Housebound

This film was billed as a midnighter, a suspense horror.  Kylie is sentenced to eight months home detention, back at her mother's home.  And while Kylie is all grown up now, her mom and her younger self feared the man in sheets, the boogie man lurking in the basement or creaking in the walls.

This is where I thought it would devolve into abject terror.  Instead, it turns out her parole officer is a part-time paranormal investigator, Kylie ain't afraid of no ghosts, and comedy will rise to balance the fright.  And it all works.  The film is really pretty good.

Housebound

2014, 107 minutes, directed by Gerard Johnstone

Purgatorio (Purgatory)

Purgatory starts as I expected: kid terrorizes broken mom who's lost her child.  But that's where my expectations break from the script.  Never devolving into outright physical horror, the plot nevertheless becomes far more sinister.

Featuring outstanding performances by Oona Chaplin (of Game of Thrones) and Sergi Méndez, the film is a psychological trip with a special twist.

Purgatorio (Purgatory)

2014, 83 minutes, directed by Pau Teixidor

Chanthaly

This is:

• The ninth Laotian film ever made
• The first Laotian film made by a woman
• The first Laotian film that's not a musical or communist propaganda
• The first Laotian ghost story
• The first screening of a Laotian film in the United States

And I really enjoyed it.  Sure, there were some production issues - sound cutting in and out with each scene, some booms visible in mirrors, but those are somewhat to be expected given the circumstances.  The director used people she knew as the actors, filming in her house, using a beer company to fund the production.  In the Q&A she noted that $200 was "a large percentage of the budget".

Chanthaly has been raised since birth by her father, her mother having died in childbirth.  Or, at least that's what she's been told.  When, then, does she have memories of her mother?  Her father - a staunch communist (as was required to get the film production approved) has no interest in hokey religion, but Chanthaly prays to understand her mother's fate.  And, when she discovers the truth, it's not at all what she expects...

Chanthaly
2013, 98 minutes, directed by Minnie Do

Scary Movie 4

Don't ask.

Scary Movie 4
2006, 83 minutes, directed by David Zucker

Haunter

Lisa's been repeating the same day for...well, she doesn't know how long.  But now she's woken up, realizing that her life is on a cycle, and soon enough understanding that she and her family are ghosts.  As she tries to break herself and her family free, a more sinister presence reveals itself.

The story, the acting, the cinematography, all were pretty good.  This will make an excellent pre-teen slumber party movie.  (In the Q&A, the director, who's previous work was a bit more adult-oriented, said he made a point to make this film without a drop of blood onscreen.)  My only issue was with plot resolution.  Everything gets resolved, which is great, except it's done in a multi-scene twenty-minute climax that left me mentally exhausted.  I would have preferred to see the tension tweaked to turn the long plateau into a building towards the final confrontation.  But other than that, the film hits its marks.

Haunter
2013, 97 minutes, directed by Vincenzo Natali

Oh, Alamo, don't show 70s footage of a topless lady dancing in a bamboo cage while injecting herself with needles in the pre-footage before what will eventually be a PG film.  The 9-ish-year-old actress who came to the premiere of her first film should not have seen that.

V/H/S/2

Having acquired a heap of knowledge and a pile of leftover tapes from their first outing, this second installment of the V/H/S horror line feels more polished and... boring... than the first.  Sure, everything tied together better in a central theme: private detectives are asked to look for a college student who's been missing for a few days.  At his house, they find lots of static-y monitors and piles of VHS tapes.

This time, it all feels more predictable in its narration.  There's a story with ghosts, one with zombies, one with occult, and one with aliens.  It's all nice and tidy.  And that's what makes it boring.

V/H/S/2
2013, 95 minutes, directed by Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Eduardo Sanchez, Gregg Hale, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Huw Evans, and Jason Eisener

The Paramount was already running an hour late after their first film.  I stayed in line for Evil Dead for two hours, but when the film was supposed to have started and the previous screening was still letting out, I bailed for dinner and a sure spot at this midnight film.  Knowing now that some people made it (barely) to both thanks to V/H/S/2 also being inexplicably delayed, and knowing that I didn't care much for the midnight film, makes me angrier at the Paramount and SXSW for being unable to keep their schedules even remotely on time.

La Memoria Del Muerto (The Memory of the Dead)

Three films in one day?  Why yes, it is the start of another Fantastic Fest!

