Want to know what I knew about Coherence going into it? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I knew it was a movie. I guess I had also read a little blurb about it to know it at least sounded interesting. Expect a lot of shit like this from the festival, guys. Just me saying, “YO I DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS WAS BUT I WATCHED IT.” Ever the consummate professional, Wolfman! Anyways, this movie was more science fiction than straight up horror, but I think that once you read my synopsis, you could see why I’d be interested in checking it out. So how about you do that, huh? Fucking read it, dummy.

I’d like to see a sci-fi movie with alternate Earths featuring Emily Foxler and Britt Marling (and I’m in it, too, as the hero they have to kiss).

On the night that a comet is passing by Earth, a group of friends all decide to have dinner together in the off-chance that if anything strange happens, they can all experience it together. Strange things do start happening, but not really anything that’s cause for alarm. It starts with cell phone screens breaking and the power going out, but while trying to assess what’s really going on, things start getting really strange. There start being knocks on the door and no one there, and when one person goes outside to the only house on the block that has power, he swears that when he looks inside, he sees everyone who was at the dinner party. Wait, what? Two theories start forming amongst the friends, with the more “rational” explanation being that, similar to other astronomical events, the comet is having a strange effect on everyone’s minds and there’s a paranoia-driven group hallucination. The other theory is that the comet has caused these friends to enter into a Schrödinger’s cat type of quantum physics paradox where this group of friends is now co-existing with their doppelgängers and once the comet passes, there will only be one group of friends. Okay, I guess that’s kind of a leap in logic but I guess with all the weird shit going on, it’s plausible. The film then follows these friends trying to figure out who is who, what is what, where and when they exist, and how the fuck to react to the idea that they’ve entered some sort of parallel universe with infinite versions of themselves. Fucking trippy, man.

EVERYONE LOOK SERIOUS, THIS IS IMPORTANT PROBABLY.

It only took about 5 minutes of watching this movie for me to get super, SUPER into the concept. One of my favorite “sci fi” movies of the last few years was Melancholia, so even though this film wasn’t quite as surreal or apocalyptic as that one, I was instantly engaged in the concept of relatively normal events and conversations taking place at the same time as an incredibly strange event. The conversations might not have been all that interesting or dialogue all that snappy, but the weight of the situation these friends were in made me much more tense. Once the stranger events started happening, the film got a little too complicated for its own good. This isn’t to say that I felt dumb watching it, or at least no dumber than I normally feel, but the editing in some sequences made things a little confusing. I don’t think this is too spoilery, but if you’re scared, don’t read this, but there started being confusion with friends not knowing which house they were in and which group of friends they had actually spent the night with? For example, one group of friends had red glowsticks and they found themselves in a house where everyone was exactly the same but with blue glowsticks. Did that make sense? It makes slightly more sense in the movie that all these people are just fucking wandering all over the place and no one knows who they really are or where they really came from. I appreciated the details put into all the complications and doppelgänger shit, but it was pretty difficult to grasp at times. Remember Primer? It was kind of like that, except possibly more confusing. I was willing to tolerate all the things that had kind of confused me, but the end result ended up being a little disappointing after this whole world had been established. Even though the movie got a little too confusing and I might not have felt the conclusion lived up to what the film was trying to establish, there was one character who described their situation as being similar to the movie Sliding Doors and also at one point a character saw his wife and said, “MY WIFE!” like Borat so that’s cool with me.

Wolfman Moon Scale

Official Site
IMDb

No guys, not literally. I am down here at Fantastic Fest and you might be wondering where all the goddamn reviews are, and I figured I’d let you know my computer killed itself. BUT WOLFMAN, HOW COULD YOU POST THIS IS YOUR COMPUTER DIED!? Well, shut up a second. A very kind soul allowed this maniac to borrow their computer in order to get some work done. Since I don’t want to waste time finding stupid ass pictures for my own site, I’m going to be posting reviews over at Bloody Disgusting, so keep your eyes on that site for updates. And, uhhh, fuck yeah. Movies. Lots of high fives. Follow my tweets.

Guys. GUYS. I’M ALIVE. I’M A-FUCKING-LIVE. Sadly, my computer is not. It is still dead. Dead as shit. It’s being fixed right now but hopefully I can get it up and running and post reviews from Fantastic Fest. Here are some of the things that I accomplished at this year’s festival:

• Wore denim a lot
• Saw 20 movies in theaters
• Saw 1 movie on festival founder Tim League’s front lawn while eating Indian food
• Found some denim twins
• Ate a lot of smash burger
• Didn’t like Eli Roth’s cannibal movie
• Ate a lot of carnivore pizzas at the Drafthouse, along with milkshakes and warm chocolate chip cookies
• Lifted Pat Healy on to a stage
• High-fived a lot of people
• Walked up to people I know from the internet, greeted them with “What’s up mother fucker?!”, got confused looks, told them I was the Wolfman and quickly dissolved the tension
• Had some righteous BBQ (but not as much as I could have)
• Sang some Black Flag at live band karaoke
• Saw Bill and Ted standing in a boxing ring at the same time
• Went on a tour of Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios, allowing me to touch a stage that Jessica Alba danced on
• I don’t know, probably some other shit that I can’t really remember right now

In the meantime, check out the reviews that I wrote on a borrowed computer for Bloody Disgusting. These are only five reviews of the 20 movies I saw in theaters, and I saw a bunch more, so just keep your eyes peeled. If you are impatient, you can always check out my Twitter and Instagram for whatever crazy shenanigans I am up to.

We Are What We Are

Afflicted

Almost Human

The Sacrament

The Green Inferno

“Hey, Wolfman, didn’t Fantastic Fest end three weeks ago?” SHUT THE FUCK UP, PERSON WHO WOULD ASK ME THAT QUESTION. As you might have recently read in another blog post, I’ve been without a computer for a few weeks and fell behind on reviews. Also, since I’ve been running a horror movie trivia night once a week, a lot of the computer time I did get was spent figuring out trivia. Since that’s winding down and now I have more computer time, that means you guys get to read my thoughts on movies that you already read everyone else’s thoughts on three weeks ago! Yay! Another little thing I should mention is that with all of the Fantastic Fest reviews I’m going to be posting over the next, well, however long it takes me to catch up, I’m going to try to get right to the meat of the review. Since I normally introduce a film with a hilarious personal anecdote or thoughts I had about a movie going into it, most of the reasons behind going to see these movies were “I was at a film festival and this was a film I knew little about and just gave it a shot.” That being said, festival buzz around Grand Piano was pretty strong, even people going as far as to say it was their favorite film of the festival, I figured it was worth 90 minutes of my time. And suffice it to say, it was! I might have even been worth 95 minutes of my time!

Just pretend like they’re all in their underwear! And masturbating.

After spending five years in retirement, pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) is playing a special performance in honor of his former teacher. Considering his retirement was due to a mistake he made while trying to play a very complicated song has given him a sort of post traumatic stress disorder, Tom isn’t really excited about this concert. Instead, he’s doing it more out of obligation, as he’ll be performing on the very piano that he was taught on. Through his wife’s encouragement, Tom overcomes his trepidation to take the stage, but when he starts getting through the sheet music, he sees a scribbled note that says if he misses a single note, then he’ll be killed. Even though he thinks someone is playing a practical joke on him, Tom realizes that these aren’t idle threats, as during one of his breaks, he finds an earpiece in his dressing room that allows him to communicate with the person behind the whole thing. It’s then up to Tom to figure out who could be doing this, worry for the safety of his wife in the audience, and more importantly, make sure that he hits every single note.

Sorry guys, but this is probably what 75% of the shots in the movie look like.

Yes, that plot does sound pretty silly. You’re right, it is. It feels like some sort of cross between Phone Booth and Speed, and the film is fully aware of itself and how absurd this scenario is. The performances and direction are all somewhat tongue in cheek, but rather than coming across as mocking the audience, it feels like a throwback to old Hitchcock thrillers. I know it might sound blasphemous to compare any contemporary movie to Hitchcock, but seriously, The Birds? It’s about killer birds. Rear Window? A creepy pervert with a camera. These films are obviously classics, but I don’t think you could make those movies these days without it ending up being mocked. I mean, seriously, remember Disturbia? Exactly. Once the audience accepts the conceit of Grand Piano, director Eugenio Mira manages to keep you involved and engaged in a movie where almost every scene is just a guy sitting at a piano. Despite the small scale of the film, Mira still managed to use that to his advantage in sequences where he could focus on Tom’s shallow perspective to play around with lights and scenery around him. The reveal of why all of this is happening is just as goofy and the climactic “battle” at the end of the film tests your patience for the films goofiness, but those are minor issues. Once you accept what this film is and what it’s trying to accomplish, it’s a fun ride and enjoyable to see people paying homage to some classic thrillers and do so without winking at the audience the entire time.

Wolfman Moon Scale

Official Site
IMDb

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• Fantastic Fest 2013: Nordling Reviews GRAND PIANO!

No guys, this is NOT the John Hodgman comedy special about jokes, no matter how many times you ask me. Yes, the word “ragnarok” is pretty badass, but multiple people can use it for their movie! Instead, the “Ragnarok” that I’ll be talking about is a Norwegian film that I went to see because the description involved both Vikings and H.P. Lovecraft. Vikings and Lovecraft? BOTH OF THOSE THINGS ARE AWESOME. Why wouldn’t I check it out?! Oh yeah, even though it wasn’t listed in the film’s description, there were a lot of beards in the movie. Makes sense with all those Norwegians talking about Vikings. Having gone into the film relatively blind, it ended up being one of my favorite movies of the whole festival. Not a perfect film or anything, but really accomplishes what it sets out to achieve.

Those Vikings sure knew how to make some cool-ass boats.

As a museum curator, Sigurd Svendsen (Pål Sverre Hagen) doesn’t get as much time as he wishes to spend on two of his favorite things: his family and proving that the Vikings traveled further than history has so far led everyone to believe. Despite putting his job in jeopardy, Sigurd has a stroke of good luck when a friend turns up with a rune that could be the clue to Sigurd proving what he’s felt all along. Knowing he must investigate the evidence, Sigurd goes on an expedition to follow this lead, and with his wife having passed away from cancer, is left with no choice but to bring his children with him. While tracking the necessary leads to prove where the Vikings really did travel, Sigurd eventually finds what he was looking for in a cave full of Viking weapons and armor. Unfortunately, Sigurd realizes that this cave serves as a tomb to fallen Vikings and after spending too much time there, he learns what it was that killed them all. Sigurd and his family must find a way to get out of there with their lives intact, and hope to change history in the process.

What’s that you’ve got there? Is that…a…a Ragnarok? Is that what those are?

What a bunch of fun! I can’t really think of a better way to describe this movie than “fun”. The first half of the film plays out like an Indiana Jones film, with Sigurd tracking down clues, exploring the wilderness, double-crosses, and at least a little bit of real-life history. The second half plays out more like Jurassic Park, with a group trying to escape a huge monster and the constant near-misses, close calls and improvised escape tactics. As soon as the movie was over, I wanted to go out and buy a battle axe and smash things while pretending I was a Viking. For a somewhat low-budget film, the CGI was pretty decent and the landscape was gorgeous, and the whole cast was solid. I had no idea who Pål Sverre Hagen, and even though I just had to copy/paste that name again because there’s no way I’ll remember it, he made a great leading family man type and his kids in the movie were also quite good.

Watch out! Behind you! It must certainly be a Ragnarok!

