The main problem with Forgetting the Girl is not necessarily that it attempts to portray a soulless murderer in a sympathetic light, it’s that the film does not seem to understand that this is an impossible task with this particular murderer. Kevin is confused why women aren’t interested in him, but he seems to make no secret that any kindness he extends to members of the opposite sex is a direct attempt on his part to trick women into liking him. In other words, Kevin is the ultimate “Nice Guy,” a man whose entire concept of relationships is founded on the idea that if he isn’t beating the hell out of a woman, she should be irresistibly attracted to him and that any relationship with a woman that is not sexual is not worth having. Even his relationships with the women in his life who aren’t his models are based on him getting something he needs out of them: he visits his grandmother Ruby (Phyllis Somerville) only so he can try to pry information out of her about his childhood, and he only keeps his assistant Jamie (Lindsay Beamish) around because he can’t do the models’ hair and makeup himself. We are supposed to empathize with Kevin because he has Problems, but his answer to these problems is to murder women, and he seems to have no compelling psychological reason to do so other than that it really bums him out when he tells a girl he loves her on their second date and then she acts all weird. All the women Kevin has any meaningful interaction with in his life are victims. He does not realize this because he feels he is more of a victim than anyone else ever could be.
Again, this sort of “Men with Problems” approach to a psychological horror story can work if the subject is compelling enough, but Kevin is just “Nice Guy syndrome” brought to life. He actually begins a monologue by saying “Women are objects,” and then goes on to explain in a way that makes very little sense, unless Kevin doesn’t realize that he is also made of blood and bones. Having a character say things like this does not necessarily mean that the filmmakers believe the same thing, or necessarily endorse this kind of thinking or behavior, but again, this is not a character for whom it is possible for any reasonable viewer to identify. Perhaps if Forgetting the Girl had been released before the advent of Men’s Rights groups on the Internet, it could have provided some psychological insight to this type of character. Unfortunately, dropping by Reddit and spending ten minutes reading MRA discussions is considerably more illuminating (and, it must be said, insanely frustrating) than this little “character study” could ever be. In the deleted scenes section of the DVD, director Nate Taylor repeatedly explains that he cut particular things to keep Kevin more “likable,” which underlines the fundamental misunderstanding at the film’s core. Nothing Kevin says or does at any point makes him endearing or sympathetic, and at the end of the film we have learned nothing about him that we don’t know within a few minutes of his first monologue.
Maybe it’s time for someone to make a movie about a guy like Kevin who deals with his problems by figuring out he’s a selfish ass, getting his shit together and becoming a genuinely decent person. That would be something different. For the most part, Forgetting the Girl is just another tired slog through depressingly familiar territory, although it is certainly technically competent and the cast is fine (especially Lindsay Beamish as Jamie), and there are some nice visual touches. Maybe if you don’t suffer too much from “Dude Problem Fatigue,” it may be more worth your time. But if you’re tired of hearing men pawning off responsibility for their actions onto the women they victimize, either in films or in real life, you’re probably not going to find much to like here.
Francesca (2015)
Originally published on Film Monthly 7 October 2016
Unearthed Films has made a name for themselves among fans of extreme and underground horror with their releases of international films like the Guinea Pig series (and recently producing the American Guinea Pig films), but their latest release is something of a change of pace for the company. Two years ago, BRINKVision released Luciano and Nicolas Onetti’s debut feature Sonno Profondo (Deep Sleep) in the States. That film was an intriguing take on the neo-Giallo, made with a cast of maybe three people and a pitch-perfect score that recalled the soundtracks of those Italian thrillers. Now Unearthed Films has released the brothers’ follow-up Francesca, which in some ways feels like the main event for which Sonno Profondo was a warm-up.
