Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

After Dark Horrorfest IV Main Event trailer

Once again After Dark Films's Horrorfest, which opens this weekend at select theaters, is showing nowhere near enough for me to be able to spend a weekend binging on predominantly cheesy DTV horror flicks getting a brief moment of Big Screen stardom.  Pity.  Even moreso because the offerings this year seem to be their best yet.

Anyway, here is the trailer:

After Dark Horrorfest III trailer

After Dark Horrorfest III: Perkins 14 poster

I don't know about you, but I was more than a little bummed that there wasn't a Horrorfest 2008.  November 2008 just wasn't the same.  But at least there is another one and January 9th, 2009 is just around the corner.  Time to start looking at what they're going to be offering.

Perkins 14 sounds to be a member of the "zombie that's not a zombie" genre.  Perkins has abducted, tortured and brainwashed fourteen people; creating an army of mindless killers to defend him.  When a police officer, and the father of one of Perkins victims, kills Perkins, the psychotic's army of psychotics bust loose and start busting heads.

This could go either way, like any movie, but I do like the concept and how the deadly siege (there's always a deadly siege in these movies) that will more than likely be the focus of the film's "third act" will focus on the police officer (and his wife and their daughter) fighting against his brainwashed son.  Something like that could give the movie some emotional oompf, or just some "Oh, the humanity" melodramatic mawkishness to giggle at.

Nonetheless, Perkins 14 is on my "I'm looking forward to seeing this at Horrorfest" list.

Horrorfest 2007: The Aftermath

Now that Horrorfest 2007 has come and, more or less, gone (as I type this there is one more weekend for it to limp through, but there are rumors of screenings being canceled), all I can think is, "Wow, what a difference a year can make."

Horrorfest 2006, backed by a highly effective, albeit highly misleading, ad campaign, managed to do what no other film festival to date has done.  Crack the top ten box office by raking in a somewhat impressive 2.6 million on a mere 500 screens.  Horrorfest 2007 opened on only 350 screens this year and, with a projected $502,000 in opening weekend ticket sales, promptly went down like the Titanic.  This was no Sophomore Slump for the After Dark Films Horrorfest, this was a financial disaster on the level of the Hindenburg.  Looking at those numbers, I have to guess that the chances of a Horrorfest 2008 are non-existent to none.

For me, it's a sad and unfortunate thing.  I really love(d) the concept of Horrorfest.  Of giving low budget horror fare a chance to have the spotlight that is now hogged almost entirely by major studio releases.  So my "good" opinion of Horrorfest remains unchanged from the one I had in 2006:

As a life long fan, I adore the concept of a mass market screening of a large number of horror movies over the course of a single weekend.  This gives some small and unique/quirky little movies an opportunity to do what had once been a routine thing for films of this kind; unspooling before an audience in a movie theater.  (Hard as it might be to believe, but films of the type seen at Horrorfest this weekend used to play at movie theaters all the time, with no one batting an eye about it.)  I think it's a great way for small, independent studios to market its product.

I still think that something like Horrorfest can and would work, but After Dark Films fell victim to the very problems I touched upon back in 2006:

Judging by the response of some posters at the Horrorfest message board, not to mention elsewhere, many a consumer felt suckered in by the hyperbole of the event's ad campaign.  All I can say about that is, if you are going to market your event as some kind of transgressive cinematic experience, then it would be in your best interest to have at least one or two of the movies in the line-up be able to live up to that hype.  As for myself, I went in expecting to see films that were DTV fodder and, for the most part, that is exactly what I got.  Of the 8 Films to Die For, only Reincarnation, The Abandoned, and The Hamiltons seemed viable as commercial releases.  If they were released to the Art Houses, that is.

After Dark Films now finds itself to be in a rather unenviable position if it chooses to mount a Horrorfest 2.  (According to this article on the event at Fangoria's web page, the plan is precisely that - to make Horrorfest an annual event.)  Audience response to the event ranged from fairly positive, to pretty much indifferent, and all the way down to acutely hostile.  The latter group, of course, will be the most vocal and, over the course of the next few months, negative word of mouth about Horrorfest will spread rather quickly.  Of course, all the hate for the Saw movies hasn't impacted the ticket sales one bit, but I do think that the next Horrorfest really needs to amp up the content mojo more than a little bit.  I'd argue that the fest will need a "superstar" entry (Saw IV, Argento's Third Mother movie, or George Romero's Diary of the Dead, for example) to galvanize ticket sales, which were plagued with problems this year.  One of the biggest, and justified, complaints revolved around there being no event pass.  For Christopher and I, I wound up spending $185.00 dollars on tickets alone.  Now I consider that to be money well spent, but others clearly do not.  If there is a Horrorfest 2, then there needs to be some way in which the ticket cost can be brought down for the consumer; either an event pass or, if that issue still cannot be resolved next year, then couple the films together as double bills and give the consumer two movies for the price of one.

