So back to the Carriageworks Theatre for the home straight of the Horror Weekend, starting with...
Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man With The Plan (USA, 2006) 5*
A half hour monologue from a guy sat alone in a white room with a mirror. Sound good?
Well it wasn't good, it was fucking brilliant!
Armed with a series of camcorders, phones and alarm clocks our lead plans to expose the lethal nature of a sinister and mysterious ornate mirror.
As he summarises his research pertaining to the mirror for posterity we start to realise that he has more than just a professional interest in this supposedly murderous curiosity piece.
The gruesome stories that make up the past history of the mirror are genuinely chilling and build an unsettling tension that just won't quit.
The performance is utterly engrossing as we witness a gradual shift from calm and rational thinking into increasing agitation and confusion.
Is the mirror unleashing it's fiendish and archaic powers or is it all in his head?
A grimly magical tale that hints towards something both epic and evil.
Apparently this 'long short' was intended to be the first of a reverse trilogy but the director is now hoping to make it the first of a nine unconventionally ordered part series.
Can't wait for the next instalment, whichever chapter it may be!
The Call Of Cthulu (USA, 2005) 4*
I was VERY excited about this film.
HP Lovecraft occupies a spot on my very shortlist of favourite writers and the creation of the Cthulu Mythos is surely his greatest work.
Now there is an unwritten rule which had, to my knowledge, never been broken before this film, namely that every single film based on an HP Lovecraft story was utter cack.
It seemed that somehow HPL's work was just untranslatable onto film. While I suspect this has something to do with the fact that his writing is so purely literary in style I have always held out hope that someone would manage to break that rule.
And this film did, kind of.
Filmed in Mythoscope, this piece is an utterly convincing silent black and movie. It absolutely looks eighty years old this seems to help it capture SOME of the essence of HPL.
The festival programme describes this film as "the most faithful and authentic adaptation of a Lovecraft story ever attempted," a statement with which I whole heartedly agree.
The scraps of information from obscure sources providing just enough of a glimpse to suggest something truly awful lurking just out of sight; the stuffy innocence of the late nineteenth century and the dreadful hopelessness of it all.
This is definitely a faithful attempt at filming HLP and deserves credit for being such.
HOWEVER, you'll notice I only dished out 4* here so here's why The Call Of Cthulu only just broke the rule.
It wasn't shit, certainly not, but equally it just a vague echo of the literature it was attempting to animate.
The one aspect of HPL that was conspicuously absent from the screen was the horror.
What HPL did was to tap into the most primal of fears, the things in the dark that are beyond our ability to understand.
His horror was always very subtle and yet incredibly powerful, creating a creeping dread that washes through. Reading HPL is like doing a jigsaw without knowing what it's a picture of.
Right up until you put the last piece in you thinks it's going to be something pretty ugly, but as you place that final tile you realise it's not what you thought, but something infinitely worse!
None of this made it to the screen but, to be fair, it would appear that this is an impossible task so it seems a little unfair to bitch.
The Woods (USA, 2006) 4*
I should say from the start that this is a 3* film.
There is one reason and one reason only that this film ended up getting 4* and that reason's name is Bruce Campbell.
This is an entertaining but entirely unoriginal horror story about a girl being sent to a spooky boarding school, uncovering something sinister and eventually having a symbolic final confrontation.
Set in the fifties, (for absolutely no reason that I could see whatsoever,) the film opens with Heather being driven to the school by her parents.
After about three seconds of looking at Bruce Campbell I knew exactly what was going on with this family. Why hasn't this guy had more work? He fucking rocks and his lack of major roles has been our loss.
Anyway, the film was another string of wasted opportunities. The most was not made of the spooky woods, the sinister back story was confused and flat and the one impressive twist was brushed by so quick you'd miss it if you blinked.
And at one point there were killer trees.
Now that's got to ring alarm bells right there.
