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Fright Club Friday: Dumplings

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Dumplings (2004)

A great deal different than the typical supernatural Asian horror film, Fruit Chan’s Dumplings satirizes the global obsession with youth and beauty in taboo-shattering ways.

Gorgeous if off-putting Aunt Mei (Bai Ling) balances her time between performing black market medical functions and selling youth-rejuvenating dumplings. She’s found a customer for the dumplings in Mrs. Li (Miriam Yeung ChinWah), the discarded wife of a wealthy man.

With darkest humor and sharp insight, Chan situates the horror in a specifically Chinese history, but skewers a youth obsessed culture that circles the globe.

The secret ingredient is Bai Ling, whose performance is a sly work of genius. There are layers to this character that are only slowly revealed, but Ling clearly knows them inside and out, hinting at them all the while and flatly surprised at all Mrs. Li (and you and everyone else) hasn’t guessed.

Gross and intimate, uncomfortable and wise, mean, well acted and really nicely photographed, Dumplings will likely not be for everyone, but it’s certainly a change of pace from ordinary fare.

 

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Fright Club Friday: Red State

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Red State (2011)

I actually got to talk to Kevin Smith about a year before Red State was released. Our official topic was his Smodcasts, but given my particular weakness for genre filmmaking, I veered the questions toward his forthcoming entrance into horror.

He told me: “For years I’ve called myself a filmmaker, but it’s not really true. Really I just make Kevin Smith movies. I’m at that stage where I could make a Kevin Smith Movie with my eyes closed. Let me see if I can make another movie.”

That other movie was Red State – an underrated gem. Deceptively straightforward, Smith’s tale of a small, violently devout cult taken to using the internet to trap “homos and fornicators” for ritualistic murder cuts deeper than you might expect. Not simply satisfied with liberal finger wagging, Smith’s film leaves no character burdened by innocence.

The usually stellar Melissa Leo chews more scenery than need be as a devoted apostle, but pastor Abin Cooper spellbinds as delivered to us by Tarantino favorite Michael Parks. Never a false note, never a clichéd moment, Parks’s award-worthy performance fuels the entire picture.

There’s enough creepiness involved to call this a horror film, but truth be told, by about the midway point it turns to corrupt government action flick, with slightly lesser results. Still, the dialogue is surprisingly smart, and the cast brims with rock solid character actors, including John Goodman, Stephen Root, and Kevin Pollak.

Smith said at the time: “I think we have something. It’s creepy and very finger-on-the-pulse and very much about America.”

Agreed.

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Fright Club Friday: Dog Soldiers

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Dog Soldiers (2002)

Let’s get the long weekend rolling with a fun, bloody, exciting trip to the Scottish highlands. Wry humor, impenetrable accents, a true sense of isolation and blood by the gallon help separate Neil Marshall’s (The Descent) Dog Soldiers from legions of other wolfmen tales.

Marshall creates a familiarly tense feeling, brilliantly straddling monster movie and war movie. A platoon is dropped into an enormous forest for a military exercise. There’s a surprise attack. The remaining soldiers hunker down in an isolated cabin to mend, figure out WTF, and strategize for survival.

This is like any good genre pic where a battalion is trapped behind enemy lines – just as vivid, bloody and intense. Who’s gone soft? Who will risk what to save a buddy? How to outsmart the enemy?

But the enemies this time are giant, hairy, hungry monsters. Woo hoo!

The fantastically realized idea of traitors takes on a little extra something-something, I’ll tell you that right now.

Though the rubber suits – shown fairly minimally and with some flair – do lessen the film’s horrific impact, solid writing, dark humor and a good deal of ripping and tearing energize this blast of a lycanthropic Alamo.

 

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Fright Club Fridays: We Are What We Are

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We Are What We Are (2010)

Give writer/director Jorge Michel Grau credit, he took a fresh approach to the cannibalism film. His Spanish language picture lives in a drab underworld of poverty teeming with disposable populations and those who consume flesh, figuratively and literally.

In a quiet opening sequence, a man dies in a mall. It happens that this is a family patriarch and his passing leaves the desperately poor family in shambles. While their particular quandary veers spectacularly from expectations, there is something primal and authentic about it.

It’s as if a simple relic from a hunter-gatherer population evolved separately but within the larger urban population, and now this little tribe is left without a leader. An internal power struggle begins to determine the member most suited to take over as the head of the household, and therefore, there is some conflict and competition – however reluctant – over who will handle the principal task of the patriarch: that of putting meat on the table.

We’re never privy to the particulars – again giving the whole affair a feel of authenticity – but adding to the family’s crisis is the impending Ritual, which apparently involves a deadline and some specific meat preparations.

Grau’s approach is so subtle, so honest, that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a horror film. Indeed, were this family fighting to survive on a more traditional level, this film would simply be a fine piece of social realism focused on Mexico City’s enormous population in poverty. But it’s more than that. Sure, the cannibalism is simply an extreme metaphor, but it’s so beautifully thought out and executed!

The family dynamic is fascinating, every glance weighted and meaningful, every closed door significant. Grau draws eerie, powerful performances across the board, and forever veers in unexpected directions.