While the "All Access" event pass did come to, uh, pass, no significant improvement in programming did, and I think that was what ulitmately killed Horrorfest in 2007.  There was no "superstar" entry to generate interest in the genre curious mainstream audiences, or to bring back any and all that felt got suckered by the highly effective, yet highly misleading, 2006 trailer:

Yeah, the Fest was nothing like it was advertised, but the toned down (in terms of hyperbole, that is) 2007 trailer, while arguably more accurate from a marketing standpoint, wasn't nearly as effective:

I blame the content, or utter lack thereof.  I am a decent sized and fairly forgiving horror buff, but this year's line-up had me scratching my head and going, "Huh?"  There wasn't a strong buzz movie in the bunch, unless you want to count the overwhelming amount of negative buzz that is humming around Unearthed.  Horrorfest 2007 did have the opportunity, when After Dark Films acquired the violent, and now NC-17 rated, French thriller Frontieres as part of the original line-up.  But the film had to be pulled due After Dark Films contractual obligation to release R-rated movies in the Horrorfest line-up.  While I admire After Dark Films for sticking to its guns and going for a separate NC-17 release for Frontieres, I cannot admire them for the overall poor choices for Horrorfest 2007.  The Deaths of Ian Stone (while arguably one of the event's best movies) and Tooth and Nail were both films that just did not belong in something calling itself a Horrorfest.  Especially Tooth And Nail, that cinematic turd was something barely suitable for airing on the Sci-Fi Channel.  Then again, the Sci-Fi Channel's logo was prominantly featured on the Horrorfest web page, so I guess a Horrorfest marathon of sorts might be airing at some on the in name only Sci-Fi Channel.

What was needed was something that gave audiences something to look forward to.  Content that would get ticket buyers excited and willing to plunk down cash for a ticket, or an All Access Pass (two of which I purchased, with zero regrets).  It didn't happen, and now it looks like a Horrorfest 2008 won't happen either.

Horrorfest 2007: Day 3 - Nightmare Man and Crazy Eights

Nightmare Man

After receiving a strange mask in the mail, Ellen Morris (Blythe Metz) is plagued with a phobic terror of an entity she calls the "Nightmare Man."  Her husband Bill, however, is convinced that Ellen needs intensive psychiatric help and he attempts to place her in a mental hospital.  When the trip to the hospital is cut short by car trouble, Bill leaves Ellen to get help.  The Nightmare Man then appears and Ellen, who flees into the woods, soon becomes trapped in a cabin with several other potential victims.

Rolfe Kanefsky doesn't take any chances with Nightmare Man.  He throws every conceivable plot development twist and turn into his script to keep it interesting, with nary a concern about whether or not any of the outlandish developments makes a lick of sense at the end.  The result is an entertainingly chaotic movie that delivers an acceptable level of chuckles (both intentional and unintentional) and some genuine jolts.  Most of those jolts can be found in the film's first twenty or so minutes, when an isolated Ellen is tormented by the Nightmare Man in both her dreams and in reality.

But when the party in the cabin is introduced, the film's tone shifts from dead serious to comedic fast enough to cause whiplash in any and all unsuspecting viewers.  During the introductions of the supporting players Kanefsky attempts some artful touches by switching back and forth from Ellen's life and death struggle against the Nightmare Man and the game of "Erotic Truth of Dare" going on in the cabin.  One particularly nice sequence is the cutting to and from Ellen's grunting and gasping battle for her life and Trinity's (the cute as a button Hanna Putnam) grunting and gasping as she fakes an orgasm.  It's not exactly the most subtle wink and nudge to the "sex and death" theme that runs through just about every horror story, but it's an effective one. 

Now that I think of it, the very same thing could be said about Nightmare Man.  It's not particularly subtle, but it is effective.

Crazy Eights

Six friends gather together to say their good-byes to a dear, dead friend.  Then the discovery of a map sends them in search of long buried secrets, traumas, and a "mysterious dead girl" that will lead them to "strange fates."

Crazy Eights screams "STORY?  I DON'T NEED NO STINKING STORY!" loud and proud.  While it doesn't make one bit of sense, it nonetheless drips with enough creepy atmosphere for two horror movies and is stuffed with cheap scares.  Scares that I was very happy to find did not rely on some sound effect or music cue going BAM! to make me jump.  At least I don't recall the movie doing that with any regularity.  I do know that, while I didn't jump, my heart did lurch a couple of times.

But I did question just what the hell was going half the time.  As the events unfolded with all the logic of a vivid dream,  I could not help but wonder if the clues to the mystery behind the And Then There Were None meets Session 9 style plot were coyly hidden in plain sight of the viewer.  Everything seems to be there, or is it?  I don't know.  But I do know that Crazy Eights defied my harsh expectations completely.  During its brisk 75 minute running time, it managed to crawl under my skin and stay there, and I could not stop thinking about it during the long drive home in the dead of night.

Horrofest 2007: Day 2 - Lake Dead, Mulberry Street, and Tooth And Nail

Lake Dead

Three sisters journey into the back country to inspect an isolated hotel they have inherited.  The psychotic inbreds that live at the hotel welcome the sisters and their friends with open and blood-soaked arms.

In my pre-screening comment about Lake Dead I said, "If the tale is well told, then it's all good, isn't it?"  Well it isn't, and it isn't.  The trailer for Lake Dead gives away it's "sick twist," so I just sat there waiting for the sisters to discover what I already knew, that the family at the Lake Motel were all kin of theirs and they were lured up to the motel for breeding purposes.  It felt like a long wait, I tell you.  A very long wait.  An hour or so I waited.  I know this because I kept checking my watch, waiting for the reveal and the film to get intense.  Well, the reveal finally happened, but the film never got intense.  Not once.  Good, mythical lord was this movie boring.  If you never see it, you won't have missed a thing.