Fifteen years after the mysterious disappearance of literature expert Vittorio Visconti’s (Raul Gederlini) daughter Francesca, a series of murders occur in the city where the family lives. Each of the victims is found with ancient coins placed over their eyes and a cut-and-pasted note with a passage from Dante’s Inferno. Inspector Bruno Moretti (Luis Emilio Rodriguez) and Detective Benito Succo (Gustavo Dallesanro) are on the case, but the pressure is on to catch this killer before the city goes into a full-on panic. Whoever the killer is, they’re not only bloodthirsty and cruel but extremely meticulous. The bodies keep piling up and the police seem to have nothing to go on but this strange obsession with the Inferno. But who’s to say even that’s not another red herring placed by the ingenious killer?
Like Sonno Profondo, Francesca is obsessed with the minutiae of the Giallo almost to the exclusion of its characters. This is much more traditionally narrative than the first film, but most of the running time is devoted to loving close-ups of leather gloves, vintage gadgets, beautiful costumes, and locations that recall the Giallo’s heyday. This is actually highly impressive given that the film was shot in the 2010s in Argentina and not 1970s Italy. The widescreen image is heavily treated to look not like film exactly, but almost more like the texture of the kind of Kodachrome slides the killer entertains themselves with in the film. Primary colors pop and extreme close-ups give more detail than a typical Giallo would be comfortable with in its actors’ faces. It’s a unique look that doesn’t exactly replicate the style of Giallo films but treats them as a whole as one more fetish object that the Onetti Brothers filter through their sensibilities.
That sensibility includes another dead-on score that sounds like it could have been lifted from films of the period like the scores of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Amer and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, another pair of modern films that use the Giallo as inspiration. It’s an uncanny replica of the scores of those films, and stands on its own as an impressive tribute. It’s hard to say much about the performances here, as the actors are almost as much props as the ancient camera and tape recorder that act as key visual references throughout the film. Francesca is less about characters and story and more about the world in which they exist. This approach extends to the reveal at the end of the film, which appropriately leaves a number of major questions unanswered. In any other film it would feel like a cheat, but here it feels inevitable. Francesca is an intriguing tribute to Giallo cinema, but viewers who are looking for a traditionally satisfying mystery will likely find it frustrating. Anyone obsessed with the stitching in vintage Giallo costumes, on the other hand, should probably just buy this immediately.
Frankenstein’s Army (2013)
Originally published on Film Monthly 10 September 2013
Director Richard Raaphorst gained a lot of attention with his trailer for Worst Case Scenario, a Nazi zombie movie he was developing as far back as 2005. After years of struggling to find financing for that project to no avail, Worst Case Scenario was officially shelved in 2009. Which, coincidentally, was the same year Tommy Wirkola’s Nazi zombie comedy/horror film Dead Snow was released: after the exciting trailers, Worst Case Scenario appeared to be a particularly heartbreaking case of “wrong place, wrong time.” After some quiet on the development front, horror fans were excited to hear about Raaphorst’s new project, Frankenstein’s Army. Now, years after the cancellation of Worst Case Scenario and the better part of a decade since Raaphorst first started making waves in the horror scene, his debut feature is finally here. Now the question is whether or not it lives up to the lofty expectations set by his previous work.
Near the end of World War II, a Russian army unit with an embedded came
raman finds themselves lost deep in enemy territory. As they push forward, they happen upon a radio broadcast from another Russian soldier pinned down by the Germans. They find the coordinates from the broadcast, only to find a mostly-deserted village with no other Russian military in sight. They soon find that there is a large network of tunnels under the village, and when they go down to investigate, they discover the tunnels are populated with bizarre creatures in Nazi uniforms. These patchwork monsters are everywhere, and when the soldiers manage to find some German civilians, the only answer they can get about the creatures is that “he keeps creating more.” The Russians push into the tunnels further and further, their numbers dwindling with each incursion with the monsters, until the cameraman eventually finds himself alone with the mad scientist behind it all.
