Andrew Todd’s Fantastic Fest coverage draws to a close as he reports on the final days of the genre movie mayhem. He’s tired and hungover as all hell, but like the professional he is, Todd manages to breakdown the plethora of cinema goodness offered to him. And more Karaoke.
If you like being jealous of him, be sure to catch the other entries of Andrew Todd’s FF diary: Days 1 & 2, Days 3 & 4, Days 5 & 6.
The Congress
Ari Folman’s followup to Waltz with Bashir has come with a seriously weird trailer, mashing up live-action actors like Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, and others with hallucinogenic cel-animation versions of themselves. The Congress is a psychedelic science fiction film that deals with the far-out notions of identity, self and existence, and while not all of its ideas come across coherently, it’s a fascinating and beautiful trip to gorge your eyeballs on.
Robin Wright (who won Best Actress in the Fantastic Features category at the festival) plays herself in the near future, a transitional time for the acting business where studios are buying out actors wholesale to digitally scan and use in movies ad infinitum. From that simple premise, the movie balloons in its second act into an animated world of seemingly infinite possibility, and taking its virtual-person concept further and further into almost a purely intellectual/chemical realm. It’s here that things get murky, requiring a large amount of active thought to navigate the particulars of its story and themes.
Visually, though, The Congress is full to bursting, an ambitious-as-hell production that fulfils its goals just enough. And even if the specifics of the story don’t quite click (at least on first viewing), the emotional journey Wright goes on has resonance. With any luck, this will turn up in a film festival screening of some sort; if it doesn’t hit the big screen, it’s a crime.
LFO
Textbook low-budget genre filmmaking, LFO is a science fiction film that runs on ideas, not visual effects. Entirely set in one house, it concerns an audiologist who stumbles across a set of audio frequencies that leave the human mind open to hypnotic suggestion. What follows this discovery is a spiral into the temptations that such an invention would bring about.
Created as part of a Swedish low-budget film initiative, LFO should be taught in film school as a prime example of how to wring the maximum potential out of minimal resources. One house, five actors and a great script is all director Antonio Tublen needed to tell his drily funny sci-fi tale. There’s a vaguely supernatural psychological element in there that doesn’t quite work, but it’s a minor derailment of an otherwise assured film that holds attention right up until its bold-as-hell ending.
Detective Downs
It would be understandable to be concerned, walking into Detective Downs, that its story of a wannabe detective with Downs Syndrome might fall into cheap pastiche or exploitation. But Detective Downs treats its hero with honesty and dignity – his Downs Syndrome is an obstacle in his life but not the butt of jokes – and tells a sweet noir-throwback detective yarn in the process.
Our hero Robert uses his own method for solving crimes (this being the first one he’s ever actually worked on): empathy. Shedding his detective coat and hat, he takes on the role of the missing millionaire he’s hired to track down, picking up clues and leaving the audience chuckling. Detective Downs‘ lead actor delivers a charming performance, pulling the heartstrings without seeming over-sentimental and bringing the laughs – in occasionally shocking ways – without the film making fun of his condition. It’s a performance that won Best Actor at the festival, and a film that won the hearts of its audience.
Metallica: Through the Never
I have never been much of a Metallica fan, but I’m a big fan of concert movies, and in particular concert movies of artists I don’t love. Films like Katy Perry: Part of Me are singular documents of ego-fluffing, fanservice and mythbuilding, and Through the Never fits into that tradition nicely. Widely hyped (mostly by Metallica themselves) as being a big, balls-out concert movie that also has a cinematic narrative flowing through it, expectations amongst the fan-rich audience were high, especially as the film’s director and two members of Metallica were present for the screening and a Q&A. But sadly, Through the Never never lives up to its promise.
The concert footage is certainly impressive, shot in pristine 3D with the band performing on a truly enormous stage that only a Metallica-sized budget and sense of self-importance can buy, but the narrative is barely there. It’s a feature-length music video at best, and mostly consists of Chronicle star Dane DeHaan as a suspiciously scrawny Metallica roadie skateboarding across Edmonton trying to find a bag to bring back to the band, dodging rioters and armoured, mounted police in the process. Amusingly, the animalistic rioters are cross-cut with shots of fans violently moshing, giving an unclear picture of Metallica’s relationship with their fans. And in the final middle finger of pretentiousness, the MacGuffin bag the narrative is structured around is never opened, the band suggesting “it’s whatever you want it to be”. Deep, guys.
For Metallica fans like the guy in the Q&A who gushed about them being “the greatest band of all time, and my inspiration”, Through the Never is a great time – it’s a fantastic, well-presented way to see a solid set by the band in gorgeous 3D. For non-fans, it might be somewhat interesting from an anthropological standpoint, but it’s not the revolution in theatrical music experience it claims to be.
Metallica: Through the Never 3D is due in cinemas October 10th.
Karaoke Apocalypse
Though the Metallica members on the Q&A were “too tired” to join us, the screening segued nicely into a lengthy set by local Austin band Karaoke Apocalypse, who play metal, punk and hard rock songs live while guests sing. Their repertoire is impressive and their musicianship tight, and if anyone finds themselves in Austin when they’re doing a show, I recommend it for the most metal karaoke experience you’ll ever have. Sadly, the band brought the show down just before my song (“Ever Fallen In Love” by the Buzzcocks), but simply dancing and singing along in Theatre 7 with a whole bunch of other maniacs was pretty great in and of itself.