Mulberry Street

The residents of an apartment complex on New York City's Mulberry Street find their day going from bad to worse.  First an Urban Renewal Project threatens them with eviction, then a rat carried plague begins turning people into carnivorous rat monsters.  Will any of them survive?

My second night at Horrorfest 2007 was redeemed by this nifty little no budget thriller.  While it's visual scope clearly exceeds its budgetary restraints at times, it still manage several truly intense sequences (and one or two unintentionally funny ones also, something that is bound to happen with productions like this).  Co-writer and director Jim Mickle clearly took a page from George A. Romero's social commentary playbook and crafted a film that makes a wonderful thematic double feature for Romero's cult favorite, The Crazies.  This is definitely one film that I will be adding to my DVD collection in the near future.

Speaking of the near future...

Tooth and Nail

Small group of survivors - blah-blah-blah - Post-Apocalyptic World - yadda-yadda-yadda - roving band of cannibals called Rovers - they fight-fight-fight...

In 2012 the world ran out of gas and society, deprived of energy, food and SUVs, quickly collapsed and degenerated into savagery.  The Professor (Robert Carradine) leads a cantankerous group of young adult survivors all named after cars.  There's Ford (Rider Strong), Dakota, Viper, Neon, Nova and some Rover chow character(s) too unimportant and/or uninteresting and/or undeveloped for their names to stick in my mind.  Oh, and the Rovers were all named after animals.  Because, well, they're all so animalistic, I guess.  Actually they all looked like cast members in a cheap road show version of Mad Max.

Tooth And Nail flat out doesn't belong in any kind of festival that dares to call itself Horrorfest, because it isn't a horror movie.  Not by a long shot.  It's also not an exciting movie, or an interesting movie.  It's the blandest, most cliched, and flat out boring piece of crap that it has been my displeasure to sit through in quite some time.  It's so bad that it qualifies as one of those bogus Sci-Fi Original movies the network airs every Saturday night.

The film's green-themed environmentalist message is so blatant that calling it heavy handed just makes it sound subtle to me.  But once the movie has shot it's thematic wad into the audience's face in the first five or so minutes, there isn't a single thing for the movie to do after that.  So you sit there and just watch the Rovers stroll in every night, kill someone, and stroll on out.  The band of survivors are all about as tough as a vat of thawed Cool Whip, and just as interesting.  It was impossible for me to care whether any of them lived or died.  Ditto the Rovers.

I hope I never see this movie again and, if this is the kind of product that After Dark Films passes over the likes of The Girl Next Door and Neighborhood Watch for, then I just might find myself hoping that I'm never foolish enough to pay to see a full Horrorfest line-up again, either.

Horrorfest 2007: Day 1 - Unearthed and The Deaths of Ian Stone

Unearthed

When an archaeologist unearths a 900 year old creature, it makes up for lost time by immediately going on a vicious killing spree.

Yes, the plot is pretty much that simple.  But if the concept isn't broke, then why bother to fix it?  I will tell you what needed fixing, though.  Writer/director Matthew (Dead and Breakfast) Leutwyler's script.  All the necessary monster movie beats were there, but what was missing from Unearthed was a narrative that would put all those beats into a pattern that made some kind of sense.  While there was some intriguing story potential sprinkled throughout, more than enough to have me thinking that the script only needed another draft or two of tinkering to really cook, those opportunities are only touched upon, not explored in any meaningful manner.  Completely unexplored is the tat-faced archaeologist, his Ahabesque obsession with the ancient beast is never explained, not even in a toss away line of dialog.  But the real kicker, one that had me slack jawed with amazement, was the nature of the beast itself.  My God, Matthew Leutwyler has actually made an unofficial remake of The Creeping Terror!

 

The Deaths of Ian Stone

Every day Ian Stone wakes up in a different life, only to die a violent death later that same day.  As Ian tries to find the reason for why this is happening to him, his deaths become increasingly violent and nightmarish.  Something is hunting Ian Stone...

Although I can't really qualify The Deaths of Ian Stone as a "traditional" horror movie, it's really more of a dark fantasy, I can say that it has made the short list of this year's Horrorfest entries that I would be more than willing to watch again.  Hell, I might even spring for a DVD at some point.  Although the film had a few too many visual nods to Jacob's Ladder, and way too many visual nods to The Matrix, screenwriter Brendon (They) Hood and director Dario Piana managed to infuse their movie with a distinctive identity of its very own.  However, Hood's script is encumbered with several clumsy expository dialog exchanges to explain just what the hell is going on, but my gut instinct tells me that this might be the result of a longer script having been clipped and tightened to fit a smaller budget and shorter production time.  Director Dario Piana definitely earned his keep on this film.  The pace is quick, but not too quick, and the performances by the lead actors are quite good for a film of this type.  It's not a classic, but it is an entertaining way to pass 80 or so minutes in The Twilight Zone.

