A Horror Unto Itself
Hororthon 2008
I’ve been covering the Horrorthon for a few years now and there are a few things that distinguish it from any other event in the cinematic calendar. Firstly, it has to be the least pretentious festival out there. For most of the year the IFI is a place where fanboys fear to tread but Hallowe’en week seems to do away with that inferiority complex. In fact, if you’re not wearing black you’ll most likely be issued with something on the door. By the venue’s standards it’s tantamount to outsider art but the overall sense of community can make the attendees as interesting as the films they pack in to – sometimes even more so. I can’t think of anywhere else that has the same number of familiar faces, often in the very same seats.
And it’s amazing what some free M&Ms or a dodgy DVD will do for your mood. Over the years I have been the ‘winner’ of copies of Hostel and The Wicker Man (not the good one) and, despite them being awful movies, it’s always a good thing to know you can catch a DVD box rocketing towards you at head height. Some skills can never be practiced too often.
Much like horror films themselves, the success of the Horrorthon is predicated on a simple cocktail of the sublime, the baroque and outright trash. So long as a movie manages to be just barely coherent you’ll at least get a clap out of it.
Usually my coverage becomes a breakdown of pleasant discoveries (Donnie Darko, The Lost, Joshua) and outright disgust at some of the worst filmmaking this side of Camp Crystal Lake (Chaos, Shrooms and the aptly named Botched).
So it now seems to be time to ponder the question: where did it all go so wrong? With precious little by way of highlights, would the 11th annual event be remembered as the year the rot set in? Has the law of the franchise – that of progressively diminishing returns – finally hit home?
Opening nerves
The opening entertainment this year was the Irish short All the Little Things. Directed by Jason Figgis, it was introduced as being in need of losing ‘about three minutes.’ In a seven-minute short that’s hardly an enticing prospect. As it turned out what we saw was something to do with a nightclub, Glenda Gilson and a lot of random screaming. Kind of like an audiovisual version of the Sindo. Only not as good.
Thankfully the main feature presentation, Quarantine, fared much better. Virtually a shot for shot remake of Spanish POV shocker [REC], the relocation of the story from Barcelona to LA works well, save for the central character who has been changed from a disillusioned newshound to an enthusiastic reporter. The lead’s emotional collapse, in the original a reversal from competence to terror, comes across as mere party-girl histrionics. Some people are just not suited to the world of hard news.
Quarantine was followed by the latest piece of Frank Henenlotter experience, Bad Biology, where a woman with seven clitorises meets a man with a sentient penis. How does one follow that? You don’t – it was the last movie of the night.
Friday may have begun early but it would not be until 7.15 pm before something off the beaten path made an appearance. Sadly, Mindflesh was not only badly structured; it had some of the worst effects of the weekend. It’s got taxis and ghosts and blurry evil creatures. You could cover the same territory by hanging around College Green at 3 am.
Somewhat better received was Timecrimes, a low-budget Spanish sci-fi effort that was self-aware enough not take itself too seriously. Or at least the audience wasn’t. The night was rounded out with a rare screening of Night of the Lepus, starring Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley, Janet Leigh and a bunch of rabbits. Giant rabbits. Also showing to a sold-out screen 2 was Irish feature Seer. Directed by Eric Courtney, his opus had to be funded by local businesses in the absence of official funding. By all accounts it was a modest success and certainly went down better than much of the new material on show.
Absent malice
Saturday began with two exhumations: the best-forgotten Giallo, the Dublin-set The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire and also, more importantly, a 25th anniversary screening of Tony Scott’s The Hunger. Possibly one of the most influential vampire films of the ’80s (lagging just behind Near Dark). Some of the cultural markers may have withered over time (Bauhaus’ rendition of Bela Lugosi’s dead has retro appeal over it) but the onscreen pairings of Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and, later, Susan Sarandon remains as delicious a prospect as ever. I refuse to make the awful quip that the latter combinations’ tryst was ‘type oh positive’.
Otherwise the day would yield only two discoveries of merit: firstly Johnny Kevorkian’s urban gothic, The Disappeared, did a reasonable job of meshing elements of The Devil’s Backbone with The Sixth Sense (with a hint of The Matrix believe it or not). The story of a troubled teen who may or may not be having visions of his kidnapped little brother; the plot hangs together nicely until a third act cops out with an oddly comforting ‘mini twist’. Still, it doesn’t run over time and would make a reasonable midnight movie. Low budget digital feature making wins again, albeit on modest terms.
Much more unnerving was the centrepiece of the event that would divide audiences opinion. Martyrs. A work of genius or crass exploitation?
Best explained as a torture porn anthology film, Pascal Laugier’s picaresque marks another step forward for French brutalist horror. Starting as an homage to Hostel, Laugier twists his way through the movie references into Michael Haneke territory and back again as a psychotic revenge drama gets turned on its head at the halfway mark. A brief poll of some fanboys afterwards saw comparisons to that other example of French extremism, Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible. That a work of such power can come from within genre cinema is a testament to the filmmakers. What rankled most with this writer was the lack of discussion that usually follows the festival main event. This was particularly well handled in 2005, when Ruggero Deodato was on hand to discuss Cannibal Holocaust. In contrast, Martyrs, was shown in a vacuum with no introduction or discussion. Opportunity missed, and a real symptom of malaise within the organising committee.
Sunday would also prove a fallow period with only two items of interest on the bill surrounded by the God-awful Ghostwood (it’s got Patrick Bergin in it – never a good sign), Demons 2 and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Standout moments were a programme of grindhouse trailers and Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!, a documentary about the sights, sounds and smells of the Australian exploitation film industry. Perhaps the most entertaining entry of the festival, it falls into the ‘pleasant discovery’ category. And it only took four days to find one. Always a leap of faith, the Surprise Film was Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s Surveillance. It bombed. So it wasn’t actually a surprise at all – in terms of reception anyway.
Limp
The final day saw two more anniversary screenings: Dawn of the Dead (30 years young and still relevant as ever) and, for some reason, Jaws 2. Also on the bill were the underwhelming British comedy/horror Mum & Dad and Ryûhei Kitamura’s (of Versus fame) The Midnight Meat Train, which saw off Horrorthon ’08 with more of a quiet burial than the raging cremation of last year, where Planet Terror left no fancy untickled.
So where did it all go wrong? Where did the vibe go? Where were my sweets? Where was Ed King to put everything in perspective with his insightful introductions?
Where was the quality control? Late night schlock pretty much picks itself, but with a history of unleashing 28 Days Later and 30 Days of Night on a vaguely-suspecting audience, surely they could have found something that would work outside their hermetically-sealed world of wonder? The obvious choice of Scandinavian vampire buddy tale, Let the Right One In had been initially scheduled but a print could not be delivered in time. Instead we got Child’s Play and Vinnie Jones with a cleaver. Gee whiz.
An over-reliance on the classics (almost half the programme) smacked of lazy programming and another dud of a surprise film hardly improved matters. It begs the question whether the same passion is there on the part of the organisers. After all, when was the last time you got interested seeing a Part 11 at the end of a title?
Horrorthon 2008 – Official website
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