The biggest strength of the film would have to be that it was Norwegian. Maybe not that it was Norwegian, but that it was definitely un-American. Not that it was anti-American, but–okay, let me clear this up. For all intents and purposes, I’m just going to call this a family adventure film. When we get these movies released in America, it’s bullshit like Journey to the Center of the Earth or Spy Kids or…Jesus, they don’t release many family friendly adventure films these days, do they? Points is, when you’re an adult and you see the trailers for one of those movies, you grown about all of the fart jokes JUST IN THE TRAILER, or the fact that there’s going to be some sarcastic humor in there. The beauty of Ragnarok, and I’m assuming partly because it’s coming from a different country, is that the film is completely devoid of that sarcasm or cynicism. Maybe it’s because family adventure films aren’t a genre that’s been exploited in Norway the way it’s been exploited here, or maybe because the filmmakers didn’t want to cheapen their film by winking at the audience, but whatever it is, it didn’t go unnoticed and definitely went appreciated. Yeah, sure Ragnarok is a family adventure film, but it’s one that’s super fun, sincere, and explores some myths unfamiliar to the American audience.

Wolfman Moon Scale

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• Quint saw five great movies at Fantastic Fest today!

How’s that for a long-ass post title? I was recently cleaning out my bag from Fantastic Fest and saw all those slips of paper you needed to get into the movies. I realized that in one day, I saw Afflicted, Ragnarok, A Field in England, and The Sacrament, which were all films that I enjoyed for lots of different reasons. As if all of those movies weren’t fun enough, I wrapped up my evening with an 11:45 showing of Witching & Bitching. And guys? HOLY FUCK. If there was one movie that could give me enough insane energy after being in movie theaters for 14+ hours, it was Witching & Bitching. All I really knew about it was that it would involve witches, to some extent, and that some of my friends there were really excited for it. Friends? Witches? BITCHES? I’m so fucking in! However, trying to recap the insanity of this film might lead me off the rails, so I apologize if I get any (all) of the plot points confused.

I’m not the only one with a boner, am I?

What appear to be just a group of weird street performers break character to rob a pawn shop. Granted, some of the street performers are ACTUAL performers, like some guy dressed as the invisible man and I think maybe a guy is dressed as a banana or something, but it’s a fantastically hilarious segment of street performers running wyld. Yes, I know I spelled it “wyld”, because that seems more accurate. The man who organized the robbery, Luismi (Javier Botet), even gets his young son involved on the action, as it’s his weekend to take care of him. While trying to flee the country with their spoils, Luismi and his crew find themselves in the home of a group of older women, and also the home of Eva (Carolina Bang), a super-hot witchbitch with an undercut. It should be noted that it’s not just Eva that’s a witch, but all the other ladies are too. With her son being missing in action, Luismi’s ex-wife is able to use the GPS in his phone to track him to the witch house along with some police inspectors. There’s now a whole group of people at this house, and that’s when shit gets really witchy and bitchy. These witches are cannibals, so they want to eat some people, but they also want to use some of these people as sacrifices to some grand mega-witch monster type of thing. Guys…..it’s nuts. This movie is nuts.

CAROLINA BANG: EVEN HER NAME CAUSES BONERS

DID I MENTION THIS MOVIE IS FUCKING NUTS?! It’s like the Crank or Shoot ‘Em Up of witch movies, and it’s fucking fantastic. There’s Jesus running around with a shotgun, monsters trying to grab butts by reaching their arms up out of toilets, and a 40 foot tall supreme witchbitch who wears a wicker hat and has giant monster boobs swinging all over the place. The frenetic editing and the visual style felt a lot like I was watching Night Watch, but the insanity of what I was actually seeing made me feel like Jason Statham could show up at any moment. Which, by the way, could’ve been awesome. I think the only issue that the film had might have been the pacing, as it felt like it was three hours long once I finally left the theater. According to the internet, it is just a few minutes shy of being a full two hours, and maybe it was because I had been in theaters all day, but if this could have been trimmed down to 90 minutes of insanity, it would get my fullest regards. With all that insane stuff happening, it was hard to keep the pacing consistent, because obviously you need moments to develop some semblance of plot but those slower moments really sink in with the audience and your adrenaline just starts to dissolve. Even though it’s somewhat exhausting, Witching & Bitching does for witch movies what taking angel dust is for BEING ALIVE. It’s funny, disgusting, fucking insane, and have I mentioned how good Carolina Bang looks in it? Well worth price of admission.

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Official Site (Spanish)
IMDb

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you can come to know a few things about me. One thing is that I like Ti West movies, another is that I like movie AJ Bowen is in, and another is that I’m unfunny and ugly and am a terrible writer. That last point isn’t too relevant here, but the first two points should be. West’s last film, The Innkeepers, took a little longer to build an appreciation for that The House of The Devil, but both films are now some of my favorite horror films of the past few years. The first time I saw AJ Bowen was in The Signal, and I’ve been a fan of his work ever since. His role in You’re Next, Grow Up, Tony Phillips, and The House of the Devil certainly didn’t hurt his filmography. West and Bowen teamed up again for The Sacrament, which I was able to catch down at Fantastic Fest and can read my review for over at Bloody Disgusting. I also got the chance to sit down with the two to discuss judgement in the realm of journalism, filmmaking, and audiences. Well, in addition to a minimal amount of shit talking amongst one another.

WolfMan: You had The Knife’s “Heartbeats” in the opening of The Sacrament and you had a Bad Brains t-shirt in The Innkeepers, so what kind of music do you listen to?

Ti West: I certainly grew up listening to Bad Brains and different hardcore bands and things like that, but what do I listen to now? I don’t listen to a lot of the harder stuff now, I actually listen to this really great radio station in L.A., 93.5 KDAY, which is all 90’s hip hop. It’s constantly incredibly good. It’s just the best radio station I’ve ever heard, so I usually leave that on. And every time you get into the car, it’s always good. As far as current music, I don’t listen to a lot of current bands.

WM: Obviously there are similarities between what happened in this movie and the events of Jonestown and those events were influences, but what were some of the things you tried to do to distance this film from the events of Jonestown?

TW: It’s certainly updated to a modern time, as far as that’s concerned. Some of the issues that were relevant in the 70’s to Jonestown are still relevant today, so that felt like a natural parallel. Involving something like VICE, it was a way to update things. It’s a personal story about someone who wanted to see his sister, so Jonestown was a model, but it’s really about what people in cults are like. There’s a three-dimensional perspective on that. When people say they know about the mass suicide (in the film), I’m okay with everybody knowing that’s going to happen because it’s not about the actual act itself. It’s about the things leading up to it and the things after it and what causes people to do that instead of them just dying in general. It was about counter-culture and feeling like you don’t have a place in the world and making your own version of that.

AJ Bowen: There’s also a difference in that it led to other things that I thought about that we hadn’t actually discussed. We discussed plot and that kind of stuff, but just putting it in the VICE world and this concept of “immersionism”, it creates an entirely different conversation. It raises some questions about both mainstream media, fringe media, and how we get our information and how it’s presented as a piece of entertainment vs. information. I watched a lot of VICE for the movie, as well as other news, and Ti watched a lot of it, and I was aware of VICE, and I just thought, “Holy shit, these guys are putting themselves in these crazy positions,” and one thing that I never saw in any of it was any sense of judgement. We were talking a little bit about this concept of judgement and how important it is to reduce that as much as possible. That’s very interesting, especially considering the descriptions of “hipster journalism”, and it’s like, right, cool, you can say that behind a keyboard, but where are YOU going? Why are you coming from a place of judgement towards people sharing information?

WM: I think the lack of judgement from the VICE crew can be interpreted as oblivious. It’s like they Googled “conflicted areas” and the response is, “Oh, apparently the border between India and Pakistan, there’s a lot of shit going on down there, let’s just hang out see what happens!”

TW: The thing about it is the amount of education and riches that would be required to get there and do that…like, we can’t just roll up there and do that. There’s a process of very intelligent people working it out safely. I think the media in this country, there’s a very clear divide: there’s MSNBC and there’s FOX. There’s not a lot in the middle. Not to say that VICE is the middle ground, but they just don’t have that agenda. I think it’s interesting, there’s also about the balance of the media’s role in these conflicted places.

AJ: That kind of stuff is important and it sucks that it’s considered fringe.

WM: I stopped listening to the news when I could no longer get it from Tabitha Soren. It’s like, what’s the point.

AJ: I’m a little bit older, so Kurt Loder is where I finished.

WM: Isn’t he still out there, though? I mean, he’s alive? Good for him.

AJ Bowen

WM: And Ti, you mentioned that the scene between AJ and Gene Jones, the original interview scene, was something like a 17 minute take that you cut down to around 7. How much of the movie ended up on the cutting room floor?

TW: Probably about a half hour. It never even really made it deep into the editing room, I knew that early on. That interview scene, the rest of the interview is certainly very interesting, but it felt…not redundant, but it felt like information you just already knew. All the interviews with the people before that are much longer, and there’s a lot of great stuff. There’s all this great context stuff, but when I was editing the movie, everyone kind of knows where they’re already at. As much as it is nice to hear background stories, it didn’t really change anything. It doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s mostly stuff like that that didn’t make it in.

AJ: The expositional dialogue, initially, the opening montage part was a scene. This is way more efficient.

TW: The interview had a lot of information on how they pulled this together, physically and technically, and what they were planning on doing. It was interesting and it was valuable and it was sad to let go, but it didn’t change the movie one iota. I mean, do you really need to know how they plan to bulldoze and how much it’s going to cost, and those were things you didn’t really have to know.

Gene Jones (left), Joe Swanberg (right), and AJ Bowen (hiding)

WM: AJ, people love seeing you as a villain. They love seeing you as a bad guy. And Ti, people love the deliberate, slower pace of your films. How do you find that balance between what your creative vision is but also not wanting to fall into the things that you get almost “typecast” for doing?

TW: Every movie I make, I try to make different movie than the last. That’s really the only effort I put into that. It’s really not for anyone else, other than me not wanting to repeat myself. Everything is subjective, so I don’t really give a shit what people say, since I can’t control it. I’m making these movies for myself, and if I can make them good enough for my standards, there will be other people out there who like them. I don’t know how many, but there will be someone besides just myself. There will also be people who hate them. I’m happy with movies that are either 1 star or 5 stars, those are the ones that are most interesting to me. The ones that are polarizing, because it means you’ve at least done something. I don’t even think about an audience. I’ve never made a movie for the audience before. It’s a very different process to do that, to make a movie that’s all about the people’s experience in the theater and their enjoyment and their attention span and that’s what you’re manipulating the whole time. I’ve never done that, it’s always just been about the movie. I assume if I did a big studio movie then I’d have to switch gears and just try to make a movie for an audience, otherwise it’s such an uphill battle that it’s probably not worth happening. With this movie, it’s tough for 15 year old kids to go see. Whether they know about Jonestown or not, there’s a lot of context and content in the movie that was born in 1992 might not get.

AJ: I don’t mean to sound glib about it, but I don’t give a shit.

WM: Wow, that’s very glib of you.

AJ: Fuck you. (laughs) I can’t concern myself with that stuff. What I concern myself with is my own sensibility. Another silly thing is the group of people who are making genre films. Ti is one of my closest friends, Ti’s my favorite filmmaker, I want to make movies with Ti. Our sensibilities are in line. I don’t concern myself with whether or not people like it. Obviously I’m not trying to say, “If you want to hate on it, hate on it.” It’s always preferable for people to identify with your work. I’m lucky because I’m just the actor in this group of people, so I tend to get a lot of good will. I’m very fortunate and grateful for that. As these movies get a little bit bigger, as more people see them, there’s a lot more criticism. I could spend a significant amount of each day reading people talking shit on me, and that’s fair. When we got into the movie, we knew that if we got to keep doing it, that eventually it would get to a place where people are seeing it that aren’t our buddies. As long as there’s a creative sincerity behind what you’re doing, we try really hard to do that, and I know for certain, myself, I’m just trying to do it better than I did it last time. I’m trying to not let my collaborators down. Like Ti said, if that means that five people are into it, great, because they’re into it for the right reasons. If that means 5,000, awesome, maybe it will make it easier for us to make another movie, but that stuff is a non-issue. It’s a non-factor.

