Released in 2017 to a limited theatrical run The Void is a modestly budgeted cosmic horror film set in a rural besieged hospital.

Daniel Carter is a sheriff’s deputy in a small rural community when late one evening while on patrol his discovers an injured man, bloodied and disorientated on an isolated back road. He takes the men to the closest hospital, one that is in the process of closing down after a fire devastated most of the building leaving the facility this night with a skeleton staff and only one patient already admitted. Daniel’s wife Allison works at the hospital as a nurse and though they are not estranged it is clear a tragedy haunts their relationship. Before long Daniel, Allison, and the small collection of characters are besieged when masked cultists willing to murder anyone who attempts to flee the building surround the hospital. Strangely, the cultists seem uninterested in invading the facility and it quickly becomes apparent that the real horror is already inside the hospital.

Avoiding second tier digital imagery and boasting practical creature effects The Void  makes the most of its limited budget. Inspired by but not based upon the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this film starts itself grounded in a real and recognizable world before sliding into a scenario of monsters, madness, and unimaginable horrors from beyond. Competently acted and directed the film is not perfect but works overall as an entertaining horror movie that is perfectly willing to leave questions unanswered and matters to audience interpretation. While there is plenty of gore and injury effects the heart of this movie is about loss and how loss transforms us into people we may have little understanding of. There is a slight cinematic trope of ignoring serious injury after a few scenes but overall the movie is fast paces, enjoyable and for fans horror well worth their time.

The Voidis currently streaming on the horror service Shudder.

This year was the 10^thannual Horrible Imaginings Horror Film Festival. For the second year, the festival has been hosted by the non-profit theater The Frida Cinema and this year I managed to attend 2 of the 3 day run time. I am sad that I missed Friday but day-job commitments are paramount.

Saturday started with a block of short films programed around the theme ‘A Shock to the System’ where the horror lies more in systemic and cultural issues than a beastie or man with a knife. There were 11 films in this block and many were quite compelling. The film that most disturbed me was Off Fleek  which centered in a young woman and the terrible effect of the cyber-abuse she endured. It is a film that haunts the mind well after its brief running time has ended. Per haps most entertaining  was Kathy  a film about growing up gay in a fundamentalist household where demons and possession are common dinnertime discussions. And most artistic visually striking of the block was LVRS a film without dialog that symbolically explored the nature of abusive relationships.

The next block continue the theme with the longer films Conversion Therapist  and What Daphne Sawand included a panel discussion about the issues of ‘reparative’ therapy and human trafficking. We rounded out Saturday with two feature films but the one I enjoyed the most from that evening was Reborn  starring Barbara Crampton and Michael Pare.

Sunday again started with a block of short subjects, this time the theme being Monsters, Sci-Fi and Beyond. Nest  was a ‘found footage’ style short that understood brevity if powerful in that model of filmmaking. How to be Alone  was a wonderful exploration of isolation and the mental toll that can take on a person while Ulysses  presented perhaps the best mermaid design I have ever watched.

Then we were treated to a long form short film block where instead of running times between 2 and 12 minutes the films were along the lines of a half an hour including a lovly film about a séance in the White House at the height of the Civil War. Though perhaps my favorite of that black came from Brazil For My Cat, Mieze  where justice comes paired with a fine wine.

We rounded out the day with two feature films, Antrum – the Deadliest Film Ever Made  which included as part of its conceit a mini-documentary about the fictional film Antrum  and the deaths associated with it, but the film struck me as more gimmick that story. The final feature was Pornoa movie about religious teenagers who accidentally summon a succubus in the theater where they work. It’s over-the top, bloody, sexy, and funny, providing one of the festival’s’ most memorable line of dialog; “I’m not going to get excited by your exploded testicles!”

All in all the festival was a grand time well worth the 3 hours of drive time each day.

Hailing from 1972 and currently streaming on the specialized horror service Shudder, All the Colors of the Dark  is a giallo,  a genre of Italian cinema that specialized in sensation lurid tales often centered on aspects of sex, sexual perversion, and violence. Part of the global exploitive cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, giallos  are colorful, have amazing photography, and bold art direction, the best of them are usually associated with the noted directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Though an Italian film All the Colors of the Dark  was filmed and set in England.

Jane (Edwige Fenech), while recovering from a car crash that injured her and killed her unborn baby, is tormented by terrifying visions of a knife-wielding attacker. The vision manifest most often when Jane and her boyfriend Richard (George Hilton) attempt to be sexually involved. Richard insists she needs vitamins, while her sister Barbara, who works for a psychiatrist presses for psychiatry. Jane’s neighbor, Mary, introduces Jane to a satanic coven and the events explode into debauchery, assault, and murder with Jane’s visions becoming apparently real as she loses connection with reality.