The fact is that the infamous Evil Dead 'tree rape' set the bar so damn high for killer trees and creeping branches that if you're going use that device you'd better do it fucking well.
They did not.
A decent enough film but without Bruce Campbell's minor role it would have been nothing special.
Severance (UK, 2006) 5*
I love the Leeds International Film Festival, (and I get absolutely nothing for saying that mores the pity,) not least because the organisers always try to make it more interesting than just showing a bunch of films.
It's not uncommon for films to be introduced by directors or for there to be Q&A sessions after the screenings.
And on Sunday 05/11/06, for the first time ever in the UK, (I think,) they showed Severance with a live director's commentary.
Director Chris Smith stood on stage in front of the screen with a microphone commentating on his film and answering questions.
To be honest I wasn't sure how this would work but it was actually a fantastic couple of hours, mainly because Mr Smith was a pretty funny guy with plenty of cool stories to tell.
Shot partly in Hungary, Severance follows a group of British office workers on a team building trip into the wilderness that goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Any recent British horror comedy is inevitably compared to the fantastic Shaun Of The Dead but such a comparison is not really valid in this case.
Shaun Of The Dead billed itself as a Zom Rom Comedy, ie. a romantic comedy that happened to have zombies in it.
Severance is quite definitely both a comedy and a horror film and Chris Smith explained that one of the most difficult parts of making the film was striking the balance between the two.
For my money he managed perfectly and created a brilliant film which I would highly recommend.
The commentary gave the film a whole new dimension for and was a lot of fun.
If you see it, and you should, take note that most of the stunts are done by Hungarian stuntmen who really don't give a monkeys.
The coach crash for example was undertaken at double the speed asked for and the guy knocked himself out cold doing it.
All the guns you see in the film are real and Chris Smith had to put his foot down to stop them using live ammo for the filming!
A brilliant film and a brilliant screening.
surprise screening (?, ?) 4*
I must admit that I was hoping for something old and rare as the surprise screening but over recent years the Fanomenon section of the festival has moved away from celebrating classics and towards supporting the contemporary scene.
I can't complain about this and I can't really complain about the choice for this mysterious film.
I had "ils" (THEM in French apparently,) down as a three star film right up until the end when it managed to chill me so effectively that it crawled over the line.
We start in some Romanian woods where a mother and her teenage daughter swerve off the road to avoid a mysterious figure. They are swiftly toyed with and executed by an unseen group of assailants.
Cut to our heroine, a French teacher who lives out in the woods with her writer husband.
Pretty much the whole film from here on in is these two being stalked and terrorised.
First off in their big old house, which unfortunately seems to fall foul of a classic horror mistake, namely making the place seem infinitely large, I mean she runs a hell of a long way without going outside, know what I mean?
Anyway, they escape the house and a hunted through the woods before eventually finding some underground chambers and tunnels to be hunted in instead.
To be fair this single, feature length chase is done well. You can really feel the panic and desperation and the scares are delivered well.
As I say, thus far I was not hugely moved by what was happening but I was impressed with how it was being done.
What chilled me was the finale of the piece wherein the identities of the hidden killers was revealed.
SPOILER! SKIP AHEAD IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.
It's a bunch of kids!
Not feral children nor members of an evil cult, just ordinary, bored, hoody wearing urban youths.
As the sun comes up and we see them running to catch their school bus, having successfully slaughtered the long suffering couple, a caption tells us that the film is based on a true story.
A French couple living in Romania were hunted and killed by a group of youths aged 10-15.
This worked very well at bringing the horror off the screen and into the real world, which is after all the secret of truly great horror.
And so that was it, the horror weekend, twelve features and god knows how many shorts. I took Monday off to recover but still managed to catch a couple of films in the evening.
The week saw a break from horror and a change to political docs and more independent film.
They say a change is as good as a rest and they're wrong. Still by the time the second weekend of the festival came around I was up for some more scares and so attended the annual ritual that is the Horror Allnighter.
All these will be reviewed in due course, watch this space.