Short Fuse: Horror Shorts
One of the three short-film programmes at Fantastic Fest (there are also Fantastic Shorts and Animated Shorts, plus shorts playing before various features), I had heard the horror programme was particularly strong this year, and it wasn’t a lie. The winning short, Remember Me, is a prime example of taking a straightforward premise – if nobody’s thinking about him, the main character starts to disappear – and running with it to absurd, shocking and hilarious results.
Other strong shorts in the lineup included Jack Attack and The Body, clever Halloween-themed shorts; Perfect Drug, a wild, drug-fuelled slice of tentacle action; and Baskin, a Turkish police thriller that quickly turns into a horrifying glimpse into hell.
The Sacrament
Ti West’s latest is a marked change in style for the House of the Devil and The Innkeepers director. Having dealt with Satanists and ghosts in prior features, he now turns to religious suicide cults. It’s interesting pairing this film with Eli Roth’s (who also produced this film) The Green Inferno, as both are attempts to resurrect and refresh niche subgenres from the 1970s, when the Jonestown Massacre was big news and generated a truckload of exploitation films cashing in on the mania.
In the fiction storyline of The Sacrament, West hews close to the real events from Guyana, but updates it literally, in the sense that it’s set today, and formally, in the sense that the movie takes the form of a VICE documentary. Yes, it’s found footage, but it’s a crafted documentary, not just home video tapes, which lends extra production value and more justification as to why its characters keep filming. West also puts in a clever sequence where a cult member gets control of the camera, filming a ceremony from their own subjective point of view. More could have been made of this in terms of how points of view affect how crews shoot, but it’s a refreshing moment in the movie nonetheless.
As for the drama, there are few surprises, but it’s executed very well, with good performances from You’re Next‘s AJ Bowen and Joe Swanberg and Upstream Color‘s Aimee Seimetz, as well as a chilling turn from character actor Gene Jones as the cult’s leader. Reinvigorating two genres at once, as well as completely changing up his style from the highly-crafted horrors he’s made his name with, Ti West has made a worthy and fresh entry in the pantheon of suicide-cult movies.
Goldberg and Eisenberg
There’s something of a genre renaissance going on in Israel at the moment, and this strange low-budget thriller is the latest to come out (along with Big Bad Wolves, which I missed). It’s a surreal and frequently comic obsessive-relationship thriller about a lonely computer programmer and an overweight stalker who wants to be his friend. What starts off as slightly unsettling escalates into violence and mind games, but it’s not a dark movie per se – rather, it’s directed with panache and dotted with a Coen-esque sense of humour and, incongruously, heavy electronic music.
The story itself takes several bizarre turns, but none so bizarre as the sound design: about 80% of the film’s sound appears to have been recorded in post-production. Voices are clearly ADRed and the constant loud footsteps are painstakingly matched, but they frequently exist alone in a reverberating, otherworldly soundscape that keeps the audience slightly off-guard. This is the feature debut of director Oren Carmi, and if the ideas he brought up in the Q&A (including “a South Korean style Holocaust thriller”) are anything to go by, he’s a talent to watch.
Danger Gods! Panel
I turned in my ticket to closing night film The Zero Theorem to see a panel discussion with five stuntman legends with centuries of experience between them. They’ve directed, acted, doubled for the likes of Kirk Douglas and Burt Reynolds, been set on fire, jumped off buildings, flipped cars and more. Accordingly, the audience was treated to a wealth of stories about the stunts industry, as well as movie clips with live commentary by the very men who risked their lives on a daily basis to make the world more awesome. In a world laden with fake-ass CGI “stunts”, these guys’ work is all the more impressive – they don’t make them like they used to.
Fantastic Fest Closing Panel
After the panel, the attendees flowed out into the Drafthouse parking lot for the commencement of the closing-night celebrations. Kicking off in true Fantastic Fest style, attendees were treated to car flips, explosions, jumps and crashes, as well as a man jumping off the roof of the theatre while on fire. Following the pyrotechnics, the party got started, with freshly-shot barbecued hog on offer, as well as corn dogs and steeply discounted alcoholic beverages. Matching the carnival fare were a range of outdoor activities, like an obstacle course, a mechanical bulldog, and a scaffolding tower from which one could fall onto a stunt airbag. But Fantastic Fest parties are known more for their chaos than anything more organised.
A tattoo stand was set up in a tent, with lines stretching out the door. Elijah Wood got dunked into a pool of water in his underwear. Ain’t It Cool News founder Harry Knowles slapped festival director Kristen Bell in the face while a crowd of onlookers cheered him on. And a karaoke stage was set up in one of the theatres, where Timecrimes director Nacho Vigalondo raged out Pulp’s ‘This Is Hardcore’ before hijacking the outdoor PA system to keep singing it.
‘This Is Hardcore’ is a fitting description for a festival whose films, events, and attendees are all definitely hardcore. This year I hit the festival hard, making great friends even while getting punched in the face, and even more than this time last year, there’s no way I can not go back annually now. Time to start budgeting for those flights.
