Art by Chris Bilheimer
It’s that time again for my sojourn to Fantastic Fest, the annual Alamo Drafthouse week long love letter to horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. This year’s festival runs from Sept 24-October 1, here in Austin at the South Lamar location.
As in year’s past, I begin my coverage with a multi-part/day preview.
Fantastic Fest Preview Day Eight
Evolution
Life probably began in the sea. Billions of years ago, amino acids joined together in the primordial soup to form the first simple microbes that evolved over the eons into the complex organisms that now dominate this world. Because of this, we’re frequently drawn to use the sea in film as a metaphor of life. Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s newest film, EVOLUTION, takes our longing of the sea and shows its beauty; even lingers on how wonderfully alien it can be. Life probably began in the sea, but it’s still unknown and deadly to us, as life can certainly also end in the sea.
Like her 2004 film INNOCENCE, Hadzihalilovic’s narrative here is an examination of gender and morality that uses children as its main characters. With EVOLUTION, Hadzihalilovic introduces us to Nicholas, a pre-teen boy who lives on a small Mediterranean island populated only by young boys and women. Nicholas takes medicine for a mysterious illness that forces him to visit the local hospital. Whatever is wrong with him, it’s bad enough that he needs emergency surgery and is then quarantined to round-the-clock care. He’s never told what’s wrong with him or the other boys, but he resists what’s happening to him and holds onto a memory of a world outside his captivity.
Framed by lush cinematography, Hadzihalilovic’s vision plays out like a bastard child of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Layer in a Lovecraftian fascination with the mysteries of the ocean, and you have one of the weirdest, most beautiful and enduring experiences of this year’s fest. (James Shapiro)
Darling
In DARLING, a young woman takes a seemingly simple job as the caretaker for an enormous, historic New York estate. In fact, as she’s picking up the keys, the woman who hired her mentions that it’s the oldest house in New York. And with that age comes several stories, including odd rumors about the former caretaker. When the young woman asks what happened, the owner begrudgingly admits that he committed suicide, but they don’t know why and “it’s nothing to worry about. Nothing like that could ever happen again.” With that, she is out the door, leaving the replacement with a check and the first pangs of anxiety about her latest career move. But with no other choice, she resigns herself to her decision, and starts to get to know the place. She discovers an odd necklace with an upside down cross as well as a single locked door at the end of a short hallway. Both are strangely ominous, just like the odd noises she hears at night. When she finds herself frightened by an innocuous encounter with a man on the street, she starts to spiral out of control.
Mickey Keating returns to Austin hot on the heels of the SXSW premiere of his film POD. Filmed in black and white with disorienting sequences of fast edits, DARLING feels nightmarish with a thick atmosphere of fear and apprehension that calls to mind elements of REPULSION. Lauren Ashley Carter, who fans will recognize from JUG FACE as well as POD, stars as the main character and perfectly depicts the descent into madness. Punctuated by heightened sound effects and a score that’s constantly evolving to drive the tension, DARLING is a dark, unsettling experience filled with dread and the constant threat of impending doom. (Luke Mullen)
Camino
Zoe Bell – best known for her long running collaborations with Quentin Tarantino – is Avery Taggert, an acclaimed photojournalist looking to put some distance between herself and her own dark history when she takes a job in the remote jungles of Colombia. Her subject? A religious group – led by TIMECRIMES helmer Nacho Vigalondo – with their own hidden agenda. It should be a fairly straightforward job, but when Taggert snaps a photo of something she wasn’t meant to see, things go very dark very quickly and she ends up running for her life through the hostile jungle.
Director Josh Waller reunites with his RAZE leading lady for an adrenaline-pumping action adventure through hostile territory, packed with familiar faces including festival mainstays Vigalondo and Francisco Barriero (HERE COMES THE DEVIL; WE ARE WHAT WE ARE). Waller’s no-nonsense style delivers a lean, to-the-bone approach, with Bell proving once again – as though she’s got anything left to prove at this stage – that her physical skill and fearlessness is matched by an on-screen charisma that should have thrust her into the spotlight long before now. And Vigalondo? When someone gave the manic Spaniard license to chew a bit of scenery as a charismatic villain, any festival regulars should have no problem figuring out what will be the result. For the uninitiated, the answer is big time fun.
Though he has built a name for himself as part of the Spectrevision producing team, Waller has also been careful to maintain an individual identity separate from his COOTIES and A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT cohorts. With this, his third directing effort, Waller reinforces his own taste for no-nonsense action, balancing out late ‘70s antiheroes and character work with mid-‘80s Corman style pulp. CAMINO falls roughly at the midpoint on the spectrum between his earlier efforts – RAZE and the Toronto-selected McCANICK – and reminds us that while he may be part of a very gifted team, Waller is also a solo force to reckon with. (Todd Brown)
Southbound
Five groups of weary travellers will discover the reality behind their innermost fears while traveling on a long, lonely stretch of desert highway. There’s two men on the run from something which neither of them can explain, a girl band stranded with some car trouble, a family man who’s involved in an accident, a brother coming to the end of his search for his long-lost sister, and a family en-route to a holiday house for one final trip together before their daughter leaves for school. All are different and yet connected, and by the end of the trip, all will understand the cruel, uncaring nature of a universe which plays havoc with its inhabitants’ lives.
Owing as much to classic TWILIGHT ZONE episodes as the recent outpouring of anthology films, SOUTHBOUND plays meaner, leaner and more frightening than most of its counterparts. Rather than relying on simple jolts and twists to deliver the thrills, the film sets itself up in the long game; as each story reveals yet a little more of the overall world, the frightening whole becomes clearer.
Particular attention can be paid to David Bruckner’s segment in which a man’s involvement in a car accident and his honest desire to help will throw him into a gruesome road of chaos. Both cringe-inducing and containing one of the meanest codas in a long time, this segment exemplifies the quality of filmmaking prominent throughout the film.
SOUTHBOUND is an anthology with all the fat cut off. It’s a lean, mean wonder ride into the dark corners of a vicious universe and will be sure to delight any audience member brave enough to thumb a ride in its dark cars. (Evrim Ersoy)