The Deaths of Ian Stone was one of the few movies in the Horrorfest 2007 line-up that was actually looking forward to seeing, Unearthed and Mulberry Street are the other two.  I am very happy to say that I did not walk out of the theater disappointed that I had done so.

Due to fatigue and a long drive home, I had to skip the screening of movie three, Borderland.

Countdown to Horrorfest 2007: Movie #8: Lake Dead

Three sisters journey into the back country to inspect an isolated hotel they have inherited.  The psychotic - and no doubt inbred - family that is currently living at the hotel welcome the sisters and their friends with open and blood-soaked arms.

Lake Dead is the flip side of the "Don't Venture Into Unknown Territory," of which another Horrorfest 2007 offering, Borderland, is the other.  Borderland, like Hostel and Turistas, exploited the American anxiety of traveling abroad in these paranoid and (artificially, I say) terrorism saturated times.  The flip side of this is the backwoods inbred sub-genre, which got its biggest commercial boost from the 1974 one-two punch of Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  But Herschel Gordon Lewis did the very same time with 2000 Maniacs, way back in 1962 or 63.  As you can see, Lake Dead isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before...countless times.  But if the tale is well told, then it's all good, isn't it?

Here's the trailer:

Countdown to Horrofest 2007: Movie #7: Tooth and Nail

Small group of survivors - blah-blah-blah - Post-Apocalyptic World - yadda-yadda-yadda - roving band of cannibals called Rovers - fight-fight-fight...

What the hell is this, the 80s?  I swear I saw about a gazillion Italian Road Warrior knock-offs, most of which seemed to star Michael Sopkiw and were directed by Lamberto Bava, with the exact same plot as Tooth and Nail.

At least the flick has this Crazy Ass Chick in it:

Countdown to Horrorfest 2007: Movie #6: Borderland

Three Texas University students cross the border into Mexico so they can properly celebrate their pending graduation by getting drunk and getting laid.  Not necessarily in that order, I would hope.  Instead of a good time the three students find themselves hunted by a cult hellbent on making them their next human sacrifices.

If I had a dime for every "Based On A True Story" (bogus or otherwise) horror flick that has come down the pike, I'd probably have more money than this movie cost to make.  I look at this film's trailer (viewable here) and all I think is that Eli Roth decided to remake The Wicker Man as Hostel Part 3.

Wake me when this one's over.

Countdown to Horrorfest 2007: Movie #5: Unearthed

When an archaeologist unearths a 900 year old creature, it makes up for lost time by immediately going on a vicious killing spree.

Unearthed currently holds the number two slot on my "Horrorfest 2007 movies that I really want to see" list, bumping The Deaths of Ian Stone to the number three space.  It's not that I think Unearthed will be the better movie, because it probably won't be.  It's just that I am a monster movie fan before all else and Unearthed looks to be an old school monster movie.  You can catch the trailer here.

Countdown to Horrorfest 2007: Movie #4: Crazy Eights

Six friends gather together to say their good-byes to a dear, dead friend.  But the discovery of a map quickly sends them in search of long buried secrets, traumas, and a "mysterious dead girl" that will lead them to "strange fates."

Hey, who the hell put American actors in my Japanese horror movie?  Come on, just look at that promotional poster...why not just call the movie Ring Around A Grudge and be done with it?  Oh, I am so going to use that title some day, so don't even think about stealing it or I'll send some long haired and freaky ass looking spook to torment you.  It'd totally be like a Ramsey Campbell story, only lame and boring, because the Japanese horror movie tropes are so old hat.

As of posting time, there is currently no trailer for the film, nor are there any clips or even a web page.  Are the filmmakers and promoters embarrassed by this movie, or something?  With nothing but my gut instinct to go on, and it's whispering "Boring Retread" in my ear at this very moment (well, that and "I want me some Peanut M&Ms right about now"), I just can't get all that excited about this little mystery movie entry in this year's 8 Films to Die For line-up.  Hell, not even the presence of Traci Lords, Frank Whaley and Dina Meyer in the cast does much for me.  I can only hope that I am wrong and that Crazy Eights turns out to be something worth seeing.

Countdown to Horrorfest 2007: Movie #3: Nightmare Man

After receiving a strange mask as a gift, Ellen Morris (Blythe Metz) is plagued with a phobic terror of an entity she calls the "Nightmare Man."  (Hey, that's the film's title.  Coincidence?  Perhaps, perhaps not.)  Her husband Bill, however, is convinced that Ellen needs intensive psychiatric help and he attempts to place his wife in a mental hospital.  When the trip to the hospital is cut short by car trouble, Bill leaves Ellen to get help.  The Nightmare Man then appears and Ellen, who flees into the woods, soon becomes trapped in a cabin with several other potential victims.

The plot synopsis for Nightmare Man reminds me of a forgotten 80s horror flick called The Slayer.  In that film, a woman who suffers from vivid nightmares of a murderous beast (the Slayer of the title, of course) finds her nightmares becoming reality as the aforementioned murderous beast crosses over into reality (or is it?) and begins killing her friends and relatives during a weekend getaway on an isolated island retreat.  Ironic movie trivia: The Slayer was directed by one J.S. Cardone, who also directed Wicked Little Things, which was one of the "8 Films to Die For" in the Horrorfest 2006 line-up.  Not so ironic movie trivia:  Nightmare Man was directed by Rolfe Kanefsky, the writer/director of the cult horror-comedy There's Nothing Out There and a man who looks to have taken to toiling in the softcore porn arena immediately thereafter (and throughout most of the 90s and 00s).