Love or hate their films, there’s no denying Ti (left) nor AJ’s (right) fashion sensibilities. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.

WM: Are you glad you got to play a guy people liked? I mean, I didn’t personally like you, but I hear other people could relate to you.

AJ: It’s a weird thing, when you talk about performance. I still have to try to make the guy sympathetic when the first time you’re seeing him, he has a schtick that could be considered invasive of people’s privacy. It was important for us to try to find that line, that transition from turning that machine off and realizing he’s a person who has feelings and has to care. Beyond that, I can say that I’m profoundly grateful that we got to make this movie. For me, personally, it was such a hard right turn from stuff I had encountered right before. I think that’s important for creative people. Tell a story, and it’s important to allow yourself the privilege of taking a right turn like that and doing something different. It forms everything. It makes you better. I’m lucky. I love this movie. It took me a couple of days to figure it out. I knew it was good, in my opinion. I knew it was a bummer. This is some sad, sadtown, I don’t know if I like it. Then I figured out I love it.

WM: I really dug it, I hope it bums out a lot of people.

AJ: How can we make people more sad today…

Big thanks to Ti and AJ for taking the time to chat with me. The Sacrament was purchased by Magnolia Films and should be released some time in 2014.

It was almost a year ago now that I posted my review for Cheap Thrills, and if you guys follow me on Twitter, I’m sure you’re goddamned sick of me talking about it. Well now that the film is finally being released on VOD on February 21st, you’ll finally fucking see what I’m talking about! The problem is that it’s a movie where the more you talk about it, the more a viewer can get confused with what to expect. It’s funny as shit, it’s dark, it’s twisted, and a bummer. With such a small cast spending two weeks in a house together filming, if they don’t all pull their weight, the movie will flop. Luckily, the entire cast is fantastic, especially Ethan Embry and Pat Healy and their incredibly tense former friendship. These two fucking killed it and I was happy to sit down and talk with them about their experiences filming such a dark and intense film. As a disclaimer, the night before this interview took place, the film was screened with a series of dares for the audience to participate in, from getting a tattoo to dipping your balls in a concoction of hot sauce. Oh yeah, and one member of the cast (who will go unnamed) was real drunk during the Q & A.

Pat Healy and Ethan Embry

WolfMan: This movie’s fucking awesome. I think you guys know that from me talking about it all the time.

Ethan Embry: We know that YOU like it.

WM: And what else matters?

EE: In this context? Not much.

WM: But it’s a difficult movie to talk about without giving things away. As you’re watching it, you don’t know where it’s going to go next and you don’t know how it’s going to escalate. I really don’t want to give anything away because I don’t want to take any enjoyment away from the audience. The big thing that sells the movie is your friendship, or your past friendship.

EE: Let’s call it a “relationship”.

Pat Healy: It’s a complicated relationship. It’s somewhat complicated in real life because we are different kinds of guys, but it works for the movie. When there’s tension, there’s tension.

WM: Did you guys know each other before the movie?

EE: We met maybe 2 days before, 3 days before?

PH: We met for 2 seconds when we were doing our makeup tests. He’s a lot more gregarious than I am and I think we probably just had different styles of acting, in general, but I think it was very good casting because there was real tension. At the end of the day, neither of us hated each other or were in any real danger.

WM: Now would be a good time to admit you hate each other though.

PH: A Wolfman exclusive. (laughs) A really great moment, for me anyway, and I know we’ve talked about it a ton, after the big sort of crazy moment in the movie, we had this scene that was like a page or two long that we just had to shoot really quickly, which was just he and I talking, and on the page it’s really just an excuse to make some time go by for something else to happen, but it was an amazing scene because of what we had just been through emotionally and through the filming of the movie and it’s just us talking about it’s a two camera setup and what you see is what you get. Us really connecting. It’s a quiet moment, which the movie’s not full of, but we were very connected at that point and I thought that it was what it’s all about. To go through all of that to get to that moment, it’s worth it.

EE: And I think what you said about us just having different styles. Like if I get hit, I like getting hit.

PH: Right, and I don’t.

EE: And it comes down to something as simple as that. I hit him a couple of times.

PH: And then I didn’t mean to, but unconsciously I probably wanted to.

EE: And I fucking loved it. It was probably funny enough, and I thought that that moment was the most connected you and I were.

PH: To be fair, the move…George Wilbur coordinated the fight, and Ethan wanted another move, and…I felt bad. I gave him a black eye.

EE: And for me, it’s like, DO that shit. I fucking love it.

PH: And for me, there’s no right way or wrong way to act. If you want to act like Abraham Lincoln, then that’s fine because the proof is in the pudding. He’s great in the movie, but I did buy him a carton of cigarettes because I felt bad.

EE: And those aren’t cheap.

PH: And we had one more day of shooting, and what we had to shoot was the beginning of the movie.

WM: And Pat just won’t stop bragging about how strong of a puncher he is.

PH: I didn’t punch him, it was my foot.

WM: How good of a KICKER he is.

PH: We did this scene, and he’s on the ground, and I knew that the camera was behind him and that I wasn’t close and that I had to kick him in the face.

EE: I actually asked you to put your boot on my face.

PH: And then what happened was I looked at the thing and I just lost my mind but they didn’t actually use that take.

EE: It was great, because then in the next scene I have this fresh bootprint on my fucking face.

PH: And what follows that is fucking brutal. The one thing about the movie that people always ask about “When would you stop and what would be too far?” and I just look at the movie and I know it’s a good script is because everything that happens logically follows. As crazy as any of that stuff is, if you were in the middle of it, like Compliance too, if you were there, it wouldn’t seem that crazy of a time. It might, in retrospect, like talk to David (Koechner) about last night, and at the time, if I were in the same situation, I doubt I would go so far as to murder someone, but when you’re in the quicksand, you’re just trying to get out and you’re struggling and you sink deeper into it. (To Ethan) You told me you’d cut your finger off when we were having dinner together.

WM: Just for fun or for money?

EE: I think that’s why the movie as a whole works, because, depending on, if I had to, depending on who it was, I’d go as far as you. I think my character gives you enough reasons to justify.

PH: It’s not like I’m unprovoked, you see it, but at the same time…that’s another great thing about his performance. The vulnerability that comes out at the end and the humanity, and there’s tragedy in that.

WM: It’s not an entire 180 degree turn for either character, but the perception of the characters switch.

PH: Even Ethan’s hat falling off tilts it. It’s actually my favorite stuff in the movie, and the way it’s shot in the movie, it’s beautiful. That whole sequence when the slideshow is on and all that stuff, it’s great. I don’t think anything could happen in the movie and our relationship and performances included,  without the crazy way that the movie was set up. And only because there wasn’t a lot of money all of the time. It was crazy, and we just kind of had to be there and do it.

EE: There was talk about if it could be done as a play.

WM: And Dave had talked a lot last night about how it felt like a play on set.

EE: Did you actually decipher anything he said last night?

WM: I know he made it rain on someone, I remember that.

PH: What makes it like a play is that you don’t really get to work scenes, long scenes, with actors where you’re acting with them. It’s usually bits and pieces or it’s coverage. With this film, we had these two cameras and we had to learn these scenes and they were long scenes and you had to look at each other and do these scenes. The budget and everything kind of forced that, but I prefer it because we got to actually do real acting with one another.

Ethan Embry, Dave Koechner, and Pat Healy

WM: You guys have both had these diverse careers, where you’ve done teen comedies–

PH: Not so much me.

WM: Right, but through your work in theater and Pearl Harbor, you’ve all just kind of dabbled in these big movies and smalls movies and all over. Now what is it that you guys love doing the most? Is it just whatever the next challenge is or are you looking to go even weirder?

EE: Is that possible? (laughs)

PH: We look for the next challenge, neither of us are independently wealthy, we need to work. I’ve been lucky that the things that have come to me are the things I’d like to do, for the most part. Sometimes things like this get seen by bigger people in the business and you get offered opportunities in the business to make more money, and I know Ethan’s getting a lot of work now and is working consistently, and that’s starting to happen for me too. Just because I went and did these smaller movies and people saw them.

WM: And Ethan, you’ve been doing a lot more genre stuff.

EE: Ya know, I grew up in a fucking trailer park in East L.A., but then I played preppy fucking make it rich punks, or underdogs. I always felt it wasn’t a true representation of who I am. Lately I’ve been trying to go more towards the things that draw me in, what I would go see, and represent who I am a little bit more.

PH: I think that’s been happening for me too. I might know myself better now so I’m more accurately able to represent myself on-screen.

EE: But you said it yourself, sometimes it’s about getting the next fucking gig. (laughs)

WM: Wait, neither of you are independently wealthy?

PH: Well I’m not, but I can’t speak for Ethan. I know he was in a pretty rough spot before we did the movie.

WM: You guys work so well together, and again, I’m a big genre fan, so seeing you guys both pop up in these different genre things. Between The Innkeepers, Compliance, and now this, these are some of my favorite movies of the last year, and I see your ball picking up steam.

PH: Into a bowl full of hot sauce.

EE: Did you see the aftermath?

PH: I saw that guy later and he had the time of his life. He went into the bathroom and he had his balls in the sink. He told me it didn’t actually hurt until he put water on it. We took him out last night and he had the time of his life after that.

WM: I totally would’ve gotten the tattoo.

PH: You don’t count. You’d do anything for this movie, and you’ve already seen the movie. It’s ballsier for someone who hasn’t seen it.

Even though he might not have had to do too many interviews in his career as a director, I can guarantee that you are about to read the absolute best interview that E.L. Katz has ever given. And you know what? It’s probably the best interview he ever will give, because after you chat with Wolfman, there’s nowhere to go but down. I probably don’t have to remind any of you about how much I loved Cheap Thrills, and I didn’t need to remind Katz about that either. Rather than run the risk of inflating his ego even more than it already is, I decided to give him a few curveballs and ask him some of the questions I asked the rest of his cast. Luckily, I still got some good stuff out of him and any interview that ends up talking about Lucio Fulci is a good one in my book.

WolfMan: You know I like the movie. I know I liked the movie. The internet knows I liked the movie.

E.L. Katz: This is not news.

WM: I didn’t do any research is what I’m saying. I’m just gonna give you the questions I gave the other guys.

ELK: Okay.

WM: So what was it like being in Anchorman 2?

ELK: …well, I was afraid of being typecast. There are several things that I’m great at, and there are some things that I’m specifically great at, and I was afraid of that. But I think people are gonna love the movie and that it’s going to make a lot of money.

WM: Hmm, good, interesting. Now you’ve got the Empire Records 20th anniversary coming up, what was it like working with Rory Cochrane? Ya know, he was coming off of Dazed and Confused…

ELK: Typically when you act, it’s a collaboration, so if someone’s not giving you anything to work with, what would you do? You’d just stand there, you’re not living in it, it’s not real. Anything else?

Sara Paxton in Cheap Thrills

WM: You were investigating ghosts with Sara Paxton, so you guys had worked together before and then you starred with her in THIS movie…

ELK: It was confusing!

WM: Did you ever think you were in that other movie?

ELK: Sometimes I was forgetting my lines thinking I was supposed to be helping her look for ghosts. As an actor, you only do one movie every couple of years so it just sticks with you.

WM: What do you think of director Evan Louis Katz, as he prefers to be called?

ELK: I wish he wasn’t so fast and loose with his hands because he sometimes does some inappropriate stuff, but I think that comes with talent. A lot of artists are tortured and have a lot of demons. I think that everybody kind of gave him a little bit of a pass. Usually, as long as he had his medication by the end of the day, he was pretty good. He kept to himself and didn’t really bother anybody.

WM: Okay, now let’s get serious.