As the director puts it, La Memoria Del Muerto (The Memory of the Dead) is not a horror film; it's a love story.  Or, as I see it, a story of horrible love.

Five friends of Jorge reunite with his widow to remember his life.  And when the dead start to return, it seems the reunion is something more... Be prepared for emotional scars to be ripped off and eaten as the guests reunite with the ghosts of their pasts.

La Memoria Del Muerto (The Memory of the Dead)
2011, 89 minutes, directed by Valentín Javier Diment

V/H/S

Five short horror stories are tied together loosely by a sixth, centered on the theme of "found footage" shakey-camera work.  I wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped to be.

V/H/S
2011, 115 minutes, directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence

Lovely Molly

In Lovely Molly, director Eduardo Sanchez (of Blair Witch fame) follows the same trend as the [REC] franchise, moving away from first-person "found footage" back to a mix with traditional camera work. Molly and her husband, newly married, move back into her childhood home. The demons of her past - drug use, insanity, the memory of her father - quickly reemerge as she struggles in her new old setting. Are the demons all in her head, or does her father's legacy live on? SXSW bills the as "what happens before the exorcist arrives". I think of it as Paranormal 4: Less Scary More Nudity.

Lovely Molly
2011, 95 minutes, directed by Eduardo Sanchez

Keyhole

The director of this film describes it as "gangsters meet ghosts" turned into an autobiography of a house. Ulysses returns to his family home, determined to reach his wife Hyacinth on the top floor. To get there, though, he must navigate the other rooms of the house and their unearthly inhabitants.

Or at least that's how it's billed. I describe it more as surreal experimentation. Or a black & white cinematic study of how many actors (young and quite old) you can get full nude and acting like a crazy ghost on film.

It's not really for me.

Keyhole
2012, directed by Guy Maddin

Sinister

SXSW's not-so-secret screening was the first public screening of Sinister, exactly as everyone thought.  While I appreciate all the effort they went to for the film to screen here, it just didn't work for me like I'd hoped.  Ellison (Ethan Hawke) is a true-crime writer seeking his second Big Novel, having suffered several unspecified failures.  He moves his family - wife Trace (Juliet Rylance), son Trevor (Michael Hall D'addario), and daughter Ashley (Clare Foley) into the house of his latest focus, a family of five where four members were hung from a tree in the back yard, and the final member, a daughter Stephanie, disappeared.

Very quickly the scope of the crime grows when Ellison finds a box of "Home Movies" in the attic, along with a Super 8 film projector.  The first film shows the murder of the family - a film the police never found.  The other four films show the deaths of similar families, each killed by a different method, each in a different state, and each (as he later learns) with a missing child, stretched out over the past 45 years.  At the same time the supernatural events in the house lead him to believe that maybe the killer never left...

I didn't think Ellison's actions were plausible, something admittedly I can overlook (as I often must) for horror films.  The real problems though were in the ending.  I have BIG SPOILERS below the film info below.  Read on only if you have seen the film or have no intention of doing so.

Sinister
2012, directed by Scott Derrickson










THESE ARE SPOILERS!  Things that just didn't work:
1. The biggest problem is the slow, all-cards-on-the-table ending.  We just didn't need everything spelled out like that in passionless film.  First the kids should not have already been mindless automatons when they killed their families.  It would have been better if they were doing it scared shitless and crying, while being forced to by the Boogie Man.  And what Ashley does after Ellison dies seems redundant.  Who cares that the kids live in the film?  The movie should have ended the instance Ellison was killed, his family dying first.
2. When Ellison learned that one dead family previously lived in a home that was itself the scene of an earlier film, it was obvious the same would be true for all the other murders.  It also meant that "family piles into the car and flees" would never be a suitable ending.  Either they'd need to fight and win, or they wouldn't make it.  That's all fine, except that the phone call from the deputy at the end where he explains all of this is completely pointless.  I got it already, thanks, don't slow things down.  Maybe the only useful bit is the deputy's comment that his action might have "accelerated the schedule" which was somehow true but really never explained.  Why'd they need to die the day they moved?  The other families clearly lived at least a little while in their new homes based on the films.
3.  Why did the Boogie Man switch to Super 8 in the 1960s?  Was that when he stopped using photographs?  During the course of the film - which could also double as an Apple product instructional video - Ellison proves the editing superiority of digital cameras and a computer.  I think it would have been more satisfactory somehow if Ashley was filming on her dad's digicam at the end, with a USB stick dropped in the Home Movies box if that clip isn't cut (as it wouldn't be I guess if they want a sequel segue.)  The Boogie Man needs to keep up with the times or else he'll be stuck with a family that doesn't even know what the Super 8 projector is.

