Tag Archives: Daniel Baldwin

Nightmares Film Festival

Murder Ballads: How to Make It in Rock ‘n’ Roll

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by Daniel Baldwin

Rock music and horror have always gone together like peanut butter and jelly. Given that both are considered outsider artforms, it’s just a natural pairing. After all, rock (and metal or punk) music tends to be aggressive and there is no genre of film more aggressive than horror. Even action cinema tends to be less brutal.

Comedy is another genre that fits well with both horror and rock. Both artforms love to roll about in camp on occasion, cutting loose with over-the-top subject matter and black humor. Murder Ballads knows all of this and revels in it, while also mixing doses of British crime into the mix as well. What results is an offbeat concoction that feels like someone dumped elements of ‘90s slacker comedies, music biopics, and ‘90s crime comedies into a blender. The trappings are lo-fi due to its indie budget, but the throwback sentiments remain intact.

The story follows a struggling British rock band in desperate need of a new image – including a new member – and a new hit song. If they cannot swing either one, their label is going to give them the boot. Desperate times call for desperate measures and those desperate measures end up involving theft, deception, and murder, among other things. If that weren’t enough, most of the band members also happen to be morons. Given that morons are prone to making mistakes and mistakes are the last thing one should be making when committing crimes, well, you can see why things inevitably get out of control.

Writer/director Mitchell Tolliday has crafted a fun little film here about the darkly comedic and supremely chaotic rise and fall of a British rock ‘n’ roll band. The performances are pitched properly to the film’s playful tone, the faux documentary cutaways to actor Simon Callow are amusing, and the segues between sections are cute and inventive. Aside from some occasional pacing issues, this is a fun time.

Nightmares Film Festival

Abruptio

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by Daniel Baldwin

Genre-bending mysteries were big in the ‘80s and high concept thrillers were all the rage in the ‘90s. Attempting to combine both is a bit of a tall order, but it’s one that writer/director Evan Marlowe aims for with Abruptio. What we have here is an increasingly tense and weird tale of a mild-mannered sad sack named Les (James Marsters – more on that in a moment) who finds himself at the center of an increasingly weird and violent conspiracy. Forces beyond his comprehension are compelling him to commit heinous acts at the drop of a hat. If he refuses, he dies. But will he be able to live with himself if he continues to accept these diabolical missions?

You’d think that would be enough of a tightrope act for Marlowe to walk, but you’d be wrong. Not satisfied with crafting just any mere genre-melting pot thriller, Evan decided he should also do the entire thing with puppets and other handcrafted effects. The potential failure rate for such an additional complication is high, but Abruptio nonetheless manages to pull it off. Because of this, every last bit of tension, violence, and weirdness gains an extra layer of uncanniness, absurdity, and existential dread.

Quite a few of our puppet leads are voiced by familiar genre performers. There’s the aforementioned James Marsters, who voices a troubled middle aged lead who 30 years ago could have easily been played in the flesh by J.T. Walsh. We also get the late Sid Haig as a sketchy stand-up comedian, the great Robert Englund as a haunted neat freak, and Christopher McDonald as a gruff intimidating police chief. All of this is an added bonus atop a film that bears multiple influences from genre filmmaking luminaries like David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Don Coscarelli, David Lynch, and Joel Schumacher.

An experimental, genre-bending, high concept thriller performed entirely with advanced puppetry should be a recipe for disaster. In the hands of Evan Marlowe, his crew, and his voicecast, it sings. Abruptio should not work, but it very much does. The world has been gifted a wild little midnight movie here that isn’t for everyone, but the people who it is for are going to love every last bit of it.

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Slay, Girl, Slay

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KillHer

by Daniel Baldwin

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: a bunch of hot young twentysomethings haul off into the woods for a weekend of fun, only to find themselves at the mercy of a psychopath. You have? Well, how about the one where a bunch of hot young twentysomething ladies get together for a pre-wedding party to cut loose? That one too? Well, how about if we mash them together? Alright, now that’s better.