ELK: Let’s get serious.

WM: Some people have called you the “Punk Rocker of Hollywood”…

ELK: (laughs) Nobody…absolutely NO one has called me that. The Punk Rock Prince.

WM: Oh absolutely. It goes, that guy from Papa Roach, the singer from Hoobastank, then Evan Katz. I was thinking about it on my way over, and how fucking stupid it sounds, but that Cheap Thrills was made with a more DIY sensisiblity. It was just you guys, two weeks, this awesome cast, together for two weeks, put it together, and now it’s something that I know the more people will discover, the more people will realize it’s their new favorite movie.

ELK: It was definitely a full-hearted decision to make a movie in 14 days. It definitely helped the tension and made people legitimately crazy. I think you want a manic energy in movies like this that’s genuinely crazy. I look at old Tobe Hooper and obviously everybody kind of lost their minds on Chain Saw Massacre. He was a big inspiration, but also Friedkin. There’s just a real chaos in everybody’s mind when they’re making those movies. It’s interesting because it’ll never happen like that for me again.

WM: You already had your 7″ demo and now you’re going to be signing with Epitaph.

ELK: Yeah, that’s the thing, “Punk Rock Prince of Hollywood signs with Epitaph”. We’ll have too slick of a production on the next album, and everyone’s going to be saying, “It sucks, I can hear their voices now, it sucks. I don’t like his voice, it’s too clean.”

WM: Why are there all these harmonies?!

ELK: Too many ballads. We’ll see where it goes.

Papa Roach

WM: You and I have talked a lot about music before, and with Agent Orange being tied into the movie, how often did you keep music in mind while reworking the script?

ELK: I really think there’s nothing more evil than techno music. It really is the most sinister soundtrack.

WM: Have you seen Man of Steel? They have a goddamned dubstep machine going “WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP”.

ELK: That’s evil. All that rave shit is evil.

WM: You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen, “Punk Rock Prince of Hollywood proclaims Electronic Music Evil”.

ELK: Well our composer did the music for You’re Next–

WM: Which had an awesome soundtrack.

ELK: And he doesn’t really make techno music. In Denmark, we has like this Danish Mr. Bungle and it was kind of weird for me to force him to make this kind of music that he didn’t relate to. My whole thing was that it needed to be douchey, cokehead party music. It fed into the bad decisions. For me, I had that shit playing while I wrote it because it was the voice of Colin (Dave Koechner). It was just imagining him listening to that stuff and thinking “Isn’t this cool?!” and it was a little out of date, so it was probably the coolest version of that stuff.

WM: Which we know is really cool.

ELK: Super cool. At first, we wanted it to feel like it was just this shit that they had on, then it starts to become a little weirder and more thriller-horror music. But make it at least seem like transitional, you’re not 100% sure what’s score and what’s just douchey party music.

WM: That you couldn’t tell the difference between what the characters were listening to and what the score was.

ELK: Exactly. We didn’t have a lot of tricks, we just had people in a house the whole time, so we asked what we could use. Is it going to be score the whole time or whether it be music in their world and every choice would be different music they put on, and that was shitty.

WM: In the bar, early on, I swear I could hear Joy Division playing, but I wasn’t sure if that was them or not.

ELK: If we had that money, we would’ve blasted that the whole time. We just used a lot of bar bands that we thought we could get. I know a couple of record labels and they helped out on tracks but we didn’t have any recognizable stuff. The most well-known thing in there was Bloodstains.

WM: And even that, I’m sure a lot of people have no ideas about. “Whoa, they wrote this song for the movie! They’re saying  ‘Cheap Thrills!'”

ELK: It was almost like a theme song, where you have this bummer ending and then that comes on.

Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond

WM: Yesterday we were talking about your Fulci tattoo, so is The Beyond your favorite Fulci movie?

ELK: I love a lot of his stuff, but it’s also kind of random. Like, Contraband is such a gory crime movie. Fulci was really sort of my introduction to the weirder horror. I grew up with John Carpenter and Tobe (Hooper) and once I found the Italians and what they did, all I watched for a while was horrible Italian movies. Horrible ones. I watched all of them. Like, horrible shit. I really enjoyed it. It felt so much riskier and that it was being made by crazy people.

WM: They get you in that context where what you’re seeing isn’t a linear narrative so you, as an individual, have a hard time figuring it out. Have you seen Room 237? They talk about how Kubrick constructed the hotel to be a building that could never actually exist so your brain can’t really figure it out.

ELK: And that’s awesome. You’re constantly trying to place everything in a box to understand it, and the Fulci stuff, I think people didn’t give him credit. He did have a lot of sloppy movies too, for sure, but he did some that were really well constructed and his influences of Lovecraft and Poe. He was a smart guy, I just think he had bad luck, and (Dario) Argento came from wealth, and he’s an amazing filmmaker, but if you give somebody the best DP in the world and the best composers, it’s going to be a win. Fulci died right before his biggest movie was going to be made, The Wax Mask, and he had a bit more money for it but he was sick, he was suffering for awhile. I like Fulci, I know he was kind of a beast on the set.

WM: Just knowing that at any moment in any of his films, you could enter an apocalyptic Hellscape. You could open a door and it would be Hell.

ELK: The whole world can change. It’s so dangerous. His movies are fucking dangerous. Bad things will happen to really good characters just because of where they were. It was really influential to show that much gruesome stuff. The filmmaker in me, I love his gore, but when it happens, it’s fucking there and it’s practical and it’s really mean.

WM: My favorite Fulci movie is the one where something happens to that guy’s eye…or that girl’s eye…

ELK: And I think head wounds are one of my favorite things. Anything that can happen to somebody’s noggin, I’m happy. Both Fulci and David Lynch do a lot of head trauma. It’s just my favorite. I was attacked by a dog when I was younger so I have like 20 scars in my head.

Cheap Thrills is available now on VOD and will be in select theaters March 21st.

It’s easy to market a film to the public if you say, “It’s like Movie X meets Genre Y!”, but those marketing strategies aren’t always accurate. You take two things that are relatively well-known so that an audience can start to anticipate whether they’d like it or not. A lot of the times, these comparisons can be totally off. When I was at Fantastic Fest, someone told me that Afflicted was “If you too Chronicle and changed it to horror”. Well, I didn’t really like Chronicle, so that definitely wasn’t a selling point. And the subgenre of horror that is represented in Afflicted is one I don’t particularly enjoy, so the film was 0 for 2. Despite my low expectations for the film, I had a shit ton of fun, even watching it at 8:30AM. The relationship between the two leads was believable and endearing, there was a lot of comedy, the pacing made it so it wasn’t an onslaught of gore, and the effects and scares were subtle and surprising. Despite the “found footage” or “faux documentary” style of horror being scoffed at, Afflicted is one of the better representations of that filmmaking style of the past few years. I got to talk to writers/directors/stars/best friends Clif Prowse and Derek Lee at Fantastic Fest and I’m sure they are bound to do more really cool things in the future.

WolfMan: I saw the movie yesterday, went in pretty blind, but had heard a good response out of Toronto. It was one of the better movies, and especially a better horror movie. When I tried to describe the movie to people, well, there’s a movie that came out a few years ago that your film is getting compared to, which I won’t say. There are horror elements, there’s the friendship element, there’s a lot of stuff in there. How do you sell your film to other people without comparing it to other movies?

Clif Prowse: It’s about a couple of guys who are filming their year-long trip around the world and end up documenting this horrific illness that takes one of them over. That’s the hook that brings people in. A lot of the fun of the movie is the surprise. How that manifests itself. One of the most fun reactions we get is people who know nothing about the movie. It starts out as this travel blog and people are going along with it and all of a sudden, a freight train comes and knocks it in another direction. People seem to really enjoy that aspect of it.

WM: And that’s what’s been so difficult for me. Trying to describe it to people, saying it’s like a horror version of…this other movie. I don’t want to always compare it to that movie.

Derek Lee: The timing of it was both the best thing for us and very scary at the same time. We actually cut a version of the movie prior to them releasing their film. I think I mentioned in a Q and A that we lost a scene that was too similar to that as a result. We don’t take the comparisons unfavorably. We’re huge fans and they did a great job. That film opened up people’s consciousness to what can be done with found footage or faux documentary, whatever you want to call it. We’re huge fans and we’re glad they did what they did. It meant that we got to go back and do some cool stuff and play with some bigger toys.

CP: You’re being compared to a movie that people really enjoy, and that’s great. Hopefully you’re not being compared to a movie that’s universally panned.

WM: Alright, let’s clear the air. We’re talking about Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star. How did this concept come about? Was it just an excuse for you guys to go to some foreign locations?

DL: People keep asking that! Do people make movies like that?

WM: Oh totally.

CP: Three years ago, we decided we wanted to make a feature film. At the time, we had made four short films so it felt like the next thing to do. We had written a script, but it was way too huge. We realized that we needed to do something that we could actually produce on money we raised ourselves. That way we weren’t beholden to someone else. We were brainstorming and the idea of this supernatural documentary came up. We knew that was something we could execute on a budget that would be a lot of fun. We think we found a unique enough hook that people would enjoy seeing it.

DL: We’re aware that found footage, or faux documentary in our case, and the “creature”, I’ll say, are all well-worn. We understand that. It was about figuring out if we could use those things to tell what is ultimately a very personal character story about a descent into darkness. We wanted to bring back the horror, the curse element, the no escape, the constant violence, and that was at the heart of it. The way we chose the tropes that we used and didn’t use, they were just the window-dressings to this guy having to go through this terrible affliction.

WM: Affliction…it’s almost like that’s…a good hook. See, I thought it was going to be a documentary about Affliction clothing. You can imagine how thrown off that I was. I didn’t see ANY mixed martial arts. You guys kind of play version of yourselves in the movie. How close is what we see on film are you to what your relationship is really like?

DL: The easiest way to say it is that they’re just larger than life versions of ourselves. It’s really meant to be based on ourselves. We did this as a conscious choice because as the film gets into its more fantastical, crazy, absurd parts, that all has way more impact if you believe these guys are real and can draw real histories and real personalities, real relationships. Those are our families. We put our parents in the movie, which is not a nice thing to do, but we did it. We had to make it worthwhile. It became a question of making a movie and making it about us and taking the absurd thing and just plop it into our lives. That way we did as little expansion as necessary. Hopefully that means you get to know us, hopefully like us, and then when shit hits the fans, you feel for the guys.

CP: There’s the stuff that’s overt, that’s talked about, like our relationships and the photos of us and videos of us when we were kids, all of that is authentic. Situating it in our actual lives, in our relationship, it just sort of infuses it in that environment. Hopefully you feel the authenticity coming through in every aspect.

Clif Prowse and Derek Lee in Afflicted

WM: Obviously it’s fun to see splatter films that are just about the body count, but you feel a lot more for what these characters are going through. It’s a much more powerful, resonant feeling than just how much blood you can put on-screen. You say these are heightened versions of yourselves, so do either of you actually have any sort of superhuman abilities?

DL: Clif doesn’t need to sleep. That’s impressive. I can’t punch through walls or jump off of stuff.

WM: You can’t? Well, it was nice meeting you guys. I only decided to do this interview because I have walls that need punching.

CP: You mean beyond our raw sexual magnetism?

WM: Well, I just don’t know if that will come across in this interview.

CP: It’s up to you as a writer to put that in there.

DL: Did we test well in the 18-24 demographic?

WM: How do you react when people try to marginalize your film by saying that it’s just another “found footage” movie? The negative reactions?

CP: What we were very conscious of was to make this film have a very specific purpose. once you see the film, hopefully you’ll understand that it’s been put together by the characters for very specific reasons. That was exciting to us. In traditional found footage, it feels like a bunch of shots that are stitched together quasi-randomly. We really wanted to explore the idea that these guys are creating a finished product as they’re going through their journey. It starts off as this polished, fun travel blog with title and music and all those things, and then as the situation gets more and more crazy, and more and more grave, all that artifice starts to strip away and it just becomes a documenting thing and eventually becomes this kind of message that they’re sending. That journey of the aesthetic and the way it’s put together that we thought was a cool layer for the story.