Oh, and I would be remiss not to state that the fact that "loving husband Bill" conveniently disappearing prior to Nightmare Man's appearance is every bit as suspect as it is cliched.  That particular plot point also makes me wonder if the movie is nothing more than yet another rehash of Diabolique.  As if we really needed one.

Here's a semi-decent trailer for the flick:

And here's one that is just godawful:

I'm not all that excited about seeing Nightmare Man on the big screen.  It just screams DTV junk and it will have to work very hard to not only get my interest, but to hold onto to it as well.

Countdown to Horrorfest 2007: Movie #2: The Deaths of Ian Stone

Every day Ian Stone wakes up in a different life, only to die a violent death later that day.  As Ian tries to find the reason for why this is happening to him, the deaths become increasingly violent and nightmarish.

Now this sounds like an interesting horror movie.  Well, at least it does to me.  Others might shrug their shoulders and say, "Do I really need to see the suicide montage from Groundhog Day stretched to an hour and half and beefed up with yet more long-haired supernatural beasties?"

Well, I do and The Deaths of Ian Stone holds the number two spot for the Horrorfest 2007 entry I most want to see.

Countdown to Horrorfest 2007: Movie #1: Mulberry Street

With Horrorfest 2007 less than a week away, I thought it would be fun to do a brief write up a movie from this year's line-up each and every day until "zero hour" arrives, then I'll review the actual movies themselves.  Come to think of it, I did the very same last year, so it's kind of become a tradition.

I'm going to start off with Mulberry Street, the 28 Days Later style rat virus movie and the one film in the line-up that I'm truly looking forward to seeing on the big screen.  Last year it was The Gravedancers that had me all excited, and I walked away from that movie fairly happy.  The only thing I didn't like about Gravedancers was the ending, when it got all Zardoz via The Blues Brothers.

Mulberry Street tells the terrifying story of a strange, rat carried virus that turns the people it infects into flesh eating rat creatures.  While that particular plot twist, one that the film's trailer is coy about revealing, might sound silly, the advance reviews for the film say that it is a hell of a lot scarier than it sounds.  The outbreak occurs in New York City (so I expect 9/11 references and/or commentary will abound), with the action quickly turning claustrophobic as a group of survivors (one of whom is played by Fangoria Radio hostess Debbie Rochon) struggles to continue surviving in an apartment building located on Mulberry Street.  Hey, that's the film's title!  Coincidence?  Perhaps, perhaps not.

Now here is a trailer from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (which has nothing whatsoever to do with the After Dark Horrorfest):

And here is a Q&A with the film's director:

Horrorfest 2007 trailer

Okay, this trailer is MUCH better and, despite the all over the map quality of the previous Horrorfest, I'm already getting excited about seeing it. I'm a cheap date, sue me.

Penny Dreadful trailer

The Gravedancers trailer

My favorite Horrorfest flick. This trailer is much better than the one After Dark films did.

Horrorfest 2006: Dark Ride (2006)

In 1989 a deformed behemoth of a maniac lurking, and killing, in the bowels of the "Dark Ride" (a boardwalk haunted house attraction) was finally captured and sent to a mental asylum.  Flash forward almost twenty-years.  The psycho manages to escape and return to the "Dark Ride" that he called home.  Also in the "Dark Ride" are a group of college students on a spring break trip, that have decided to save some cash by crashing there for the night.  The imaginary horrors inside this playland house are about to become very real...

Dark Ride was the movie that kicked off Horrorfest, so I guess it would be fitting that it would be the last movie Christopher and I would see.  Like Wicked Little Things,  Dark Ride won't win any awards for originality, but I did think that it had an energy to it that made it easy to like.  I'm guessing co-writer/director Craig Singer took the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" to heart when putting this film together.

In many ways, Dark Ride is very much like its title setting; it moves along its predetermined course in fits and starts, employs a large amount of cheap and easy jump scares, and takes a few unexpected, but not in the least bit surprising, sudden twists.  When I first posted about Horrorfest a week ago, I compared Dark Ride to Tobe Hooper's 1981 schlocker The Funhouse.  That comparison turned out to be very accurate, because the movies are virtually identical.  (The Funhouse is even referenced in the script, the events of that film dismissed by the characters in Dark Ride as "just an urban legend.")  If you have seen one, then you have seen the other (the same thing could be said of just about any slasher movie, really) and if you liked one, then you'll probably like the other.

And now a final thought to add to my previous final thoughts:  I enjoyed Horrorfest immensely and would gladly do it again.  Seeing these low-to-modest budget films took me back to my younger days (oh, how it pains me to say that) when they played on the big screen.  It seems that I wasn't the only one that appreciated it.  According to Box Office Mojo Horrorfest took in an estimated gross of $147,000 on Monday, which is a damn solid showing for something playing on only 488 screens across the nation.  (I'm also fairly certain that the estimated gross for Tuesday will be over $100,000 as well.*)  I'd really like to think that another Horrorfest is a sure thing, but there are other factors to consider: the cost of marketing and distribution, for one, and whether or not the event will generate a noticeable increase in DVD sales of these films.  So all bets are off.  All I can say is that I liked most of the films enough to want to buy them.  I will be purchasing the DVDs of Reincarnation, Unrest, The Gravedancers, Penny Dreadful, and Wicked Little Things, at some point in the future.  Hell, I might even spring for Dark Ride, just for the nostalgic buzz it gave me when I watched it.  That I am sold on six out of the nine movies that were screened seems like a good return on the investment, but that's just me (others might not be feeling so generous) and maybe I'm just a cheap date.

