Screaming from cult to low profile to award winner

If judged from the selection of films screened in-competition this year, calling the festival Screamfest might be a bit of a hyperbole. Maybe Yelpfest, Gigglefest or Groanfest. But screams… not so much. In fact, the loudest scream I heard came from a fan who found himself impatient with the long wait. Time delays, projector problems, and technical glitches had a fair number of us groaning.

After an hour-long delay for one screening, the director of the no-budget Sympathy told the audience “while you guys were waiting, I made a sequel so if you don’t like this film check out the new one.” Horror fans, we’re resilient. Think of it this way: anyone who can stand the sight of seeing brains being scooped out or a particular male appendage being excised mid-coatis in a, shall we say, female booby-trap can certainly handle long waits and painful head tilts due to incorrect aspect-ratio projections.

The groans allowed the anticipation to mount and fans to enjoy the chaos. What good is horror without a little pain? So as the heads flew, blood spewed, and body counts mounted, fans ate up the pulpy gore with some fava beans and a nice chianti. Welcome to Screamfest.

Special Screenings
This year’s out-of-competition films offered a mixed bag of entertainment. The festival opened with a whimper with the unorthodox mock-documentary Diary of the Dead. Shot with low budget zeal, this sequel looks more like a grandiose side-story than a continuation of Romero’s zombie series. There’s little accounting for the timeline discrepancy between Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the techno conscious Diary of the Dead. Romerio’s film looks to continue his lamentable box office loosing streak; the film is far too formalized, rigid, and experimental to attract an audience beyond Romero-heads such as myself.

The opposite could be said of Columbia Picture’s dazzling town-under-siege 30 Days of Night. As I write, the film has grossed $16 million, North American BO. The Vampires own the night. These are not pretty-boy blood suckers that drink wine and talk about Camus in baroque dwellings. Headed by the screeching, grunting Danny Huston, these bad boys are insectilian, all the more compelling because they are vividly sketched-out with their own culture, language, and methodology, screenplay by Steve Niles and Steward Beattie.

There were a number of lower profile films that seem destined to serve in the purgatorial state that is the direct-to-DVD release: Headless Horsemen, Boogeyman 2, Buried Alive, and Return to House on Haunted Hill. The great thing about Screamfest is that even these films that are normally looked down upon seem content in their respective niches.

Also fun was the experience of watching the “25th anniversary” of the 3D film Friday the 13th Part 3 along with the original cast. A packed crowd of hockey-mask enthusiasts quoted with the film as if it were Casablanca indicates that the macabre cult following of Jason is as strong as ever -- I may never understand the popularity of this horror(ble) franchise but there is no denying that its fans, like Jason, never seem to die.

Speaking of cult following, what can be said of David Arquette’s Tripper, another camper/slasher film about a Regan-obsessed/hippy-hunting killer on the loose during a weekend musical festival? Tripper has the right idea but the disorganized political speechifying got in the way of what was otherwise a good time. Arquette getting political is akin to Spicoli discussing the Iraq war which, come to think of it, he has.

The camping follies didn’t end there. The closing slot at the festival went to the uninspired camping thriller Timber Falls with its total lack of innovation. Horny twenty-somethings camping, hiking, bickering, and doing other things that end in “ing” run into a gang of backwater religious crazies to predictable results.

Feature Films
One of the reasons horror has been so successful is its ability to strip the excess baggage of a studio production and exist in a pure genre state. Unlike sister genres, action or thriller, horror doesn’t need a big budget or bankable stars. All it needs is a good hook as its enduring qualities rest on concept, execution, and the occasional good performance by a heavy.

Historically, this has been good news for indie filmmakers such as James Wan and Eli Roth who have thrived in this sector. 16 films played in competition this year. Having seen a fair number of them, it occurred to me that if anything can sum up this year’s festival, it’s: monsters are out and torture is in.

Storm Warning is Australia’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with shades of Deliverance and I Spit on Your Grave thrown in. Atmospheric and creepy this film hit all the right buttons. When I asked director Jamie Blanks if there were any plans for theatrical distribution, he lamented that the box office failure of Hostel 2 ruined any chance he had of a wide American release. Look for this film on DVD sometime early next year.

Many horrorphiles were clamoring about the supernatural Alone directed by Parkpoom Wongpoom and Banjong Pisanthanakun and beautifully shot by Niramon Ross. The film is about the dead half of a Siamese twin that haunts its surviving sister. While the audience as well as the festival jury with seasoned filmmaker Wes Craven and new horror auteur Eli Roth, seemed to fall under the spell of this bittersweet Thai horror, I found it entirely derivative, a ghost story with a “twist” as tangled as the conjoined twins.

And finally, there’s the cerebral horror The Signal. If it’s reduced to a classification, then it’s a bit of a zombie movie, a mass media satire, a riff on Steven King’s Cell, and a bit of a rage movie. In other words, it’s everything Diary of the Dead tried to be. With a wink to the audience, it opens with a low budget b-horror movie that is interrupted by a strange, swirling signal that practically hypnotizes the audience. The signal has begun its deadly transmission and on this night to end all nights, humanity falls victim to the “panic, paranoia, rage, extreme suggestibility…” caused by all televisions and cell phones. The signal is able to transmit and transmutate our image-obsessed civilization.

This shaky reality plot device gives the production the freedom to explore its concept with as much deadpan fun as dead seriousness. In that sense, The Signal is America’s answer to England’s 28 Days Later with as many laughs as that country’s Shaun of the Dead. The film also presents a thinly veiled diatribe against the relentless nature of mass media that invents realities rather than projecting them as they are. Signal is not just one of the best films to come out of Screamfest but one of the best of the year. Too bad it went zero for zero at awards night.

The film Alone pulled a feat by virtually sweeping all categories, taking top prizes for Editing, Cinematography, Director, and Best Picture. There is an unshakable feeling that I’ve seen this same type of film made and remade in one form or another. Even so, it’s nice to see Asian horror films continue to assert their dominance and establish international horror as a viable entity in what is normally an American dominated market.

As the winners enthusiastically accepted their gold trophies, the ceremony felt like a glorious subversion of the Oscars: morbid skull trophies instead of naked gold men and a dark atmosphere instead of high-key lighting. This is fine by me because while the supposedly prestigious ceremonies tend to overlook the gems of this genre, there will always be a Screamfest.