Fantastic Fest 2009

Yes, Fantastic Fest ended almost two weeks ago (has it been that long already?), but just because the fest is over doesn't mean the HorrorSquad coverage has to end.

Salvage, Directed by Lawrence Gough, 2009
A shipping container has shown up on the shore of a small, isolated village on the UK coastline. Said village is under quarantine, which is a bit of a problem for Beth, a single mother who spends too much time at work and not enough time with her estranged daughter who got dropped off at her doorstep right before the quarantine was underway. Making matters worse, when a commando unit shows up to enforce the quarantine, it becomes clear that its not a virus that has the UK government so freaked, rather it's some kind of cognizant, escaped mutant.

Lawrence Gough's film has a decent premise and a less-than-stock dynamic between its characters, but Salvage is ultimately a rather generic horror movie hurt most by a monster at its core that is really not all that monstrous thanks to flat design and uninspired camera work to showcase it. Great performance by lead actress Neve McIntosh, but her gutsiness isn't enough to save the film from the clutches of mediocrity.

Ten years from now, 95% of the human population has been transformed into vampires, with those few uninfected survivors evading capture as best they can and those already captured being farmed for every last drop of their blood. However, supplies are dwindling, substitutes aren't working, and vampires who are driven by starvation to feed on one another tend to mutate for the worse.

This is the world of Daybreakers, a more ambitious and straight-faced follow-up than anyone might've expected from the Spierig Brothers in the wake of their cheeky low-budget aliens-and-zombies debut, Undead; better yet, it's a smarter and more refreshing take on the vampire genre than most of late, and a solid action flick in its own right.

Time for some rumor control. Contrary to what one would assume watching The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West does not have the power to bend time and space to his will. Ti West is not a time lord, he is a mere mortal like the rest of us, he just happens to have the ability to make a film that lives and breathes as if it fell out of a wormhole from 1983. Plenty of horror directors attempt the throwback film, but few pull it off and even fewer pull it off as convincingly as West has with The House of the Devil.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is an impossibly cute college gal dying to escape her slovenly roommate. In order to afford the too-good-to-be-true rent on an apartment she's just discovered, Samantha has to, against her better judgment, answer a Babysitter Wanted flier pinned to the ad board on campus. The man on the phone (Tom Noonan) is a little creepy and a little too eager to find a babysitter on the night of a rare full lunar eclipse, but that's just something Samantha is going to have to put up with if she wants to move out. So the ill-fated coed asks her best friend to drive her out to the isolated house in the woods, where things eventually prove to be even worse than Samantha imagined.

What follows is a remarkably restrained, expertly-maintained atmosphere of tension and dread that is in no rush to evolve from its controlled burn to full-on Satanic panic. And if there's anything that House of the Devil has going against itself, it's the fact that very little happens for long stretches of the film. Granted, this is liable to only be a problem for those who like their horror movies fast, quick and drenched in red, but for those among us who can appreciate a 95-minute film that remains wholly fascinating without exploiting any of the aforementioned qualities, House of the Devil is a near-perfect film.

Set a film in Tasmania in 1822 with prisoners on the run as characters and, as far as my frame of reference for the story is concerned, you may as well be making a movie on a different planet. And yet with nearly 200 years and half a globe of separation between myself and this true story of cannibalism among escaped convicts, Van Diemen's Land still clawed its way under my skin. There's one particularly haunting moment that I found nearly unbearable to watch; what's amazing about that, however, is that Van Diemen's Land is not a gory horror show, and the particular moment in question arrives without a single drop of blood.

Despite the integral plot element of cannibalism, there's no abundance of body parts or organs floating about in Van Diemen's Land. In fact, the film is remarkably light on the red, and yet there are nerve-crushing moments in which all semblance of humanity goes out the window. That loss of moral compass in the face of survival is the cornerstone of this fact-based story about a prison break that went horribly wrong: Eight prisoners in a Tasmanian penal colony overthrow their sole guard only to learn that the coast isn't as clear as they thought, that their only true course of action is to either wait to be recaptured (and almost certainly executed) or flee aimlessly into the wilderness.

What ensues is the fastest case of survivalist cannibalism ever recorded. The script, written by Jonathan Auf Der Heide and Oscar Redding, is faithfully based on several confessions from the last man standing. This is not another Wendigo film about men who eat other men and gain their strengths. It's not a plane-crash story about unfortunate athletes who must devour each other or die. Van Diemen's Land is a gritty, manly, teeth-baring look at what happens when a group of people must eat one of their own to survive. Then tension comes from the basic animalistic imperative to survive at all costs ... not from the innate "grossness" of man eating man.

Well, you've already seen what Weinberg and Hall were most looking forward to with regards to Fantastic Fest 2009: The Fantast-ening, and I fall somewhere in between, having already seen some damn good films and yet eagerly anticipated a great deal more -- and that's not to mention the Secret Screenings!

I'm putting my picks in alphabetical order, because numerical order would be like asking me to pick a favorite child that I haven't even met yet. Or something. Whatever. On with the list!

District 13: Ultimatum

What is it? -- A sequel to 2006's severely kick-ass District 13 (or B13 in the States), in which the eponymous ghetto is once again in danger... unless a certain cop (Cyril Raffaelli) and a certain vigilante (David Belle) team up once more to eliminate the threat.

Why am I excited? -- "Parkour!"

So Peter got all excited for the first wave of announced titles for Fantastic Fest, despite having never been before. Then Scott brought the love when it came to the second announcement, having been time and time before. And now it's my turn to assure you that, after having only attended last year, I really, truly can't wait for this year's festivities to kick off, and the most recent reveal of what's on the slate certainly didn't hurt my interest.

The controversial Antichrist will make its U.S. premiere, as will [REC] 2 (hec yeah!). The director of Ninja Assassin will be there with his film, the stars of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant will be there with theirs (read: John C. Reilly), and the very clever Hirsute bodes well for the shorts program to boot. And there'll even be a couple of secret screenings that we can only hope our fellow Twitter types will have the courtesy not to spoil prior.

Check out the rest after the jump. 17 more days!