DL: I think to get over the hump of people’s reluctance towards found footage, and we totally know where they’re coming from, is to make it character based. To drive it with a strong story about two guys dealing with something terrible. What that would feel like and how you would deal with it. The other thing is to make sure that it was fun. Even if it was old or was done before, that people would enjoy. Everything is from something else, so if it works for some people then it’s because we did our job. If it doesn’t work for people, we understand that there’s that hump to get over. Hopefully the character work, this dream of Clif and Derek, is worth it.

CP: Hopefully the spins that we gave it gives it a unique feel and not feel like every other film.

WM: I sometimes feel like one of the few horror fans that, when I hear “found footage”, I’m not deterred. I feel like with found footage, it challenges the viewer to take an active involvement in whether something might happen in the top left or is it the bottom right. We’re constantly searching because it’s not structured like a bigger movie. All of your gags are very subtle but also really succesful.

CP: I think the thing that’s exciting about found footage, when it’s done right, is that all of a sudden, it can feel like reality. If you’re watching a huge budget superhero movie and you see someone punching through a wall, it doesn’t have the same impact. You’re very aware of the art of cinema. When it happens in a movie like this, you’re like, “Holy shit, he ACTUALLY did this.” It’s like you’re witnessing someone punching through the wall. That’s your relationship to the audience with found footage and when it’s done well, that’s when it’s exciting.

DL: It’s fun to believe it. When I punch through a wall, I’m obviously not doing that. I wish I could, but it’s still fun to see it. There’s a level of the audience thinking how cool it would be.

Derek Lee in Afflicted

WM: How many of the effects were practical versus CGI later on?

DL: The original shoot that we went on, We knew that we’d have to do most of the effects practically because we had a very limited VFX budget. Image Engine came on, who did District 9, offered us six shots, which was really, really awesome. We knew that our shots couldn’t just be barely strung together, they had to be photo real to keep this found footage thing. Things like the rock break were extremely nerve-wracking for the both of us because I was punching air. They’re saying there was going to be a perfectly photo-realistic rock that would break apart and look great. Thankfully, for their amazing skill, it is phenomenal. This film would’ve tanked if every time we saw a VFX shot, it takes you out of the movie. Bearing that in mind, we tried to keep as much as we could practical. That’s where found footage works because if you want to cut the frame of something or use less lighting or change the depth-of-field, then that works. If we can play with that and plan everything out meticulously beforehand, there was a lot of that. If anyone is derogatory towards found footage, we didn’t know this going into it, but it is a monumental task to do it well. It is a technical feat. Everyone that came before us, that we borrowed from, we have so much respect for. Like, The Blair Witch Project…that’s not easy at all.

CP: The Blair Witch Project is a work of genius. It really is. It’s an amazing film.

WM: I just hate when people try to say “Who would have edited this movie? How is this possible?” It’s like, guys, you’re in a fucking movie. Are you really going there for believability? You just paid money to see this. Clearly this is not a real thing.

DL: It’s fun to believe. If you can’t get over that, then what are you there for?

Afflicted is in select theaters and available on VOD on April 4th.

Official Site

IMDb

I have been to a whopping….one year of Fantastic Fest, but it is probably THE festival for both genre fans, genre filmmakers, and people who like karaoke. Rather than gush and gush about how amazing the festival is, you can click here to find it out for yourselves. Instead, I’m going to highlight my favorite films that have premiered at the festival in some way, shape, or form. Some of these were world premieres, other were North American, others were American, some were…well, you get the point. I’m excluding films that were re-released and wanted to highlight the incredible programming that the fine folks at Drafthouse do every year and remember how many amazing, contemporary classics that made their premiere here.

2005

Feast – Although it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, I remember enjoy the tongue-in-cheek humor of it, Henry Rollins being a real asshole, and a scene where Krista Allen punches out a monster’s teeth and shoves her entire arm down its throat to choke it. That’s pretty badass.

Hostel - Although Cabin Fever is still my favorite Eli Roth movie, his follow-up gave us a more focused narrative about a bunch of asshole Americans thinking they’re awesome for backpacking through Europe. The gore effects combined with the awful portrayal of American youth culture still holds up well.

Wolf Creek – The gritty Australian thriller that unfortunately inspired more gritty slashers. Although I do prefer the Wolf Creek 2, the success is attributed to John Jarratt. He got to let loose in the sequel, seeing the subtle glimpses of just how wild this guy could get was my favorite part about the original.

2006

Hatchet – In his ode to ridiculous, gore-filled slashers from the 80’s, writer/director Adam Green made a gore-filled slasher. There was also a lot of humor in the movie and I really wish I had gotten to see it with a crowd and I’ll bet that the Fantastic Fest crowds ate it up.

Pan’s Labyrinth – Admittedly, I haven’t seen this movie since it was in theaters. SO WHAT?! CAN I NOT STILL THINK IT WAS AWESOME?! Guillermo Del Toro makes terrifying fairy tales like no other, and this film is no exception. Great job, buddy!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning – HEY, WATCH IT. No, this movie isn’t perfect. It’s far from perfect. However, there are a lot of things I really liked about it, especially in comparison to the 2003 remake. Also, by my count, it’s the only movie at Fantastic Fest that year that Diora Baird was in so it automatically gets a top spot.

2007

Inside – Hyper-violent, hyper-stylish, and hyper-awesome. Is that a word? Probably not, but the French Inside came from out of nowhere and proved there was more blood in the human body than scientists had previously thought. Holy shit, I mean, seriously, WHERE DOES ALL THAT BLOOD COME FROM?! This movie was awesome.

The Orphanage – Although this was only executively produced by Guillermo Del Toro, it’s the scariest movie I’ve seen with his name attached to it. I guess I have a weakness for ghosts and haunted houses, but this movie blew me away when I saw it and it is still one of my favorite haunted house movies of all time.

Timecrimes – Time travel is real, REAL hard to do. Why does it have to be so confusing? Probably because time travel is confusing. Confusing and stupid, that’s why I never do it. Never has time travel been explained so simply as a drawing scribbled on some notebook paper in Nacho Vigalando‘s Timecrimes, about a man who stumbles into time travel and keeps trying to correct his mistakes. AND IT’S FUN! Fun and not confusing time travel movie? Who woulda thunk it!

Honorable Mention

There Will Be Blood – As a movie, I’m not sure any other movies this year could compete with a cinematic masterpiece like this. I dare to say that this movie is nearly flawless, so the only reason it is relegated to being an honorable mention is that it’s not so much “genre,” unless that genre is “amazing movie.” Then it would definitely be numero uno. (That’s Spanish for “the best,” dummies!)

2008

Fanboys – Do you have ANY idea how long I had been waiting for this movie? A REAL LONG GODDAMNED TIME. I feel like it was at least three years between the time I saw the trailer and the time I got around to actually seeing the movie, and boy oh boy, it was worth it. Not only does Fanboys appeal to the Star Wars fan in me, but themes of losing touch with friends and death make this movie more than just a one-note amalgam of snappy references.

Let The Right One In – Man, I sure do hate vampire movies. Even classic vampires movies I don’t see much appeal in. Luckily, Let the Right One In is far from your traditional vampire movie. Sure, there are themes of budding young love and adolescence and all that junk, but most importantly, the movie looks gorgeous. Beautifully shot movie that’s a non-traditionally vampire fare? SIGN ME UP!

Martyrs – To this day, Martyrs remains one of the only movies that physically churned my stomach. To those of you who have seen it, I think you’ll know exactly the scene I’m talking about when I say “cheese pizza scalp.” EXACTLY. IT’S SO GROSS. Even though the film loses me at the end by reaching a little bit too far with its philosophical and religious questions, most of this movie is incredibly intense and incredibly nasty. Not in like the “Damn girl, you NASTY” kind of way, but in the “I think I’m going to puke my guts out” sort of way.

Honorable Mention

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer – I saw this at a 24 hour horror movie marathon, and even though some people groaned that it was a last minute replacement title, I ended up really enjoying myself. It’s goofy and filled with a ton of practical effects, and even though it pokes fun at the genre, it does so in the most loving way.

2009

The House of the Devil – Cults, Satan, cute babysitters and pizza? THIS MOVIE HAS ALL OF THE THINGS I LOVE. I don’t know what else I can say about this film that I haven’t said a hundred times, so just read my review if you want to know my complete thoughts on the matter. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

[REC] 2 - Any time the topic of sequels that are better than the original, this movie comes up. The original took a well-worn idea and handled it pretty well, and then this movie came in and went in a different direction with its narrative than I had seen done before while managing to keep all of the strengths of the first film. And there’s that cute skinny lady in her underwear at the end! Someone get her some pants!

Trick R’ Treat – Some movies are growers, some movies are showers, and some movies are both. What does that mean? Yo, I have no goddamned idea. Trick R’ Treat is one of the few movies that I’ve ever gone back and corrected my review. The more years that go by, the more I consider this movie a Halloween classic that encapsulates all of my favorite things about Halloween.

Honorable Mention

Paranormal Activity – Thought the franchise itself has had its ups and downs, the original still sets the bar for simple and effective found footage ghost movie. Hard to believe that it’s only been five years since the film’s release, considering how many copycats it’s spawned. I still like you, original movie!

2010

I Saw the Devil - I put this movie off for a really long time because “revenge thriller” isn’t so much my genre as “horror,” but boy, I sure am a dummy for putting the movie off for so long! I Saw the Devil is violent, compelling, and has fantastic performances. Stop it with all the “genre” descriptions, Wolfman! Just go see good movies!

Red White and Blue – It’s just…it’s such a bummer! There are some horror/thriller elements in the movie, but it’s ultimately a portrayal of how awful people can be to one another. It’s awful people doing awful things. What a fun ride!

Troll Hunter – Can you imagine just going in to see Troll Hunter and having no idea what it was about, only to see a bunch of Norwegians HUNTING TROLLS?! This movie is so much fun! I wish I was Norwegian. Or a troll. If I was a troll, then Norwegians would hunt me out. CAN SOMEONE TAKE CARE OF THIS FOR ME PLEASE?

Honorable Mention

Rare Exports – Easily the worst part about seeing Rare Exports in September is that it gets you excited for Christmas but you have to wait a whole bunch of more months for Christmas to come, and you have Halloween in the meantime! Although this is a yearly Christmas movie for me, I don’t know how much I would enjoy it if I watched it an a month that didn’t end with “ecember.”

2011

Melancholia – Is there a better metaphor for depression than an entire planet crashing into Earth, rendering every pointless and everyone worthless? I don’t think so! I love me some depressing movie and I’m glad I didn’t see this at Fantastic Fest because it probably would’ve bummed me out for the rest of the day.

The Innkeepers – Another slow-paced horror movie from Ti West? Cool! I’m in! One of the few horror films in recent years that gives you such charismatic and charming leads that you actually get nervous that something bad might happen to them. Instead of fodder, you get to see an awkward relationship unfold as ghosts haunt a small Connecticut hotel.

You’re Next – Thanks to its premiere screening at Fantastic Fest, You’re Next became one of the most hyped movies in the horror community for almost a year and a half before it played again at SXSW 2013. Luckily, a bunch of nerd losers reacted with terms like “overhyped” because they let other people form their opinions of it without having even seen it. They never got to enjoy the funny and highly watchable take on the home invasion genre. Oh well, more for me!

Honorable Mention

Beyond the Black Rainbow – Even though I still find the narrative a little disappointing, the visceral experience of watching Beyond the Black Rainbow has made it one of my most played Blu-rays. I do generally fall asleep shortly into it, but that’s not important! It’s pretty and sounds cool!