With plenty of blood and nudity All the Colors of the Dark is not a film for the young, sensitive, or easily offended. The final act of the movie ties things together with an explanation, but this, as with most giallos  in my opinion, is more a perfunctory move providing only the barest of rationales that allow the dream-like and nightmarish imagery to play out.  This sort of movie you do not watch for logical consistency or carefully interlocking plotting but rather for the surreal nature of the visuals and the emotional punch of the scenes. I find the style reminiscent of David Lynch albeit with a much more conventional approach.

As we wind down into the end of August and the end of summer, I can look forward to two different fantastic film events.

First up, starting on August 30^thand running for three days is the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival. Started ten years ago by my friend Miguel Rodriguez the festival is dedicated to horror films of all stripes. Miguel and his team cast a wide net using a liberal definition of horror that includes everything from neo-noir crime thrillers to surrealist experimentations exploring deadly vampire clay. Started in San Diego with a tiny venue, the festival now is hosted in Orange County California at the wonderful art house theater The Frida Cinema, and while the locale has added about an hour and a half of travel time, it is still well worth the effort. Sadly, because August 31^stis the first day of a long holiday weekend and I do not yet have 15 plus years of seniority at my day-job I will be missing the first evening’s festivities including what looks to be a fun film Satanic Panic. Seriously, at my job people rarely leave once they get in the door, and that is understandable, but to get any time off around the holidays is neigh impossible for anyone with less than 15 years of seniority. I do miss the days when the festival was located in San Diego and I could simply drive down to the Museum of Photographic Arts to catch the first evening, but the Frida is a great venue and I would rather the festival thrive than wither simply because it would be easier for me.

The second film event is on September 28^thand is The Secret Morgue 2. Created by our local film fanatics Film Geeks SD, of which Miguel is a founding member he’s responsible for in part or in whole for a whole lot of good film stuff in San Diego, this is a 13 hours marathon of horror film hosted by the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park. Last year at the first Secret Morgue the theme was 70s and 80s horror, the sort of title you would discover in video rental stores, if you remember what those were. The titles were secret and I rolled the dice and attended the screenings. What fun I had! Every film was one I had never seen, and while some were tedious than entertaining, I don’t regret attending. This year the theme is SF Horror and I suspect I will have seen some of these titles before but I could be wrong. Film Geeks SD has a deep cinematic knowledge and their choice can be quite surprising.

Last night I completed a two-night re-watch of the South Korean zombie film Train to Busan.I originally reviewed this movie January 2017 when I had the good fortune to see it in a local micro-theater. At that time I gushed over the film and for Christmas my sweetie-wife gifted me with the Blu-ray edition. So, how does it hold up two years later? Have scales fallen from my eyes and have flaws now made themselves suddenly prominent in the bit of cinema?

No.

Off the top of my head and without digging deep into the history of zombie movies I’d place this film within the top three zombie movies of all time. Mind you I am speaking of quality and not importance. Train to Busan ranks along side the 1978 Dawn of the Dead  and 2004’s Shaun of the Dead as zombie movies that transcend genre and move into the realm of art. Where Dawn  using it’s time to slyly comment on consumerist culture and Shaun  uses it’s rom-com format to address life when it is unexamined, Train with its passengers slicing through the various strata of Korean society, comments on the nature of individuals and their relationship to each other, most exemplified by the estrangement between the lead and his daughter, but the theme echoes in interactions throughout the cast with no character, not even the self-serving and villainous business man, lacking in human depth and need for connection with those they love and cherish.

Re-watching the film I am thunder-struck by the performances. Not simply the leads, who are all fantastic, but every small part if played with the life and vitality of a serious performance. Simple expression and single lines of delivery suggest complex interior lives for characters that are never even granted to the honor of being named. Not to be overlooked are the amazing mime performances of the actors portraying the zombies. Twisting and contorting their bodies the actor exude a sense of inhumanness that turns what had become a tired and standard screen monster into something that again can truly terrify.

By the heart wrenching ending of the film I was thoroughly engrossed in the characters fully invested emotionally, Train to Busan  is a fantastic film.

There are horror film, monster movies, and creature features with significant overlap between these three sub-genres and this week’s releaseCrawl pretty much falls into the Creature Feature definition.

Set in a fictional Florida town of Coral Lake during a category 5 hurricane, Crawl  is about Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario) and her father Dave (Barry Pepper) trapped in the crawlspace of their home while being menaced by aggressive alligators. If you have seen the trailers for the film then you have pretty much seen the entire premise and set-up. Clocking in at a slim 86 minutes Crawl  doesn’t waste much time, very quickly delivering it’s central character Haley into the jaws of danger and then escalated the obstacles throughout the movie. Focused on the dangers of drowning and deadly alligators the movie is light on character development, though it has some just enough to hang the barest story upon, and any deeper theme beyond survival is wholly absent from the script. With the exception of a few secondary and utterly disposable characters this movies rest entirely upon Haley and Dave as they struggle to survive.

