[REC] 2 - Spain - Directed by Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza
Synopsis: A Vatican priest accompanies a SWAT unit to investigate the aftermath of a viral outbreak that may not be quite what it seems.
[REC] 2 is a fantastic sequel, expanding from the first film in surprising and exciting ways. Not content to be just a great zombie film, [REC] 2 takes a first-person walk into the spiritual side of horror with its tale of a church experiment gone horribly wrong. If there's any significant knock against the film, it's that [REC] 2's scares bear too much influence from survival horror video games, complete with white-skinned ghouls that crawl across ceilings and a sewer "level". For some, these bits might work just fine, but for me they were akin to watching someone play a scary video game, which is a much different experience than playing one yourself. The characters are all thinly drawn and serve the story only to die, more-or-less, and it impairs the tension that Balaguero is trying to create.
Regardless of whether or not I was personally terrified, I never expected [REC] 2 to be so interesting. The greatest movie sequels deliver the most well-regarded elements from the original while expanding situations in an unexpected way. Horror sequels are notoriously lousy at this, always trying to one-up the original in the least creative ways possible. [REC] 2 avoids sequel-itis by replicating what works from the original [REC] and only attempting to out-do its predecessor's story, not the scares. Nice work, guys.
Cropsey - USA - Directed by Barbara Brancaccio & Joshua Zeman
Synopsis: This documentary examines how truth can spin into urban legend as it presents the case of Andre Rand, a Staten Island drifter accused of murderering mentally handicapped children.
It's almost too easy to draw comparisons between this film and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Both films explore how a community reacts to a potential monster, especially if that monster is just enough of an outsider for people to draw their own conclusions about the details of the monster's crime. Brancaccio and Zeman are not interested in presenting a detailed case in support of Rand (unlike the support that the West Memphis Three found in Paradise Lost), despite the appearance to the contrary, as they dismiss many assumptions about Rand and his crime with this film. For a while it looks as if they're painting Rand as a martyr who got punished for being the wrong guy at the wrong time, but as the story unfolds and the tales from the police and Staten Island residents continue to get increasingly bizarre, Rand's guilt becomes almost irrelevant.
The question then becomes "why do we need to create monsters?" If Rand is guilty of kidnapping and murdering children, that's horrible enough on its own. Why do many of the people involved with the case want to reimagine Rand as the retarded, necrophiliac lackey of a Satanic cult? Since when do you need to be substantially more than a child killer to be considered evil? Unfortunately, it's not a question Brancaccio and Zeman are capable of answering in Cropsey, and if the documentary falters at all, it's because of the lack of something definitive. To placate our own desire for closure, we go the only conclusion that the filmmakers weakly offer, which is that Rand is most likely guilty.
Cropsey is unforgettable--more unsettling than any run-of-the-mill horror movie, and I commend Brancaccio and Zeman for exploring the dark questions in Cropsey, even if they don't provide any answers. It's obvious the heartbreaking subject matter got the filmmakers thinking, and it got me thinking too. I also don't have any answers.
Bronson - UK - Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Synopsis: Michael Peterson adopts the identity of Charles Bronson and goes on to become Britain's most notorious serial prisoner.
I'd dismissed Tom Hardy because I didn't like him in Star Trek: Nemesis. I feel idiotic even admitting that right now, because Hardy is downright relevatory in Bronson. It's an Oscar-calibre performance that provides the centerpiece for a series of darkly humorous vignettes about the life of a completely psychotic thug. I'm not really sure what the point of Bronson is (A celebration of thuggery and violence? How much animal is in a man?), or if there even is a point, but who cares? Hardy as Bronson is incredible. It's a fearless portrayal of unhinged violence, tempered by absurd humor and humming with dangerous immorality.
I'm nothing like Bronson. I don't ever want to meet anyone like Bronson. There's hardly a violent bone in my body, but, man, I sure did like watching this character, up there on the movie screen, unable to throttle me from the safety of my theatre seat, no matter how alive Tom Hardy made him seem. Bronson is a hilariously rude, astoundingly brutal must-see.
House of the Devil - USA - Directed by Ti West
Synopsis: A teenage babysitter takes on an unusual job that turns into a Satanic nightmare.
Going into the festival, House of the Devil was one of the few films already on my radar. I'd heard that director Ti West was working to create a perfect replica of a 1980's horror film, and I was expecting the excess cheese of something like Night of the Demons. I expected squealing nude teenagers being gruesomely stabbed to death while Bullet Boys played in the background.
I was very wrong.
Make no mistake, House of the Devil does feel like a forgotten gem from the 1980's, but it's a resolutely low-key affair. It has that slow, creeping kind of terror (and the use of the zoom lens) that earmarked many European horror films from the early 80's, except House of the Devil takes an American approach to its narrative (which is a nice way of saying it doesn't completely throw logic out the window). It's a solid "trapped babysitter" film, and I imagine my reaction to it would be the same if it had been created in 1983 instead of 2009--It's pretty darn good. I like parts of House of the Devil more than the whole, and I wish West had gone just a little bit darker, a little bit nastier with it. There's a lot of repetitive build-up for such an abrupt pay-off, but the length of the pay-off maybe wouldn't have mattered if it were just a touch more horrific. I even think some of that could've been remedied stylistically, as the film's finale is shot with modern hand-held camera techniques. That's not the way horror films were being shot back then, and it's the only one awkward misstep in this otherwise excellent homage.