The Cabin in the Woods

Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon don't want anyone to talk about this film.  It's hard not too because it was fucking awesome.  You think you have it figured out?  Oh no you don't; check out this.

What happens when five young college students set off for a weekend alone in the woods?  Mayhem of course.  If you would ever watch a horror comedy, make sure you watch this one.

"This came from a place of love.  Joss and I just love horror movies." - director Drew Goddard at the world premiere Q&A on opening night of SXSW 2012.

The Cabin in the Woods
2012, 105 minutes, directed by Drew Goddard




"No, no, no.  It's not an angry raping tree.  It's an angry molesting tree." - Drew

Bones

This film makes for great background content while doing my taxes.  Highly recommended for this.

Bones
2001, 96 minutes, directed by Ernest R. Dickerson

The Innkeepers

I was looking forward to this as perhaps the first good narrative of the festival (not counting The Pee-Wee Herman Show as to me that felt more like a documentary).  Alas, it just doesn't quite get there.  The story centers around the Yankee Peddler Inn, an old establishment on its last weekend before being closed down.  The owner has bailed for Barbados, leaving just two employees to care for the place and its few final guests.  Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) occupy their time trying to find the ghost who haunts the place, while interacting with each other and the customers.

The problem revolve around a lack of strong central plot.  They bring up some things - like the knowledge that there are three ghosts instead of just one - but then don't take them anywhere.  And they leave you scratching your head as to the truth - something that may be fine in some films but not one billed as a comedy (not that it's very comedic).  I think they just weren't sure what type of film to make, and so made a lot of pieces of different ones that just don't fit right.

The Innkeepers
2011, 100 minutes, directed by Ti West

Paranormal Activity

This film is generating so much hype here today. Together with the industry presence (30+ seats blocked off for cast and crew) and enhanced security, it's either going to be a huge blockbuster or a serious disappointment.

...watches...

Eh, it was ok, but not worth the hype. It was very predictable and lacked the stick-with-you creepy factor of similar films like The Blair Witch Project. I didn't go to sleep thinking about ghosts, I went to sleep thinking up a better ending. I overheard the guy sitting next to me say that there are eight endings, and he described one of them. Sadly, the one he gave was better than the one they used.

Paranormal Activity
2007, 99 minutes, directed by Oren Peli

read on for spoiler thoughts
The CG in the last second was totally out of place, and the ending was 100% predictable from the moment of the slashed picture. Come on, when she decides to not leave it's obvious she's been possessed. Rather than all of that, wind back to when she's dragged down the hall. Instead of having her pulled into a back bedroom until Micah rescues her, let's see her (via an arm, whatever) get pulled up into the attic through that back closet just before the door slam. Then Micah shouldn't be able to rescue her. He ends up alone. After the tension (and the activity) mounts over five minutes of him frantically figuring out what to do, she should reappear, just give a little grin, and then plug in the she-slaughters-him ending of choice.

El Orfanto (The Orphanage)

The Spanish have stolen the show. Juan Antonio Bayona's masterpiece El Orfanto is a beautifully-told ghost story. There are few shocks or other horror elements that would scare off potential audience - sadly just the Spanish with subtitles will doom this to a poor American release.

The writer and director were on hand to answer questions after the movie. Director Juan Bayona described his movie as a "connection to childhood". Writer Sergio Sánchez added that he "redid Close Encounters but replaced aliens with ghosts and added some angry Carlos." While in screenplay form they received strong feedback that this movie was a mix of genres and therefore unable to succeed. I'm very pleased that they proved that wrong.

El Orfanto (The Orphanage)
2007, 100 minutes, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

Alone

Although I dislike horror, especially including the shockfest, I find that Alone, seen September 22, does have redeeming qualities. I appreciated the plot twists and turns, which served and advanced the story instead of merely setting up the next visual effects shock.

Alone
2007, 95 minutes, directed by B. Pisanthanakun and P. Wongpoom