2012

Here Comes the Devil – A movie that combines exploitation elements with slasher elements and wraps them up in a possessed children narrative? YEAH, SIGN ME UP. A lot of good things come together in a great way with this film and it was well worth the long wait before it got distribution.

Miami Connection – What I wouldn’t give to have been able to be at Fantastic Fest to see this movie. Instead, I just read all about “friends through eternity” and “against the ninja” all over Twitter for weeks and week. I just like to pretend I was there because I think everyone who has seen Miami Connection are best friends (through eternity, loyalty, honesty).

Sightseers – Having loved Kill List, I was incredibly excited to see Sightseers. Suffice it to say, I left the theater pretty confused. This wasn’t a horror movie! It was like, a weird black comedy! Good thing I watched the movie a few more times and came to respect writer/director Ben Wheatley and the way he can’t be nailed to just one genre or just one type of filmmaking. COming to appreciate the movie, I anticipate every Wheatley movie more than the last one.

Honorable Mention

The American Scream – This movie really hits me in my heartbone. By the way, hearts don’t have bones. They have guts. Wait, I’m getting distracted. Want to know a surefire way to get me to watch a documentary? Have it take place in New England around Halloween. It instantly conjures up lots of wonderful memories for me and I recommend the movie to everyone I come across who has ever lived in New England.

2013

Big Bad Wolves – I mostly only checked this movie out because it had “wolves” in the title, and that was a good decision on my part. Both thrilling and hilarious, Big Bad Wolves makes for the most entertaining movie about interrogating a child molester that I’ve seen in quite some time. Not including watching home movies. AW COME ON, I’M KIDDING. Goofball Wolferman!

Blue Ruin – Whereas Big Bad Wolves took a dark subject matter and made an incredibly entertaining movie, Blue Ruin took a dark subject matter and BUMMED EVERYONE THE FUCK OUT. In the best way imaginable, of course. Blue Ruin doesn’t pull any of its punches when it shows the impacts of violence and revenge on real people and showcasing the real world ramifications of going on a revenge-filled massacre. Macon Blair is phenomenal in it and I just want to give him a big hug. But only if he takes a bath first, because he looks kind of stinky in the movie.

Cheap Thrills – I am lucky enough to have been able to see this movie six months earlier at SXSW, but with it being one of the best movies I had seen all year, going back to see it with the cast and crew there was just as enjoyable as the first time. Oh yeah, and this time it involved a lady eating a popsicle covered in bugs and Dave Koechner making it rain, so there’s those added bonuses.

Honorable Mention

The Sacrament – Mr. West, you’ve done it again! You’ve made an effective horror movie that feels completely different than your last film. The Sacrament is deeply unsettling in its depiction of mob mentality and cult persuasion and features some of West’s most disturbing sequences to date. Yeah, I guess you could say I drank the Kool-Aid. Hahaha, get it? Because that’s what people do in cults when they want to die? Oh man, I’m hilarious!

And there you have it! All nine years of Fantastic Fest covered and not a moment too soon! Obviously there are tons of movies that I left out that I would’ve loved to include, but I tried to keep this relatively brief, so thanks to those of you who stuck around until the end. Make sure to follow me on Twitter and on Instagram to get the real-time updates of all the cool things I’m doing at this year’s Fantastic Fest, and say hi, won’t ya?! Some of you might actually recognize my awful face by now!

When you arrive at a film festival at 1:30 a.m. from the airport and are asked to drive a different way because they’re about to have a food fight in the alley and then a door flies open and you see a conga line being led by a man in a Carmen Miranda costume, and that man is the guy who founded the festival, you know you’re in the right place. I know you’re thinking, “Hey, Wolfman, could you stop talking about Robert Redford and his banana for five minutes?” to which I’ll say, “No.” I’m also going to say that this isn’t Sundance, this is Fantastic Fest, the ultimate destination for weirdo nerd film fanatics and is the closest thing we can get to revisiting summer camp.

What may seem like just any other film festival to most people is something that you can only truly embrace by attending. Fantastic Fest isn’t just a film festival, it’s a film celebration. For as much as the festival is deservedly lauded for showcasing the best and boldest films and filmmakers, it also provides a place free of cynicism from even the most jaded of people. Everyone goes to Fantastic Fest for slightly different reasons, so before I veer off into wild tangents, I’ll speak to my personal experiences. My reasons for going are to see as many movies as my body will allow with friends I don’t get to see too often in one of the greatest theaters in the country, the Alamo Drafthouse. Their zero tolerance policy for distractions in a theater ensure that everyone gets to do what they came to the theater for: enjoy a movie free from distractions.

There are five rounds of films each day, and press get an extra early opportunity to enjoy an additional round. My first day at Fantastic Fest resulted in seeing a film for all six rounds. My day started at 8:30 a.m. and ended at 1:30 a.m. The following day, I took things a little bit easier and only saw five films. I didn’t want to overdo it, ya know? I skipped the last round of films to attend an event that can only happen at Fantastic Fest: the Fantastic Debates.

Each year, a list of controversial opinions are debated between two people in the film industry. They might be filmmakers, film critics, or even just film fans. The one thing they all have in common is they remain steadfast in their beliefs and fight tooth and nail to prove it. In some cases, this is meant to be taken literally. The subjects being argued this year were Samurais vs. Cowboys, if Bittorrent was the savior of independent film or the enemy, whether or not literature should ever be adapted into film, and the idea that found footage movies are a cancer on the artform. All topics make for an interesting debate, but what sets the Fantastic Debates apart from any other discourse on film you’ll ever see is that it also features a physical component in which the debaters get to beat the shit out of one another. Yup, that’s right, once the debaters flap their gums arguing their points, they put their money where there mouths are and box one another.

Remember how I said it’s great to see the founder of a film festival take such spirited involvement in opening night ceremonies? Well, Fantastic Fest founder Tim League doesn’t stray away from controversy as he challenged filmmaker Ti West on the merits, or lack thereof, in found footage horror movies. Both debaters came to the conclusion that there should be less found footage movies made, as they were both quick to get to the fighting. West had boasted about how no one has really given League a run for his money, and he aimed to do just that. And, well, he did. West managed to knock down League four times in their short match, but that didn’t stop League from winning. No, there wasn’t some technical disqualification, but the bouts were judged by audience applause. When it comes to who festival-goers love endlessly, League will always be their champion.

My energy drained over the next day and a half and I only ended up seeing four more films, bringing the total to 15. I did manage to leave the theater campus long enough to get some barbecue and also skipped some rounds in which there weren’t many movies being shown that I was all that interested in seeing. Although I did manage to see a 70 year old man win a nerd rap contest before singing Limp Bizkit karaoke in a room modeled after a freak show.

It’s always bittersweet to leave a film festival because you know you have to get back to the real world. I was able to take some comfort in the fact that, now in L.A., I can see some of my friends more often. And when you’re seeing four or five movies a day while also eating fried food and doing karaoke, your body and mind start to decay and fog. Knowing that I didn’t even stay for half of the festival means I missed lots of great times with great people watching great movies. But don’t worry, there’s always next year, right?! Be on the lookout for reviews of some of my favorite movies from the fest in the coming days and weeks! Thanks to everyone at Fantastic Fest, Alamao Drafthouse, Fons PR, and all the movies fans in attendance. Fantastic Fest….you’re cool.

Here it is! The first movie of Fantastic Fest 10! U-S-A! U-S-A! Wouldn’t it be ironic if I started chanting that and then found out that the movie was Canadian or something? Hahaha. That’d be so embarrassing, Wolfman! You stupid doofus! Don’t worry, I just checked, it was made in Tennessee. Arguably one of THE most American places on the planet! Great job, everybody. With a name like “Closer to God,” I think we all know what to expect. We expected a sequel to Greg Kinnear’s Dear God, right? RIGHT? Well, you heard it here first, Closer to God is NOT a sequel to a Greg Kinnear movie! Nope, lucky for us, it is an intense thriller about the consequences of the advancements of science in both literal and metaphorical consequences. And it’s good. DAMN good.

Victor (Jeremy Childs) is cautiously optimistic about the birth of Elizabeth, as all human births come with complications. The added complication with Elizabeth is that she is the first human clone and her genetics have been modified in hopes of amplifying brain development. Dammit, Victor! Why must you tamper with God’s will!? When Victor returns home, he’s met by his family with mixed emotions. On the one hand, they’re proud of him for the work he’s accomplished, on the other hand, he’s brought unwanted attention to his home. Protesters start gathering outside his home demanding Victor pay for his crimes against God, but he’s not so interested in that. He could be living a totally safe life inside his house, except for the fact that one of his previous, deformed clones is still alive in the attic. Ethan (Isaac Disney) was never supposed to make it longer than a month, so Victor is counting down the days until Ethan dies, but it’s been a few hundred longer than expected. The threat of Victor’s safety becomes a little bit more imminent when Ethan breaks free from the attic. Unsafe in his home, unsafe out of his home, Victor must finally confront the wrath that he’s brought upon himself for challenging God.

Don’t you just love it when a movie can change gears halfway through in an unexpected and enjoyable direction? Did that sound sarcastic? I was trying to be genuine! The moment when your realize that one of Victor’s previous experiments is still alive changes the tone of the film completely and gives every scene a sense of unease. Since Ethan is heard more often than he’s seen, you don’t really know the extent of Victor’s experiments on him. The more effective sequences involve hearing Ethan, yet not knowing what he’s doing. The sounds he’s making through his actions take an immense emotion toll on Mary, Ethan’s caretaker. Mary, played by Shelean Newman was by far the most conflicted and tortured character, and was easily my favorite. Paying a woman to take care of a baby while it’s dying seems torturous enough, nevermind the fact that the baby refuses to die and whose behavior becomes more and more unpredictable, all while getting more emotionally attached to it. There were lots of segments I found really unsettling, and most of them were the unspoken sequences involving Mary and Ethan.

Writer/director Billy Senese took a highly controversial topic and showed us the horrors of both sides. On the one hand, you had religious fanatics expressing their outrage at the situation while threatening physical violence while also showing the real world consequences of Victor’s attempts at playing God. Granted, the societal threats are a little bit more believable than the literal threats of a deformed humanoid creature coming after you, but Senese wasn’t trying to play the zealots like they were wrong for what they were doing. I was a little hesitant when I saw that Closer to God was listed as a “drama” and wondered why it was at a genre festival, and now I know why. Sure, the film can be right at home with other hard sci-fi films like Moon or the genre straddling Proxy, but it also tap into a primal fear of the “other” and is at its most effective when it’s not showing you exactly what you’re dealing with. Do you remember the Treehouse of Horror episode where it’s revealed that Bart has a monstrous twin living in the attic? Well, imagine if that was turned into an intense sci-fi drama thriller, and that’s Closer to God. Let’s see them put THAT on a poster.

Wolfman Moon Scale

One of the best parts about Fantastic Fest is that it features filmmakers who try to push your preconceived notion as far out of your head as possible and completely blow your mind by hitting you with something that comes out of nowhere. What you think is a relationship drama turns into something supernatural. A romantic comedy turns into a revenge thriller. A yakuza movie turns into a musical with vampires and puppets. However, for as enjoyable as being surprised by a movie can be, there’s also something incredibly refreshing when a movie delivers on all of its promises. One of my most fulfilling theatrical experiences at Fantastic Fest was Cub, which delivered on every promise that it made to you in the opening sequence. Despite it being a relatively straight forward slasher, it included one of the most talked about scenes of the entire festival that completely turned people off from being able to support it, which, at Fantastic Fest, is saying a lot.

What could possibly go wrong?! I mean, nothing bad happened in The Sandlot, right?