We Are What We Are is among the finest family dramas or social commentaries of 2010. Blend into that drama some deep perversity, spooky ambiguities and mysteries, deftly handled acting, and a lot of freaky shit and you have hardly the goriest film ever made about cannibals, but perhaps the most relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBkNz3_pzsw

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The Snowtown Murders

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The Snowtown Murders (2011)

Very quietly, Australia is putting out some of the most troublingly honest films on earth, The Snowtown Murders among them.

First time filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s movie bears more than a passing resemblance to 2010 Aussie import Animal Kingdom. Both boast unreasonably realistic performances focused on Australia’s seedier side; both examine one family’s functional disregard for the law; both hinge on the relationship between a charismatic psychopath and a quiet, wayward teen.

But Kurzel’s film, unfortunately, mines a true story.

John Bunting tortured and killed eleven people during his spree in South Australia in the Nineties. We only watch it happen once on film, but that’s more than enough.

The director seems less interested in the lurid details of Bunting’s brutal violence than he is in the complicated and alarming nature of complicity. Ironically, this less-is-more approach may be why the movie leaves you so shaken.

An unflinching examination of a predator swimming among prey, Snowtown succeeds where many true crime films fail because of its understatement, its casual observational style, and its unsettling authenticity. More than anything, though, the film excels due to one astounding performance.

Daniel Henshall cuts an unimpressive figure on screen – a round-faced, smiling schlub. But he brings Bunting an amiability and confrontational fearlessness that provides insight into what draws people to a sadistic madman.

There’s not a false note in his chilling turn, nor in the atmosphere Kurzel creates of a population aching for a man – any adult male to care for them, protect them and tell them what to do.

Once he has the trust of his neighbors in this low-income suburb, Bunting picks and chooses: who dies, who helps, who lives another day. What begins as exceedingly brutal neighborhood vigilantism turns quickly to a sort of thinning of the herd, and eventually to simple, unfathomably horrific entertainment.

The Snowtown Murders is a slow boil, and painfully tense. It’s hard to watch and harder to believe, but as a film, it offers a powerful image of everyday evil that will be hard to shake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvu_tBQgZyI

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Countdown: Best Horror Comedies

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It’s time again for our celebration of under seen  horror, Fright Club! Join us Friday, 11:30 at the Drexel Theater in  Bexley for fun, prizes, and Tucker and Dale Versus Evil! In honor of this outstanding, hilarious piece of bloody chaos, we are counting down the 5 best horror comedies of all time.

 

5. Dead Snow

You had us at “Nazi zombies.” A fun twist on cabin-in-the-woods horror, this film sees a handful of college kids heading to a remote mountain cabin for some winter sport fun and maybe a little lovin’. Dead Snow boasts some of the tongue-in-cheek, referential comedy of the outstanding flick Cabin in the Woods, but with a great deal more actual horror. It’s grisly, bloody, hilarious fun.

4. Cabin in the Woods

Joss Whedon co-writes Drew Goddard’s celebratory homage, and their nimble screenplay and wickedly clever direction allow a spot-on cast to entertain holy hell out of you. Insightful, scary, hilarious and brimming with a love of the genre, Cabin in the Woods is one for the ages.

 

3. Shaun of the Dead

Shaun offers such a witty observation of both a generation and a genre, so well told and acted, that it is an absolute joy, even if you’re not a fan of zombie movies. As social satire, it is as sharp as they come. It also manages to hit the bull’s eye as a splatter horror film, an ode to Romero, a buddy picture, and an authentic romantic comedy. And it’s more than just a remarkable achievement; it’s a fresh, vivid explosion of entertainment. It’s just a great movie.

 

2. American Psycho

A giddy hatchet to the head of the abiding culture of the Eighties, American Psycho represents the sleekest, most confident black comedy – perhaps ever. Director Mary Harron trimmed Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, giving it unerring focus. More importantly, the film soars due to Christian Bale’s utterly astonishing performance as narcissist, psychopath, and Huey Lewis fan Patrick Bateman.

1. Zombieland

Zombieland is quite possibly the perfect movie. Just when Shaun of the Dead convinced us that those Limey Brits had created the best-ever zombie romantic comedy, it turns out they’d only created the most British zombie one. The Yank counterpart is even better, and with this amount of artillery, it’s certainly a more American vision. It is a gloriously filmed piece of action horror cinema, owned outright by Woody Harrelson. His gun toting, Twinkie loving, Willie Nelson singing, Dale Earnhart number wearing redneck ranks among the greatest horror heroes ever.

Outtakes

Fright Club, Round 3: The Loved Ones

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Join us this Friday night, 3/14, at 11:30 pm for the demented Aussie masterpiece The Loved Ones! It’s a wild, violent, depraved way to spend 84 minutes, benefitting from one of the most inspired villains in modern horror. Throw in some of Studio 35’s awesome craft beers and settle in for a seriously wrong-minded flick.

Studio 35 Cinema and Drafthouse is located at 3055 Indianola Avenue. Tickets are just $5 and drink specials abound.

Join us!

Outtakes

Fright Club, Round 2: Eden Lake

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Join George and Hope this Friday night, 11:30, at Studio 35 Cinema and Drafthouse for Round 2 of Fright Club! We’re showing the underseen indie horror gem Eden Lake starring Michael Fassbender. It’s a unique and terrifying picture that deserves a big audience. Enjoy some of Studio 35’s great draft beers and hang out with some scary film fanatics – what could be better?

Studio 35 is located at 3055 Indianola Avenue. Tickets are $5. Drink specials abound.

Join us!