In a high-concept movie there is usually one ‘gimmie’ that is asked of the audience, one element that if accepted though it flies in the face of reality allows the rest of the story to unfold organically and with suspension of disbelief. In the classic film Jaws  one has to ignore actual shark behavior but beyond that the film proceeds logically. With this film the one gimmie should be the alligator behavior but sadly the writers and directors instead ask the audience to accept impossibility upon impossibility particularly as the movies crashes through its third act action. Detailed and graphic tissue damage that the characters, both Haley and Dave, sustain from attacks are minimized beyond belief for the sake of keeping the characters mobile, active, and capable of impressive physical feats for even uninjured persons. The first time the filmmakers ignored the realistic effect of a compound leg fracture, I simply groaned and accepted it, the second I silently growled in frustration, and by the climax I needed to stifle actual laughter.  In addition to the grossly under-valued physical damage the characters nearly ignore, the third act also suffers from contrived coincidences with valuable and critical equipment literally floating to the characters in their moment of dire need. As an additional note, a category 5 hurricane has sustained winds exceeding 157 miles per hour and there will not be rescue helicopters flights in such conditions.

Overall I found Crawlunworthy of the timer I spent watching it and I took solace in knowing that as part of my weekly three movies from the theater chain’s subscription service it cost me no extra money. For others, with less sensitive suspension of belief, this movie may turn out to be a fun roller coaster ride, an exciting summer popcorn movie, but for me it was not.

Writer/director Ari Aster the creative forced behind last year’s Hereditary  is back with his sophomore feature film project Midsommar. People who are looking for a horror film in the vein of slashers, monsters, and action are likely to be disappointed with Aster’s slow-burn builds, languid deliberate pacing, and long-take, carefully choreographic photography however those who are enamored with psychological and sociological themed horror such as the originalThe Wicker Man  are likely to find something on Midsommarthat will appeal to their tastes,

Midsommar  centers on Dani ( Florence Pugh) and her disintegrating relationship with Christian (Jack Reynor.) Christian is already searching for a way to end the relationship when a familial tragedy shatters Dani leaving her grief stricken and emotionally vulnerable. Six months later Dani and Christian along with their friends Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter) are invited to vacation and enjoy the mid-summer festivities at an isolated commune The Harga in northern Sweden by their exchange student friend Pelle. Once at the Harga subtle cultural conflicts slowly building between the guests, now including a pair of romantically invested UK students, and the residents of the commune. The guests used psychoactive drugs recreationally while the residents consume them for religious purposes, Christian and Mark want to study the commune for their academic advancement, while for the residents their way of life is part of an ancient and sacred tradition, and Mark sees sexual activities as something of pure pleasure the commune considers it more of cycle of life never foregoing the goal of procreation. These conflicts are not expressed in boisterous loud scenes of shouting but rather build layer by layer a growing sense of dread as the two cultures move irreconcilably towards a devastating final reveal. Dani, unlike the others, starts finding a place and a people that see her emotional injury and, though often concerned about the mysterious events that hint at darker motivations and truths, she discovers an acceptance and even a form of healing that Christian has been unable to give. As the film shifts from the second act into the third the plot descends into revelations, betrayals, the final dissolution of Dani and Christian’s relationship and culminates with Dani’s final resolution the more traditional horror film aspects emerge.

With strong echoes of The Wicker Man, which for those of you in San Diego will be playing soon for one day only at the Ken Cinema, Midsommar  is a movie that invites deep consideration and that for many will haunt their thoughts long after the final credits have vanished from the screen. Gorgeously photographed by Pawel Pogorzelski the film manages a continuously building atmosphere of dread and unease in a setting that has no period of true darkness. It is the rare horror film, psychological or otherwise, that attempts much less succeeds at mood building without a heavy reliance on dark deep shadows. The score is a different sort of musical accompaniment and I do not have the required background in knowledge or terminology to adequately explain it but in terms of mood it fit perfectly, enhancing the film’s emotional subtext without telegraphing it in broad blatant techniques. (Though that aspect of my experiences was marred by the deep bass rumblings from the Imax auditorium next tour ours screening Spider-Man: Far From Home.)

The cast is uniformly terrific, playing each character with credible depth and complexity. I want to make a particular note of William Jackson Harper perhaps best known as Chidi on NBC’s hit show The Good Place. Once again Harper is playing a character with a strong academic nature but through the strength of the script and Harper’s with subtle but effective physicality, I never once had any echoes of his role from that show.

Over all I loved the film and it has elevated Aster into a place where I will go see his next film without any other inducements required. Midsommaris a film that is not for everyone, but if you found Hereditary  or The Witchcompelling viewing then you should waste no time in seeing this movie.