The Belgian film opens with a young woman being pursued by an unseen force deep in the woods. Right when she thinks she’s made it to safety, the threat catches up with her. So, yeah, these woods have some bad shit going on in them. According to local law enforcement, there’s been quite a few disappearances in those woods ever since the lumber mill was shut down. This won’t stop a group of  from camping there for the night! The film focuses on one 12 year-old named Sam (Maurice Luijten) who is bullied by the other children. Apparently the scout leaders are aware of Sam having a troubled past, but they still don’t do much to intervene. Rather, they build up a myth in the boys’ heads about a creature that lives in the woods. As bad things start happening to those visiting the woods, it becomes clear that there’s evil with them in those woods and that no one is safe.

Well maybe your nose would stop bleeding if you kept your finger out of there.

Before talking about the quality of the film, most people expressed their opinions on a scene that focused on violence towards a helpless animal. It seemed like a lot of movies at Fantastic Fest coincidentally featured violence towards animals, but the violence in Cub seemed to be too much. I beg to differ, as I believe the violence towards a dog in Cub was the most justified violence I had seen in any film featuring similar situations. The scene focused on a helpless animal and refused to turn away from the violence one character was able to carry out on the animal. It was long, it was torturous, it was hard to sit through, and it made the film all the more effective. In a movie like John Wick, about a hit man seeking revenge on the people who killed his puppy, it could have been any number of triggers to kickstart his rampage. In other films, dogs who weren’t featured all that much were randomly killed off as more fodder to show just how far the filmmakers were willing to go. The problem isn’t filmmakers killing dogs, the problem is audiences who aren’t shocked by anything anymore, so what better way than to kill a purely innocent being that so many people have strong emotional connections to? In that respect, I don’t think I could’ve liked Cub as much without the extreme animal violence.

Of course you guys will be safe! You’ve got a big, tough army truck!

That being said, man, I fucking dug this movie. I almost feel bad liking it so much because of the animal violence and how I might be judged, but I don’t care, this movie is awesome. I haven’t been this impressed with the cinematography and sound design since High Tension. The film takes place almost exclusively in the woods and many scenes are lit merely by flashlight or campfire. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the name “Steve Moore” in the opening credits, and I partly didn’t understand the credits because they weren’t in English. Steve Moore is half of one of my favorite bands, Zombi, known for their heavy bass and trippy synth sounds that pays respects to artists like Goblin or Fabio Frizzi. The music is one of my favorite scores of the year, right up there with that other score that Steve Moore did from, oh wait, that’s right, The Guest. Another one of my favorite movies of the year. Goddamn you, Steve. How can you make such groovy tunes?!

This year’s You’re Next mask?

If a film is willing to torture a dog, you can bet your ass that they aren’t going to take it easy on their main characters, no matter how old they are. No one is safe in Cub and the filmmakers don’t hold back. Oh, that’s reminds me, you know how I’m pissed at Steve Moore for how talented he is? The same can be said of writer/director Jonas Govaerts, because this is his first goddamned movie. And it’s awesome. Whether you could sit through the animal violence or not, there’s no doubt that Govaerts made an incredibly effective movie. He took a tried and true formula and executed it quite well, but still managed to surprise the audience. Cub is dark, violent, gorgeous, and doesn’t pull any punches. Just don’t let your dogs watch it.

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Official Site

IMDb

Remember when we all first saw The Matrix and thought it was the coolest movie we had ever seen? We remembered Keanu Reeves from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Point Break, but this was his big chance! He starred in one of the most ground-breaking science fiction movies since Star Wars and he was destined to only do awesome things. His career after those films was…weird. He was involved in a couple of psychological thrillers like The Watcher and The Gift, as well as more romantic fare like Sweet November and The Lake House, but still had some sci-fi chops with A Scanner Darkly, Constantine, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. As he’s entering the fourth decade of his career, he seems to be experimenting a little bit more by making the movie HE wants to make. Luckily for audiences everywhere, Reeves wants to star in movies like John Wick, because John Wick was goddamned awesome.

Sad John Wick at a human funeral, NOT a puppy funeral.

Reeves plays the titular Wick, a man who suddenly loses his wife. Clearly at a loss for how to spend the rest of his life, a mysterious package arrives for him the day of his wife’s funeral. A note accompanies this package and it’s from his late wife, giving him one last gift in hopes of it helping John. What is it? IT’S A GODDAMNED BEAGLE PUPPY. Wick, being a human, falls for the puppy and attempts to take care of it. In a chance altercation at a gas station, Wick inadvertently offends a Russian mobster, played Alfie Allen, also known as the dick-ish Theon Greyjoy from Game of Thrones. Heh. Dick-ish. Anyways, this altercation results in this mobster tracking down John Wick, breaking into his house, beating him, and murdering his puppy. YOU ASSHOLE. Oh yeah, he also steals John Wick’s car, which is ultimately what he was after when he broke in. Unfortunately for Theon Greyjoy, John Wick is a retired hitman that’s described as the guy you call to KILL the Boogeyman. As you can imagine, the film then plays out in a series of gun fights, head smashes, throat punches, car crashes, and cameos by great character actors.

Theon Greyjoy, you are just THE worst, aren’t you?

I’ve said on this site before that a straight up “action” movie isn’t normally my cup of tea. Luckily, John Wick isn’t a straight up action movie. The film walks that line between action fantasy and action reality, because obviously nobody can ACTUALLY do any of the things Keanu is doing in this movie…can they? No, probably not, but it’s grounded enough in reality that you can still be surprised at a specific neck snap or throat stab. Wick is a man of few words, but Keanu is no stranger to getting physical and hands-on in his roles, so watching him kick ass was more believable than a lot of other Hollywood actors. Also surprising is that this is the first feature film directed by David Leitch and Chad Stahelski. Not so surprsing? Between the two of them, they have more than 150 stunt credits to their name. So, yeah, these guys know their shit. I haven’t been more entertained or surprised by an action film since The Raid films or Dredd. Admittedly, this film isn’t as good as those films, but as entertaining? Oh hell yes.

OH DID I MENTION JOHN WICK WEARS A TURTLENECK AND A BLAZER AND HAS KINDA LONG HAIR? HE TOTALLY DOES.

Reeves maintained the cool, quiet archetype well, but luckily he was surrounded by a great supporting cast. Alfie Allen’s face just screams “I’m a spoiled prick” in every scene, only to be heightened with his father to put him in his place, played by Michael Nyqvist. Wick got to face off against a female assassin out to cash in on the bounty placed on Wick’s head, played by Adrianne Palicki, who might not have had the same natural ass-kicking abilities of a Gina Carano, but don’t be surprised to see Palicki popping up in more heavily physical roles. As Wick comes further out of retirement, he crosses paths with more and more actors that make you nudge your friend and say, “It’s that guy!” From Lance Reddick to Ian McShane to John Leguizamo, the background is packed with familiar faces. Oh yeah, not to mention Willem Dafoe in all his “Hey John Wick, I’m just trying to give you helpful advice” glory.

John Wick, you can’t have a gun in church! Man, I wonder what the budget was a blue and green lights was.

The film’s plot serves as a reason for John Wick to punch guys in the face. Nothing more, nothing less. John Wick could’ve gone on a violent rampage for any number of reasons, so the filmmakers decided to tap in to the most primal feelings of all: people love puppies. There was a lot of talk about treatment of dogs in films at Fantastic Fest this year, and John Wick was no exception. It’s strange to me that a film like Cub, which has an extended sequence of violence towards a dog which is essential to character development, got so much flack when John Wick was overlooked. I don’t chastise the filmmakers for choosing a puppy murder to spark the rampage, just interesting that so many people were willing to overlook the canine casualty, possibly because the bad guys got what they deserved. Puppy deaths aside, John Wick was another one of the most satisfying movie experiences I had at Fantastic Fest and I couldn’t think of any way to make the experience. Unless, of course, they announced right then and there how many sequels were in the works.

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What did I know about It Follows? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It was my first film of the festival and it was a press screening and I had no idea what I was in for. Of the choices of everything being screened that morning, it sounded the most appealing. On four hours of “sleep” on something that some people might refer to as a “seat,” I filled myself with as much coffee as I could and headed on in. The less you know about this movie, and generally any movie, the better. In short, It Follows is a wonderfully shot story that plays on sexual myths of teenagers with a really dark twist that has great sound design and has some of the best stalker sequences since John Carpenter’s Halloween. There’s some flaws in the third act, but, well, it’s still real good.

If you’re in a car, you need to be wearing a seatbelt.

In the opening minutes of the film, a girl is being stalked by something unseen and she meets a grisly demise. We then meet Hugh (Jake Weary) and Jay (Maika Monroe), two cute teenagers on a date. When something spooks Hugh, they abandon the date. The two go on another date and they take their relationship to a more physical level, only for Hugh to reveal that now something will stalk Jay. It might be someone who looks familiar or like someone she’s never seen before, but whoever it is, they won’t stop. The stalking figure will only ever walk slowly, but no matter how far she runs, it will catch up to her, unless she sleeps with someone and this entity will then make that person the target. Jay and her group of friends must figure out how to stop it for good and break the chain of this sexually transmitted pursuer. An “STP” if you will. Wait, like Stone Temple Pilots! This movie is basically about the Stone Temple Pilots.

It’s like she’s staring into my heart and there is NO way she likes what she sees.

There’s a lot about It Follows that sets it apart from so many other horror films, be it contemporary or classic. The film ambitiously combines lots of different elements into a unique cacophony of dread. The sexual themes depicted in the film remind me very much of the Charles Burns graphic novel Black Hole in that sex in both stories will always end poorly, just to varying degrees of consequence. In the real world, sex can lead to pregnancy, STDs, and death. Those aren’t certainties with the right protective measures, but in It Follows, there is a direct cause-and-effect. Sleep with someone, and they will be stalked by something that cannot be stopped. The joy of sex is almost completely removed and merely serves as a way of delaying your own mortality. In that respect, it does feel like it reflects the real world in the sex, or generally any expression of a human connection, is a reminder of how good it feels to be alive and a distraction that we will all ultimately die.

Hey you big sissy with the flashlight, stop hiding behind the pretty lady in the wheelchair!

Sex is often symbolic of punishment in films, particularly in the slasher genre, and It Follows approaches the subject from a completely different perspective. What makes a movie like Halloween so successful is the idea of this unstoppable “shape” that will never stop. You might be able to hide from it, or possibly injure it, but it will keep coming. This sense of dread is incredibly overwhelming throughout most of the film, because you never really know quite how far the characters have to retreat to buy themselves enough time. Sometimes they escape this force for a few hours, a few days, but the characters are always on their guard and can never truly breathe a sigh of relief. In that respect, changing what could have been a stereotypical slasher character into a possible shape-shifting supernatural entity as a highly original concept.

I guess Maika Monroe does kind of stare at the camera a lot in this movie, doesn’t she?

All of these great concepts come thanks to writer/director David Robert Mitchell in this remarkable first foray into feature-length horror filmmaking. A growing trend over the past few years is to emulate films from the 1980’s, which It Follows does at times. Themes of sexuality and taboos amongst high school teens feels similar to films from the 80’s, along with an aesthetic that feels vintage, but that’s where the similarities to that decade end. The film’s cinematography really makes it stand out in its bold camerawork, from an escape in a wheelchair the focuses solely on the face of the victim without much idea of what’s pursuing them to a shot that pans 540 degrees and ends with a slow zoom. Very impressive visually, but also has great sound design with both musical choices and editing. The film didn’t need cheap jump scares to creep you out, but tossing in some musical stings at select reveals created some of the most effective and talked about scares of the whole festival.

Unfortunately there’s still the “awkward friend in love with hot girl” character, but I can’t really blame him.