UPDATE: Tuesday's estimated box office sales remained solid, with a gross of $117,000.  I would hazard the guess that the odds favor a Horrorfest 2.

Horrorfest 2006, I miss you already.

Now that Horrorfest has pretty much come and gone (and apparently done a rather decent turn at the box office) it is time to ruminate on the good, the bad, and the ugly of this unique "event."

The good: As a life long fan, I adore the concept of a mass market screening of a large number of horror movies over the course of a single weekend.  This gives some small and unique/quirky little movies an opportunity to do what had once been a routine thing for films of this kind; unspooling before an audience in a movie theater.  (Hard as it might be to believe, but films of the type seen at Horrorfest this weekend used to play at movie theaters all the time, with no one batting an eye about it.)  I think it's a great way for small, independent studios to market its product.

The bad: Judging by the response of some posters at the Horrorfest message board, not to mention elsewhere, many a consumer felt suckered in by the hyperbole of the event's ad campaign.  All I can say about that is, if you are going to market your event as some kind of transgressive cinematic experience, then it would be in your best interest to have at least one or two of the movies in the line-up be able to live up to that hype.  As for myself, I went in expecting to see films that were DTV fodder and, for the most part, that is exactly what I got.  Of the 8 Films to Die For, only Reincarnation, The Abandoned, and The Hamiltons seemed viable as commercial releases.  If they were released to the Art Houses, that is.  Which segues us into...

The Ugly:  After Dark Films now finds itself to be in a rather unenviable position if it chooses to mount a Horrorfest 2.  (According to this article on the event at Fangoria's web page, the plan is precisely that - to make Horrorfest an annual event.)  Audience response to the event ranged from fairly positive, to pretty much indifferent, and all the way down to acutely hostile.  The latter group, of course, will be the most vocal and, over the course of the next few months, negative word of mouth about Horrorfest will spread rather quickly.  Of course, all the hate for the Saw movies hasn't impacted the ticket sales one bit, but I do think that the next Horrorfest really needs to amp up the content mojo more than a little bit.  I'd argue that the fest will need a "superstar" entry (Saw IV, Argento's Third Mother movie, or George Romero's Diary of the Dead, for example) to galvanize ticket sales, which were plagued with problems this year.  One of the biggest, and justified, complaints revolved around there being no event pass.  For Christopher and I, I wound up spending $185.00 dollars on tickets alone.  Now I consider that to be money well spent, but others clearly do not.  If there is a Horrorfest 2, then there needs to be some way in which the ticket cost can be brought down for the consumer; either an event pass or, if that issue still cannot be resolved next year, then couple the films together as double bills and give the consumer two movies for the price of one.

At this time, I will choose to be guardedly optimistic about the next Horrorfest and will hope that it will go the route of all sequels: bigger, louder and more ambitious than the first.  No matter what happens, Christopher and I are looking forward to being there.

Stay scared! 

Horrorfest 2006, Day 3 (Part 2): Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror (2006)

Snoop Dogg is HOH, a demonic figure tasked with tempting people into making choices that, if they choose unwisely, will send them straight to hell.  HOH tells the stories of three people that chose most unwisely.

Good god this movie was awful.  (But my son Christopher told me to tell you, he loved the movie - he was cackling like a lunatic throughout its running time.)  Its camped up slapstick humor wasn't the least bit funny (for me) and the over the top gore horror had about as much bite to it as a toothless infant.  Try as it did to be a gangsta styled Tales from the Crypt, Hood of Horror never came to life and stayed trapped in its moldy crypt-styled crib.  Two of its three stories don't even involve the "damned if you, damned if you don't" concept that the movie's shoddy anime intro sets up.  My hopes had been for another Tales From the Hood style mix of fun and frights, but this movie didn't even come close.

Horrorfest 2006, Day 3 (Part 1): Wicked Little Things (2006) - The Hamiltons (2006)

Wicked Little Things:

Karen Tunny (Lori Heuring), having been financially and emotionally devestated by the death of her husband, relocates, along with her two children, Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Emma (Chloe Moretz), to the isolated "family home" that her late husband had inherited.  What they don't know is that the home is within walking distance of an abandoned mine where, in 1913, dozens of children had been buried alive.  Those same children now prowl the woods at night, killing and devouring anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path...

The trailer for Wicked Little Things didn't impress me all that much, so I went in expecting the absolute worst.  I was pleasantly surprised, though, to find that it was a short and efficient little horror movie.  A killer kid flick that actually worked for me.  Director J.S Cardone (The Forsaken) doesn't try to make the story into something that it isn't.  He knows exactly what kind of movie this is, so keeps the bace brisk and the kills coming.  While it will never be mistaken for a classic, Wicked Little Things is still a fun little movie.