Robyn August’s KillHer is one part rural terror, one part bachelorette slumber weekend, and all parts psycho-slasher flick. It’s a novel combo, especially when it actually involves tent camping, as opposed to riffing nonstop on “glamping” (although there is a bit of that too). We follow four young women opting to “rough it” for a weekend before their bestie gets married. Most of them aren’t the camping type, but the bride-to-be’s fiancée is, and she wants to impress him by trying it out.

What follows is a comedic terror tale that rolls straight down the usual checklist of tropes. Spotty cell signals? Check. Spooky forest noises? Check. Big sketchy dude also camping nearby? Check. Someone they were supposed to meet is M.I.A.? Check. From a writing standpoint, nothing too unexpected occurs and the dialogue isn’t the greatest. The special effects work is also a bit spotty at times, but that comes with the low budget territory.

What sets KillHer apart from the rest of the killer-in-the-woods subgenre? Actress M.C. Huff. She is an absolute firecracker from start to finish, nailing every last bit of emotion that the film calls upon her to perform. Whether she’s being bubbly & sweet, playful & funny, or whenever she’s tasked with dishing out the extreme levels of hysteria and mania that this particular genre specializes in, Huff is up to the challenge. The film around her might not knock your socks off, but her character Eddie is THE reason to check this one out. Huff is one to watch, folks.

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Return to Sender

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Condition of Return

by Daniel Baldwin

There aren’t too many movies out there that focus on mass shooters. You’ve got the occasional one that tackles it, such as Runaway Jury or the more recent Run Hide Fight, but they are few and far between. It’s not hard to see why, given both the frequency and severity of mass shootings in the United States. One might even call it a taboo cinematic subject. Taboos are, of course, the domain of genre and exploitation cinema. These are the corners of cinema where – when done right – we can find catharsis through art.

Tommy Stovall’s Condition of Return aims right at that taboo and pulls the proverbial trigger. Our protagonist is a churchgoing woman (AnnaLynne McCord) who, one day, shoots up said church, leaving over a dozen dead and even more injured. Why did she do it? That’s for the psychiatrist (Dean Cain) brought in to evaluate her ahead of sentencing to decide. Well, that and to professionally analyze whether or not she is sane enough to even stand trial. After all, she claims that the Devil (Natasha Henstridge) made her do it!

Normally what we would have here would be a battle of wits between a perpetrator and a medical professional as the latter sets about unravelling the mystery in front of them. Is she crazy? What’s the reason behind the reason for such a horrible act? Condition of Return is not interested in any of this. In fact, it makes it clear early on whether or not she is crazy. The answer is deeply troublesome. What we have here is a film that doesn’t put a whole lot of thought into the subtext behind the filmmakers’ storytelling decisions. And that’s not even getting into its problematic depictions of race.

There’s nothing wrong with making a film where the supernatural is real and inhuman beings are playing games with human lives for fun. Horror is filled with such fare. Angel Heart and The Devil’s Advocate come to mind. Religious horror is an important foundation of the genre. It only becomes a problem when evil acts by humans – especially topical epidemic ones – within such narratives are scapegoated upon such powers. Want my professional cinematic analysis? Stick with the Heaven & Hell thrillers that don’t blame mass shootings on anything other than the people pulling the trigger. As for McCord and Stovall, if you’re wanting horror fare featuring the talents either, seek out Excision and Aaron’s Blood instead. Mark this one as “return to sender.”

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Haunting in Venice, Love at First Sight, Canary, Cassandro, Satanic Hispanics & More

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A Haunting In Venice, Love at First Sight, Canary, Cassandro, Satanic Hispanics, Elevator Game, The Inventor, Little Jar, Aporia, Megalomaniac, Amerikatsi

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Nightmares in a Damaged Subgenre

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Megalomaniac

by Daniel Baldwin

Martha (Eline Schumacher) and Felix (Benjamin Ramon) are the children of the legendary uncaught serial killer The Butcher of Mons. Each of these siblings contends with their family legacy in different ways. Martha works as a janitor amongst coworkers who treat her with contempt. Meanwhile, Felix has taken up his deceased patriarch’s monstrous profession: kidnapping, torturing, killing, and dismembering women.

