Horrorfest 2009 Reviews

I haven't really seen anyone post much about Horrorfest 2009, which is probably not surprising given that the number of theaters showing it nationwide shrunk to almost none and they moved the fest from November to January. And of course, the last Horrorfest featured an overwhelming number of terrible films ("Lake Dead", anyone?).

My wife and I have gone to all 3 Horrorfests, and we thought this one was much better than Horrorfest 2 and just below Horrorfest 1. You're still dealing with low budget films of course, so if you can only handle high quality, don't even bother with the DVDs. But for those who are curious and will be checking out the DVDs in March, here are some capsule reviews with my opinions that try to avoid spoilers.

"Dying Breed"
Some unlikable Australians go into the Tasmanian bush in search of a mythical tiger while being as annoying as possible. As the backstory dramatizes, Tasmania used to be a British penal colony from which there was almost no escape, but at least one man escaped by going cannibal and vanishing into the bush. Oddly enough, the part of Tasmania our quartet visits in the present seems to be comprised of suspicious and inbred locals. Any guesses on what's in store for our main characters? "Dying Breed" does have a very powerful and unpleasant ending, but it's hard for it to truly register because it's hard to care about the characters. Oh, did I also mention this movie is also very slow and boring for most of its running length? Gorehounds will love some cannibal sequences, but when it isn't boring it's horribly cliched and recycled.

"From Within"
A small town suddenly is overwhelmed by suicides, where the witness to each suicide becomes the next dead body - after first seeing someone all too familiar chasing them. Starts out very strong and then has some stumbles and overly familiar religious stereotypes, but for the most part is pretty good and watchable. Most of the actors are familiar from various TV shows and are pretty decent, particularly the "strange cousin" Sadie who returns for her cousin's funeral. Nice downbeat ending.

"Autopsy"
Five idiot twentysomethings party down for Mardi Gras and get in a car accident, running over someone they didn't see in the road. Unfortunately for them, the ambulance that arrives for help takes them off to Our Lady of *beep* You Up Hospital, where bad things lie in store. Often hilarious gorefest with a very strong streak of black humor. If you don't like mean spirited humor and large helpings of gore, skip this at all costs. It is ridiculous, not at all scary, and the plot is nonsensical, but the gory comedy works. Robert Losurdo has some hilarious lines ("That's *beep* up! Did you ask him to do that?") and Robert Patrick (T2) and Jennette Goldstein (Vazquez!) create some amusingly disturbed villains.

"Slaughter"
A young woman moves to Atlanta to escape an abusive relationship and forms a bond with a farm girl she sees in the same predicament in a bar. The two become roommates on said farm even though the girl does not get along with her father there, who seems to spend most of his time in the pig slaughterhouse, giving dark looks and ominously watching the rich men his daughter brings home at night. To be fair, this one is also very slow moving, but I thought the two lead actresses did a good job and the friendship was very believable. I was also tricked by this one, thinking it was going one way and being surprised at where it did go. I've since read two bad reviews on this, but I have to disagree and say that I thought it was pretty good, if overlong. Reader beware!

"Perkins' 14"
A policeman is haunted by the abductions of 14 children ten years earlier - the last of whom was his own son. He is alienated from his wife and overprotective of his daughter. While overseeing the police station one night a random conversation with an prisoner in a holding cell sends him on an investigation that convinces him that the man is in fact the abductor. Unfortunately for the officer and the town, his suspicions are correct - with terrible consequences for all. This one is very good until the last 1/4, where it becomes a routine barricaded-survivors-do-stupid-things movie. The biggest complaint is that it is shot so darkly that it is difficult to tell what is going on in many sequences (think AvP: Requiem dark). Due to the low budget, that was probably on purpose.

"The Broken"
A London woman's family begins to experience broken mirrors all around them. Even worse, the woman notices that the driver of a red SUV that goes by looks exactly like her. She follows the SUV back to her doppelganger's flat, confronts the woman in an exchange we don't get to see, leaves the flat and immediately gets into a car accident, after which she cannot remember what happened. This is the movie I most wanted to see at Horrorfest and stars the always reliable Lena Hedley and Richard Jenkins, and is far and away the best looking film of the fest. However, it is also the biggest letdown, being incredibly slowmoving and amazingly "similar" to the ideas in a much more famous film that (hint! hint!) has been remade numerous times (I won't mention it because it will ruin any "suspense" at all you might get from this picture). The plot makes less and less sense as it goes on, and the characters act less and less like any human being you and I know would act. There is a twist towards the end that you ought to see coming if you were watching the main character closely, but that makes the actions of at least one other character make even less sense. A good looking but totally empty movie.

"Voices"
A pair of Korean sisters (no, not THOSE Korean sisters!) begin to find out that all is not well in their family when their aunt plunges off of a balcony on her wedding day and is then finished off by the other aunt at the hospital. In case they weren't paying attention, one of those creepy Asian ghosts makes a memorable appearance on the ceiling of one girl's room to let her know that she's the next in the family to go. And Mom and Dad seem to know a lot more about a family curse than they're letting the girls in on. By now you know Asian horror and how much (or how little) you like, so you should have a good idea of whether or not this is up your alley. As usual, the film unfurls like a puzzle, and some pieces seem to have been deliberately left out (or the subtitles are just very bad), but overall it's different from the increasingly bad Asian "J-Horror" style films sharing the same long-haired-ghost-wants-revenge plot that came out after the success of "Ringu", "Ju-on", "A Tale of Two Sisters" and "One Missed Call". I liked it, but like I said by now you know if this kind of thing's for you or not.