The Hamiltons:

Francis Hamilton (Cory Knauf) isn't like the rest of his family.  He is different.  No matter how hard he tried, Francis cannot make himself comfortable with the very nasty secret lurking in the basement of the Hamilton home.

The Hamiltons is a great "little" horror film...  For those that don't normally like horror films.  (Think of it as Near Dark reinvented as an episode of Party of Five.)  For those that don't partake of horror movies regularly, then the film will appear to be a smartly written thriller that packs a surprising punch when the "shocking twist ending" (which I gave away in the preceeding sentence, whoops) finally decides to step out of the story's shadows.  But genre savvy viewers will see the twist coming quite a bit earlier and wonder what all the art house buzz was about.  At least that was my reaction.

Horrorfest 2006, Day 2: The Gravedancers (2005) - The Abandoned (2006) - Penny Dreadful (2006)

The Gravedancers:

After saying their final goodbyes to a dead friend, Harris (Dominic Purcell, Blade: Trinity), Kira (Josie Maran), and Sid (Marcus Thomas) find a strange invitation to dance next to the grave.  Seizing the moment, the trio accept the invitation and begin dancing over several nearby graves.  Soon thereafter strange and terrifying events begin to plague each of them.  The three discover that the invitation was not a friendly one and that the vicious inhabitants of the graves they danced upon do not take kindly to having their resting places desecrated.

The Gravedancers is, for most of its running time, a wonderful little chiller that just misses the excellent mark, when its finale degenerates into a chuckle inducing over-the-top effects spectacle that had me wondering if director Mike Mendez (The Convent) was making some kind of sly homage to The Blues Brothers famous mall chase.  But that stylistic misstep does not undo the excellent work that had come before it.  The rest of The Gravedancers is a tightly scripted (by the writing team of Brad Keene and Chris Skinner) piece of work that features well developed and realistic characters in a solidly constructed story.  Even the supporting cast of characters is allowed to grow past two dimensions and given the chance to play an important role in the film's action packed third act.  But the film's ending could prove the undoing of many a viewer, you have been warned.

The Abandoned:

An adopted woman (Anastasia Hille) returns to her Russian homeland to find out about her birth parents.  She soon wishes that she hadn't...

The Abandoned is one of those time twister supernatural mysteries that isn't supposed to make any sense until the very end and, in this instance, that ending is very long in coming.  More than once I found myself nodding off as I waited for all the spookiness to make some kind of sense.  Director Nacho Cerda does a fine job of creating an ominous atmosphere of dread, but with no strong central character for the audience to become attached to, all those creepy figures wandering around that deserted farmhouse are robbed of effect.  The film also goes over the same narrative ground again and again, carbon copying its effective chills until they are completely robbed of effect. By the time the end credits began, I felt like I had sat through one of The Twilight Zone's more unoriginal episodes.  One that had been poorly padded to fill an hour and a half running time.

Penny Dreadful:

Penny Dearborn (Rachel Miner, The Black Dahlia) has struggled with amathophobia (fear of riding in cars) ever since her parents died in an automobile accident when she was a young girl.  After making some headway in therapy, Penny's therapist (Mimi Rogers, The Rapture) convinces her to take a road trip to the location of the accident that caused her crippling phobia.  While en route, the two literally run into a psychotic hitchhiker that manages to trap Penny inside the car and terrorize her.

Penny Dreadful, like The Gravedancers, is a solidly constructed thriller that misses the excellent mark by a somewhat wider margin.  

On the plus side, co-writer/producer/director Richard Brandes manages to keep the claustrophobic setting of the car interior visually interesting throughout the film, which is no small accomplishment.  He also brings out an excellent performance from Miner, who spends most of the film in a blubbering state of nearly uncontrolled terror.  But it is the poorly scripted supporting characters and events outside of the car where the film falters.  Several characters are introduced, but their stories go nowhere, and are ultimately meaningless, because they exist only to be murdered by the faceless killer.  This creates an uneven feeling in the film, as if an excellent short had been fleshed out with scenes from a Friday the 13th movie.  That the hitchhiker is never developed past a menacing figure for Penny to cower from (until she finally finds that hidden-by-her-fear inner can of whoop ass to pour out, that is) also undercuts the supposedly dramatic reveal of the killer's true identity.  Something I found to be more confusing than shocking, or surprising.  Yet, despite those weaknesses, I think the film works far more often than it doesn't, and it could wind up being one of the more repeat viewing friendly features of Horrorfest.

Horrorfest 2006, Day 1: Reincarnation (2005) and Unrest (2006)

Reincarnation:

The production of a new horror film that reenacts an infamous mass murder stirs up the victims angry spirits.

Reincarnation combines plot elements from both Dead Again and The Shining (Kubrick version) with images that could have been taken from director Takashi Schimizu's previous film, The Grudge.  The result is a moderately effective, if a bit too overly familiar, exercise in supernatural suspense.  If you have seen Ringu, Ju-on, or Dark Water, or any other Far East thriller that features a shaggy haired spook terrorizing a young woman, then you have already seen Reincarnation.  Those expecting a Takashi Miike style shocker that would live up to After Dark Films "too graphic/too disturbing" marketing hype will no doubt walk away feeling disappointed, if not cheated, and several audience members did.

