosphere, making the audience expect something new to be lurking around every corner. Though the film is at times comedic, it takes a rather serious approach to horror elements, exposing the darker side of Chinese mythology. Intriguingly enigmatic, surprisingly emotional and at turns beautiful and scary, Mak’s feature debut is a perfectly creepy little ghost story. (Michael Lerman)