Surprisingly, Frankenstein’s Army is presented as a “found footage” film, supposedly made up of the footage that the cameraman shot. Granted, this might not bother most viewers, but for film format nerds the first major problem with Frankenstein’s Army is the fact that the cameraman is shooting with either an 8mm or 16mm handheld camera, but the image is color, high-definition 1.78:1 widescreen with 5.1 surround sound. Occasional scratches and “light leaks” aside, there is nothing done to convince the audience that this is actual footage found from a 40s-era film camera. This is a serious problem on two fronts: first, it’s a distraction in and of itself, and secondly, giving the film a beaten, aged look would have gone a long way toward covering up its low-budget nature. Once the soldiers encounter the monsters, the high-def video makes everything look much too “real.” It looks like people in costumes running around in a (pretty cool) location rather than footage of intense, claustrophobic fights with monsters. We get a good long look at most of the creatures, which is both good and bad. Good in that the character design (one of the major reasons Worst Case Scenario drew so much attention) is really interesting and unique, but bad in that we’re just looking at nice-looking, crisp digital video of people in monster outfits.
The well-designed monsters still get off better than the Russian soldiers, however, who barely get a single character trait each before getting bumped off by either German fire or a monster’s scythe-hand. There’s the gruff commander, the self-important cameraman, the guy who looks like he’s fourteen years old, and then a bunch of other gruff canon fodder who don’t make much of an impression. The pacing of the film is also pretty brutal, with the first monster showing up well past the 20-minute mark. Up until then, the audience just watches the faceless Russian soldiers trudging through forests and getting in occasional firefights with the Germans. Again, making the film look like it was actually shot with WWII-era handheld combat cameras would have really helped in selling the firefight scenes, which mostly look like a bunch of guys trying really hard to make it look like they’re in a firefight where we don’t see the other side at all. Shooting on digital video makes sense from a business standpoint, but other films have proven that it’s possible to convincingly replicate the look and feel of film stock, and leaving Frankenstein’s Army mostly intact in its sharp digital look gives the audience a long look at the seams not just in the monster costumes, but everywhere.
Frat House Massacre (2008)
Originally published on Film Monthly 26 July 2009
If you think you know what to expect from a film titled Frat House Massacre, you’re probably only partially right. There’s a Frat House, and there’s a Massacre, but along the way Frat House Massacre has its share of nasty surprises, not least of which is the fact that this is basically a grindhouse period piece: the film takes place in 1979, and amazingly manages to use its setting for effect instead of just cheap irony. The other big surprise here is that the film’s production values are extremely high for what must have been a very low budget. If director Alex Pucci can pull this off independently, I’d love to see what he could do with a studio behind him.
As the film opens, brothers Sean and Bobby (Chris Prangley and Rane Jameson) have just graduated high school and are arguing: Bobby wants to go party with his friends, while Sean wants him to honor his commitment to have a special dinner with their guardian Olivia (Merle Peter). Bobby decides to go off with his friends and ends up in a car accident that puts him in a coma. Sean offers to stay and help take care of him, but Olivia insists that he go back to college and his girlfriend Erica (Lisa DiCicco). He reluctantly agrees, and soon finds himself at odds with the other members of his fraternity Delta Iota Epsilon– yes, DIE, easily the film’s laziest joke.
See, the cruel brothers of DIE, led by the evil Mark (an impressively demonic Jon Fleming), have apparently gathered a couple of new habits over the summer that they bring into the new semester: cocaine and murder. In a series of brutal hazing scenes, we learn that anyone who pledges DIE and doesn’t make the cut gets, well, cut. Or gassed, or shot, or any number of other highly unpleasant punishments. And, this being 1979, it’s not like any of the young victims are suddenly missed because they’re not answering their cell phones or haven’t updated their Twitter in a couple of days.