Their home life is not great. Neither talks to the other much, with Felix insisting on living in near total seclusion from his sister, despite residing in the same home. Both have frequent hallucinations tailored to their individual fractured psyches as they live out their own private hells. That is, until things go south at Martha’s job. A violent encounter forces Martha and Felix together, sending them down an even more vicious and crazed path.

If any of that sounds cliched, it’s because it very much is. What we have here in Megalomaniac is a film homaging both violent ‘70s exploitation and ‘00s New French Extremity cinema. The latter in particular. The fingerprints of modern classics such Martyrs, Frontier(s), and High Tension are on full display here, as well as doses of older influences like Lustig’s Maniac and Scavolini’s Nightmares. Brutal, broken killers take out their rage on unsuspecting women. We’ve seen it countless times before and we have seen it done better.

From a filmmaking standpoint, the craft on display here is sound. There are some striking images to be found, particularly during the film’s more hallucinatory sequences. Unfortunately, the tone and color palette are both so grim and dour that any enticement within those images is immediately sapped away. What we are left with is yet another in a long line of torture & kill flicks. If there’s any solace to be had here, it is in Eline Schumacher’s performance in the first two acts. While the writing for her character ultimately becomes a lump of cliches in the final stretch, Schumacher gives a nuanced take on the degradation of a tortured psyche for the first two thirds of the film.

If this is a subgenre that you’re fond of, you might find some engagement within. All others would be better off seeking out one of the other films I mentioned above. This is a fans-only affair.

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The Theatre of the Mind

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Caverna

by Daniel Baldwin

Hannah Swayze and Daniel Contaldo’s Caverna is a surrealist work about an experimental theater workshop in Florence, Italy. We follow two particular students, Giorgia (Giorgia Tomasi) and Lorenzo (Lorenzo Passaniti), who are pushed by a daring teacher named Alba to unleash their inner thoughts and fears through acting exercises in front of the group. If that sounds like a movie about a bunch of theater kids wandering about a stage as they talk about their feelings, don’t worry. It’s not that kind of movie.

Instead, Caverna hovers between reality and fantasy as dreams, desires, and nightmares are portrayed in a rather trippy fashion as the film flips back and forth between the actors and their “scenes”. What is real and what is acting blurs as both feed into one another. Is there really a rad-looking cyclops stomping about the wooded areas of Florence, chasing a princess? Probably not, but if it looks, sounds, and feels real, who’s to say that it isn’t? The same holds true for the rest of the mythology-infused moments of fantasy that are weaved throughout.

Caverna is about how the deepest parts of one’s psyche often fuel the art that they unleash upon the world. It is not the first film to do this. Nor will it be the last. It then becomes a question of whether or not its somewhat-psychedelic arthouse notions are enticing enough to draw you into its web. This is very much a niche piece of filmmaking, with a heavily disjointed nature that can and will push many a viewer away. If you’re inclined to welcome such filmmaking, however, then there’s a lot to enjoy here.

Complementing its wilder storytelling tactics is a lot of striking imagery. The cinematography – both in the fantasy and “real world” sequences – is sumptuous throughout, often giving the film a lush and vibrant look. In terms of pacing, it never overstays its welcome, which has ultimately resulted in a runtime that barely exceeds an hour. That might be a turn-off to those looking for something grander, but it also means that it avoids the bloat that plagues a lot of modern arthouse fare. Swayze & Contaldo clearly know that not everything needs to be 2 ½ hours long. Caverna might not knock your socks off, but if you’re open to its imagination, you’ll be in for an interesting ride.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Meg 2, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, Shortcomings, Final Cut, Night of the 12th & More

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TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, Meg 2 The Trench, Shortcomings, Final Cut, The Night of the 12th, Rub, Mob Land, Bad City