Despite how many strengths the film has, it’s not without its flaws. Despite how interesting the concept is, that writing isn’t really reflected as well in the dialogue. The cast was clearly talented, and I appreciate that the dialogue didn’t try to make the characters talk like they were in their 30’s, but the more grounded dialogue caused some downtime that would take some of the tension away from a scene. As far as the storyline goes, the first two acts are fantastic, but things fell apart for me in the third act. For as ambitious as the concept was, the mythos that was created didn’t really pay off for me in a final conflict. Had the first two acts not been so good, I wouldn’t have had such high hopes for the rest of the film, but hopefully that’s a testament to how good those first two acts were. Ugh. GUYS. I wanted to flat-out love this movie, because there’s a ton of great stuff in it, but I just couldn’t. Regardless of the finale, which redeemed itself a bit with its ambiguity, It Follows is a disturbing foray into inescapable dread and the horrors that can result in rushing into a relationship before finding out if having sex will result in some demon creature following you forever.

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Surely with a name like “Demon,” this movie is a prequel to Demons, right? RIGHT? Okay, well, if it’s not a prequel to Demons, it’s gotta be a romantic comedy about a woman who’s really hard to deal with, right? WRONG AGAIN, DUMMIES. Having read the film’s synopsis and learning about a “wedding” and how that can “change a person,” I guess my mind just jumped to how terribly all of my weddings have gone. Luckily, the wedding featured in Demon went much better than my weddings, and that includes the possible demonic possession! This Polish/Israeli production puts love to the test and makes you question how well you really know your better half, and how much you might have to sacrifice for love.

Hey buddy, your wife? SHE STINKS.

Piotr (Itay Tiran) heads to his bride-to-be’s home in preparation for a long night of celebrating their marriage. Despite not knowing his future son-in-law too well, the bride’s father gives Piotr a plot of land to celebrate the union. While preparing the house for the upcoming festivities, Piotr uncovers what he believes to be human remains. OH NO, THOSE SHOULDN’T BE THERE. On the night of the wedding, things start getting a littttttttttle out of control. Piotr’s behavior becomes erratic, he starts interrogating relatives about what he believes he uncovered, and begins having physical fits and tantrums. Is it the stress of a long, emotional evening that’s getting to Piotr or are there more supernatural forces at work, like a Dybbuk, as one of the wedding guests claims? Well how about you watch the damned movie and figure it out for yourself, BECAUSE I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU.

I promise that your nose won’t bleed as much if you can keep your finger out of there.

I tend to stray away from anything categorized as a “psychological thriller,” because it feels like a generic marketing term, but in the case of Demon, the events of the film really get into your head. Writers Pawel Maslona and Marcin Wrona (who also directed) crafted a story that just often enough hints at otherwordly forces at play while also keeping the story grounded. There exists a unique, specific tension at weddings that facilitates the erratic, exhausted behavior of attendants, making the perfect backdrop for the events of the film. Some people become lucid, some become depressed, some become empowered (thanks to the free-flowing booze), and some people become all three. Add the air of judgement of a father handing his daughter over to a relative stranger to the mix, and Demon captures a powerful cocktail that allows the viewer to think anything is possible. A demonic possession? A medical condition that has gone untreated? ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE AND THAT IS SCARY.

Yes, we get it, you win the King Dancing Man award!

Tiran’s performance really helps sell the conflicting interpretation of event. When you think of traditional “possessions” in films, a person gains super-strength or can do things a regular human couldn’t do. Tiran’s possession is much more subtle and much more fragile. When the film starts, he’s a confident, sometimes brash husband-to-be, but his discovery of human remains begins his descent into confusion, vulnerability, and ultimately fragility. The biggest strength of the film is its ability to walk the line between reality and supernatural. Rarely do films, especially in recent years, show such blatant disregard for an audience’s expectations for definitive answers. For as much as I enjoyed films like Citadel or The Canal, the filmmakers eventually sway you into having a much better grasp on the reality of the story. Instead, Demon leads you down two different paths, and each time you think you see the end in sight, you’re pulled in the other direction, reminding me much more of the quintessential psychological thriller Jacob’s Ladder. Demon will sweep you up in its fervor, question your devotions, exhaust you, and leave you wanting more. Hey, almost like a relationship!

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Who cares what the movie’s about, a name like that is sure to send chills down your bones! Get it? See, I’m making a joke that with a title like “February,” it reminds you of the month of February. Generally, the month of February is cold, thus creating chills. Well, unless you live in a place where it doesn’t get cold in February, then you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. For everyone else, you’re welcome for the hilarious content! Oh boy. Off to a great start. Anyways, I didn’t know much about February going in, other than positive word-of-mouth out of TIFF, and received pleasant surprise after pleasant surprise throughout the viewing experience. Inspired performances, chilling cinematography, and a terrifying narrative come together to tell the twisted tale of nightmares unfolding at a girl’s boarding school in what is in the running for one of my favorite horror films of 2015.

Sally, who’s on the phone? Is it Glenn? YOU HANG UP, GLENN’S A WEIRDO.

February tells the tale of three women clearly experiencing times of stress and uncertainty. Katherine (Kiernan Shipka) prepares for spring vacation by performing a song for her school, but with her parents not being in attendance, feels disappointed. Even worse, this might result in her having to stay at the Catholic school. Similarly, Rose’s (Lucy Boynton) family has yet to show up, forcing her to connect with Kat, despite being in the middle of a pregnancy scare. We also meet Joan (Emma Roberts), a young woman with nowhere to go and no one she can turn to after leaving a psychiatric ward, and must rely on the kindness of strangers to survive. The creepy emptiness of the school gets to Rose, who hopes for a way out, while Kat begins to take comfort in the in the looming darkness of their situation. Meanwhile, a series of coincidences puts Joan on a path towards the school, a place she seems to have a connection to. I’ll leave it at that, because the less you know, the better. Plus, you might be too scared already.

You reallllllly shouldn’t huff paint like that, Emma.

Man oh man, where do I begin to discuss how much I liked about February without just blabbering like an idiot? For those of you who say I already sound like an idiot, I agree. Anyways, my first reaction to the movie was exclaiming, “Oh crap, that’s Sally Draper!” I was always a fan of Shipka’s work in Mad Men so I was thrilled to see her pop up in a genre film. Clearly she got a few tips from Jon Hamm about portraying a character clearly detached from reality while also conveying fragility and vulnerability. Boynton exquisitely walked the line of excluding the younger girl at school while also possessing a charm and likability that the audience could connect with. I’ve been a fan of Roberts since her Hotel for Dogs days, and she gives a subtle yet compellingly distraught performance. James Remar and Lauren Holly help round out the supporting cast, but it’s the three female leads that really shine.

You really need to be more careful when filing your nails.

Have you ever felt like February might be the shortest month because it’s the most miserable time of the year and even the Gregorians wanted to get it over with A.S.A.P.? Writer and first-time director Osgood Perkins teamed up with cinematographer Julie Kirkwood managed to capture everything I hated about the month of February and put it up on-screen. The punishing cold, the desolation, the exhaustion of winter, and general unease of being trapped indoors in the frigid northeast for a few too many days. Setting the story at the brink of spring break, right when our characters should be getting respite from the bleakness, only to have it snatched away, only heightened the desperation of the characters. There are a few moments with supernatural imagery, and February took a “less is more” approach by under-lighting sinister sequences or making demonic figures appear out of focus. This technique makes the viewer work harder and strain to find nefarious elements in seemingly empty shots, trying to grasp if what we saw was actually happening, much in the same way the characters in the film struggled to discover the reality of their situations.

What’s wrong with trying to stay warm by the fire?

Guys…it’s so damned hard not spoiling things in this movie for you. I’M SO EXCITED BY IT. With the current trend of horror films rekindling the spirit of the ’80s, February digs much deeper, channeling Polanski, The Shining, and other Satanic paranoia films of the ’60s. The film leads you down dark paths to the most terrifying corners of your mind. You’re left guessing what’s truly happening and what’s all in someone’s head. There isn’t much reason to revisit psychological thrillers that reveal everything in their climax, proving that much of the film’s joy comes from learning about the reality. February not only leaves its ending ambiguous, but even if you do draw conclusions from context clues throughout the film, it crafts such an interesting world that I can’t wait to revisit it and try to extract more clues. The film doesn’t need to reinvent the genre, nor does it attempt to, but it proves that if you take a great cast, atmosphere, and concept, you can craft a bleak, gripping descent into madness that leaves you with more questions than answers.

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How awesome was King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters? SO AWESOME. Thinking that someone like Billy Mitchell could exist in the real world and he could spark such a passionate rivalry over something silly like Donkey Kong was truly something to behold. Well, if you were a fan of that documentary that chronicled average people trying to achieve significant challenge within the world of something relatively mundane, then you’ll love Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler! It’s funny, inspiring, hard to believe, and provides more evidence that people love participating in trends more than pursuing their own interests.

What dreams are made of.

Remember that game on early cell phones where you controlled a snake who needed to eat little dots, but each dot made your tail grow longer? Well, that’s what Nibbler is. But long before cell phones, Tim McVey (not, not that one) set the high score on the Nibbler arcade game at the legendary Twin Galaxies in Ottumwa, IA. Nibbler marked the first arcade game with a nine digit high score, meaning it was the first game capable of scoring a billion points on, and McVey did just that. That record stood for over two decades, until challenger Dwayne Richard, the bad boy of gaming, set out to challenge that score. What’s the big deal? Well, getting a score that high takes no less than 35 hours, no matter how well you play the game. Man vs Snake documents the duo’s attempts to become the greatest Nibbler player of all-time, from public arenas to in-home competitions, including technical tinkering, disputed numbers, and over holiday weekends. Man…it’s so awesome that these guys love anything this much.

Tim McVey proves only the biggest badasses get an arcade cabinet in their house.

The story of pursuing the high score on Nibbler, goddamned NIBBLER, is highly entertaining. Since this is a documentary, it’s hard to evaluate the content presented, but watching these two adults pursue greatness in the world of video games will put a smile on anyone’s face. The film knows how silly the premise is, and directors Tim Kinzy and Andrew Seklir don’t take the subject matter more seriously than it needs to be. For example, in certain sequences set in the ’80s, there is no footage available, so the film opts for animating these sequences in a Bob’s Burgers style of animation. These animated sequences entertained me so much that I could have watched a film of just those, but seeing the real people behind this crazy story helped remind you that yes, truth is stranger than fiction. Ugh. Did I really just say that? Kill me.

Oh, the ’80s, what a time to be alive!

Throughout most of the film, I just sat back and enjoyed the silliness of the stakes of it all. Unfortunately, the end of the film left a bad taste in my mouth, but not because of anything the film did poorly. I don’t want to spoil the specific story of Tim McVey and Dwayne Richard, but I will say that one of them does set the new record. The film ends with a montage of people around the world joining in on the record breaking attempts. When the new record was set, it seems like people who might not have even heard of Nibbler set out to destroy it just because they could. Nibbler didn’t have a legend until Tim McVey and Dwayne Richard helped put it on the map. Is Nibbler a great game? No. Not at all. Even the film’s subjects mention that getting the score has more to do with mental endurance than enjoyment of the game. Man vs Snake inspired me to pursue greatness, but showed me that I could define what greatness meant and I could achieve it in a variety of ways (and I already have achieved greatness in many ways). The film’s ending inadvertently reminded me how many people out there pursue greatness based on someone else’s definition instead of carving their own path. Granted, the people showcased at the end of the film could have been pursuing the record along with McVey and Richard and the film chose not to highlight them, but I think it’s safe to say a lot more people will now know the name “Nibbler” because a highly entertaining film featured the forgotten game as opposed to it being a game of note. In other words, Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler highlights the best in humanity and their pursuit for greatness in heartwarming, hilarious ways, but it is sure to create copycats who are so unoriginal that they have to feign interest in a game that was taken off of cell phones years ago.

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