From this point, the film plays out like Driller Killer killed and ate Animal House and got in a coked-out altercation with Fight Club. Maybe it’s inevitable that a movie that takes place largely in a frat house is going to have more than its fair share of both a) sweaty, shirtless, suspiciously fit young men and b) loads of homoerotic subtext. Frat House Massacre definitely has both, but it’s also an equal-opportunity offender: there are plenty of nubile females displaying their talents– among other things– and a mile-wide streak of serious misanthropy. Especially notable is Niki Notarile as a sexy femme fatale who may be more than she appears. It’s really all the discriminating sleaze fan could ask for, and then some.
Shot on 35mm, Frat House Massacre looks a hell of a lot better than it has any right to– but then, it’s also just generally a hell of a lot better than it has to be. The original music by Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti is great, and the period music is used to actually set the tone and enhance the atmosphere instead of just being ironic set dressing. It’s an excellent soundtrack, and hopefully it will remain intact once the film gets an official release. The performances are solid across the board, and the film’s pacing and impressive kills nicely smooth over any potentially distracting plot holes.
The short version: Frat House Massacre delivers the goods and then some.
Fright Flick (2011)
Originally published on Film Monthly 5 January 2011
Writer/director Israel Luna hit an indie/exploitation home run in 2010 with Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives, a decidedly unique twist on the rape-revenge subgenre. Luckily for fans of Luna’s wildly entertaining style of low-budget fun, he already has a follow-up on the way in the form of Fright Flick. While not quite as original (or as funny) as Ticked-Off Trannies, Fright Flick is still a cut above the standard indie slasher. No pun intended.
Fright Flick opens with a mysterious murder that takes place on the set of a low-budget horror movie called (what else?) Fright Flick. The action then jumps to two years later and most of the same cast and crew are reunited to make Fright Flick 3. Apparently the filming of Fright Flick 2 went off without any serious problems. No such luck this time out, as cast and crew members start getting killed almost as soon as the crew checks into their hotel!
There are plenty of suspects: Tom Zembrod (“Boner” in Ticked-Off) plays cameraman Chad, who is working on his own screenplay with Kat (Whitney Blake) while trying to hide it from self-important director Laurent (Richard D. Curtin, “Fergus” in Ticked-Off). Chad Allen plays Brock, the Fright Flick 3 lead whose girlfriend Angela (Daphne Khoury) has been playing a supporting role since the first film! Kiss-ass assistant Eddie (Jon Paul Burkhart) spills the story on Chad and Kat’s screenplay and promises slate girl Eye Candy (Natalie Jones) the lead in that movie while Producer Jenkins (Tod Jenkins) seems a little too calm for someone who’s constantly putting out fires.
Fright Flick delivers on the gore an
d the laughs, with a respectable body count that racks up quickly. The cast look like they’re all having a great time, and their chemistry, comic timing, and some help from buckets of fake blood make Fright Flick an enjoyable– if familiar– take on the low-budget slasher formula.
From the Dark (2014)
Originally published on Film Monthly 1 April 2015
Ireland has not traditionally been a hotbed of horror film production. That’s not to say that notable horror films have not been made there, but most film fans would be hard-pressed to associate “Irish cinema” and “genre film.” Some of the more high-profile horrors coming out of Ireland over the last decade have been takes on familiar material for better (Jon Wright’s fun creature feature Grabbers) or worse (Paddy Breathnach’s tiresome backwoods slasher Shrooms), and Conor McMahon’s From the Dark lands roughly right in the middle. From its generic title on, this is familiar stuff.
A farmer (Gerry O’Brien) digging peat stumbles upon something buried and chained under the earth. As the sun goes down, he runs to get a flashlight to discover what he has uncovered, only to find it has already escaped. Meanwhile, vacationing couple Sarah (Niamh Algar) and Mark (Stephen Cromwell) become lost and stranded when their car gets stuck in the mud on an old road. Mark sets off to find help and happens upon the farmer, who has been attacked by whatever it was he freed from the ground. Soon Sarah and Mark are fighting for their lives against a creature that moves quickly and silently in the dark, but fears the light.
The Unrepentant Cinephile Page 26