Unrest:

Four first year medical students learn the hard way that one should always respect the dead.

Creepy and unsettling, Unrest delivered more chills and thrills in its first ten minutes than Reincarnation did in its entire running time.  The movie does a wonderful job of exploiting one of humanity's oldest and most primal fears, that the dead are not truly dead and are aware.  For most of the film's running time, co-writer/producer/director Jason Todd Ipson employs a low key visual style (no rapid cuts or shaky cam footage, thank goodness) and gradually amps up the scares as the mystery of the wronged cadaver is uncovered.  The film slips a bit in its third act, but is definitely one worth seeing.

Horrorfest!

This is where we'll be spending our weekend:

And yes, the Saxelid Boys are both more than a little excited about seeing eight horror movies on the big screen in only four days.  The films, in the order that we will be seeing them, are:

Reincarnation: From director Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge, Marebito) comes this "psychological horror film" that supposedly deals with reincarnation, but looks more like a remake of The Grudge.  I'm withholding judgment until I see it, of course.  (Due to the fact that I loved Marebito.)  But the shaggy haired ghost thing has really worn out its welcome.  Get a haircut and a new gig.

Unrest: When a group of gross anatomy students disrespect a cadaver, her enraged spirit comes roaring out of the beyond to wreak vengeance.  The film's trailer doesn't do much for me.  I can only hope that supernatural stuff is real and it isn't just all in the mind of the female lead.  (Or that she gets framed for the murders by the angry spirit.)  Director Jason Todd Ipson impressed with a short horror film called The First Vampire and you can listen to some fairly interesting interviews with the cast and crew at Unrest's Sci-fi Talk page.

The Gravedancers: Three friends make the horrible mistake of dancing on some graves and some pissed off ghosts show up to kick their asses right out of this world.  This is the one I'm most looking forward to seeing, especially after reading the rave review at Bloody Disgusting.  For all the blood and thunder that the recent horror resurgence has brought to theaters (and has Bill O'Reilly bellyaching like the clueless old fart that he is) there has been a real shortage of character driven and mature stories.  It is my sincere hope that this film lives up to its hype and is the scary ghost story the review says it is.

The Abandoned:  An adopted woman finds and visits the deserted home of her birth family.  Once there, she must confront the demons of the past.  This is another film I'm looking forward to seeing.  Like The Gravedancers, The Abandoned received a rave review from Bloody Disgusting.  Fangoria was rather taken with the film also.  Again, I can only hope that it is the frightening ghost story the reviews claim it to be.

Penny Dreadful:  A young woman (Rachel Miner) is taken on a road trip by her therapist (Mimi Rogers) that ends with her confronting a living nightmare.  Gee, I watch that trailer and, no matter how good the buzz on this thriller might be, I cannot help but think that all they did was put The Hitcher in a blender with Under the Car.  At least it has Michael (the original Hills Have Eyes) Berryman in what appears to be a small role.  But they never do show that weirdo hitcher's face, do they?

Wicked Little Things:  A widow and her two children move to her late husband's isolated cabin.  The youngest child begins hanging with a very rough crowd.  The trailer makes this movie look like a generic killer kid chiller, as if someone had hired John Saul to write a remake of The Children.  The fact that it is directed by J.S. Cardone (The Forsaken, True Blue) doesn't raise my hopes about it all that much either.  But I can hope, can't I?

The Hamiltons:  The perfect neighbors are hiding a very gruesome secret in their basement.  Here is another thriller that got a solid recommendation from Bloody Disgusting, although I am a bit cheesed that I have to wait for a "shocking revelation" for the full impact of the movie.  Hopefully the drama that leads up to it will be compelling.  The review implies that it is, and that it isn't the gore soaked killathon general audiences (and Bill O'Reilly) have come to expect from the genre.

Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror:  The rap superstar gets to play "cribkeeper" (get it?) as he hosts a trio of hyper-styled horror stories.  This looks like it could just be called Tales From the Hood Part 2, which wouldn't be a bad thing, as Tales From the Hood was a nifty little horror anthology movie.  It also has an interesting cast: Danny Trejo, Ernie Hudson, Lin Shaye, and Jason Alexander.  (If you have to ask who Lin Shaye is, then you need to take a b-movie remedial course asap.)

Dark Ride:  A group of fun loving youths quickly come to regret their decision to spend the night in an amusement park's haunted house ride.  Wait a minute, didn't Tobe Hooper make this movie way back in 1980, and wasn't it called The Funhouse?  I guess if you're going to have a horror movie festival, then that trusty golden oldie (you know, the one that almost destroyed the genre's never critically popular reputation to begin with back in the 80s) the Slasher Film needs to make an appearance.  The trailer makes it look like more of the same, but, with the one exception of Wicked Little Things, all the other movies look like solid efforts, so there might be a bloody surprise or two in this film.

My own reviews will be forthcoming, but I will probably be doing a lot more viewing than I will writing over the weekend, so they might not start showing up until Sunday or Monday, at the earliest.  But do not fear, Constant Reader (hi Mom, hi Dad) I have reviews already written and programmed to post during the weekend, so it will be like I am not even wasting all my time gorging on those horror movies after all.

Stay scared!