It is said that when a genre cycle nears the end of the ‘life’ and the dramatic idea within that genre run dry the artists turn to comedy. I am not sure I buy that even as a general rule and I certainly do not buy in to that for the subset of horror movies built around zombies as flesh eating undead. 2004’s Shaun of the Dead  is often credited as a film that helped re-launch the zombie movie and its comedic nature is undeniable. An even older than that example is Return of the Living Dead  from 1986, a direct sequel to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, a dark comedy, and the movie that forever implanted in popular culture the concept that zombies eat brains. So the release of this month’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die  is not in my book a sure sign that the genre had reached its end. Though I will admit that finding really good zombie movies is always a difficult pastime.

Written and Directed by Jim Jarmusch the filmmaker behind the vampire movie Only Lovers Left Alive  The Dead Don’t Die  is a story of the zombie apocalypse as experienced in the small one horse town of Centerville USA. Roughly centered on Police Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and police officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) the film follows a diverse set of quirky characters including Farmer Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi), Hermit Bob (Tom Waits), and new comer to the town and apparently a Scottish samurai undertaker Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton) and a smattering of other famous actors and musicians playing smaller parts.

Unlike most comedies this movie is paced, quite deliberately, at a quite sedate speed. Things unfold in a slow steady progression and scenes play out with a languid sense of timing. Some of the humor comes from character and context but this film also plays with the a meta-narrative that has at least some of the characters seeming aware of the convention of zombies film and even through own more questionable reality. While there is zombie flesh eating action it is far from graphic in this presentation and Jarmusch replaces zombie blood and gore with a wispy black smoke effect that makes this a nearly bloodless horror film.  Near the resolution in the movie’s third act I was reminded of the Spierig’s brother low-budget indie zombie comedy Undead, but only is a passing manner due to a few shared story elements.

The Dead Don’t Die  is not a film for everyone. The humor is often understated, the pacing more fitting to a foreign film than a typical US theatrical release, and the meta-narrative keeps the viewer at distance, but conversely there are some terrifically understated performances, Bill Murray gives perhaps his quietest comedic line readings ever, several interesting ideas are presented on the nature of life versus unlife, and throughout the movie’s run time I was never bored as I was with the much faster paced Dark Phoenix.

Sunday morning I ventured alone to see the new film Brightburn  as this movie held little interest for my lovely sweetie-wife. The one line description of this feature is ‘The Superman origin story done as a horror film.’

This is a modestly budgeted movie, R-rated for horror, graphic violence and imagery that succeeds on its own terms. Produced by James Gun who is best known widely for the writer/director of the Guardians of the Galaxy  franchise inside the massive machine that is the MCU, though for those of us more familiar with his body work Brightburn  represents a return to the genre where we first discovered his unique vision, horror. Brightburnis also a family affair with Gunn’s brother Brain and cousin Mark writing the screenplay while David Yarovesky directed.

Elizabeth Banks and David Denman star as Torie and Kyle Breyer a loving couple living on an farm in the middle of Kansas struggling with infertility and desperate for a child when a spaceship, more of a pod than a ship, crashes on their property its sole occupant a infant boy. Passing the child off as one that they had adopted Torie and Kyle raise the boy they named Brandon as their own. When Brandon reaches the edge of adolescence his begins to manifest powers and abilities  unlike anything found in nature and the Breyer’s suddenly have to confront the reality behind their fairytale of adoption.

Brightburn  knows what it wants to achieve wastes very little screen time with subplots or extraneous stories focusing on its core theme, what if someone with fantastic powers was simply evil? Jackson A Dunn who plays Brandon caries off the role with a subtle and creepy performs managing to convey menace with only body posture and his expression. David Denman is perfectly adequate as Kyle but the real star of the movie is Elizabeth Banks as Torie, she walks that line portraying a mother who loves her son, does not want to believe the worst is true, and yet has the strength in the end to face reality.

The production design on the film is outstanding. Normally when someone is aware of the production design it is because it captures some sort of beauty, usually an unaffordable one to the audience or an unearthly one such as in Thor: Ragnarok  but neither case applied to Brightburn. The Breyer’s home reflect a reality I recognize, despite having inherited a sizable farm with a large home they are not people of wealth, not even solidly middle class but rather they exist towards the lower end of the middle class. Too often in Hollywood productions this is either made to look much richer than the characters are, with stylish furnishings and art works, or it is made to appear cheap and trashy, but Brightburn  avoids both extremes, presenting a realistic home, one I recognize from my own life.

The violence and injuries in this movie are graphic fully earning the R Rating from MPAA. This movie may not be suitable for younger audiences, certainly children should not see this movie, the themes of vengeance and parents turning against their children in addition to the bloody scenes are too intense for most children, for younger teenagers, depending on their level of maturity, caution should be exercised. Over all I enjoyed this movie and for anyone who is a fan of horror this should be on their list of movies to see.