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PART 1 OF THIS REPORT HERE
Last year was my first experience with the Tribeca Film Festival, for this site or otherwise. A festival featuring over 150 films can be a little daunting to navigate, especially in my hometown New York, where so many theaters are scattered across the jittery city. Luckily, last year and this one, I had an easy mission: seek out the most intriguing, buzz-heavy horror films the fest had to offer. I was able to catch only four, but I think the most important four in the line-up – and thankfully I lived to tell the tale.
THE WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD
Written and Directed by Duane Graves and Justin Meeks
Starring Justin Meeks, Alex Garcia, Charlie Hurtin, and Tony Wolford.
Too many movies are unfairly compared to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE just because they maybe have a vague, grungy 70’s aesthetic and some menacing hillbillies practically drooling on the lens. More often than not it’s by design, as the filmmakers attempt to parlay their meager capital into a visceral, low-budget you-are-there experience (although sometimes a critic will dumbly toss around the old “If you like Texas Chainsaw Massacre…” routine. A flick like WRONG TURN will get hit with this a lot).
So here we have THE WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD, a dirty little Texas-bred runt (based on a “true story”) that pays a genuinely effective tribute to the infamous 1974 masterpiece. One reason why it’s so successful at recreating the filthy majesty of the Tobe Hooper classic is because it was produced by that film’s co-writer/producer Kim Henkel, who also acted as mentor to WILD MAN’s two young directors, Duane Graves and Justin Meeks (Henkel was their film professor in Texas). The trio create perhaps the most visually faithful imitation of TCM I’ve ever seen – from the gritty, grotesque close-ups of its toothless hicks and their ominous surroundings to the occasional gorgeous crane or dolly shot. In addition, the film stock is certainly a convincing replica of the crusty old 16mm drive-in movies of yore (sure, I’ll even throw in that overused “grindhouse” word).
In terms of story, however, WILD MAN owes more to movies like THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN or THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK – films that took their true story angles seriously and attempted to recreate the plight of a town besieged by an unseen monster or “wild man”. It plays more like a myth than TCM’s intense, ghastly nightmare.
Unfortunately, WILD MAN is working with only one idea – that this mysterious marauder attacks whoever ventures into his territory during hunting season – and it doesn’t quite know what to do with it, other than reenact the same scare scene over and over (person wanders around, hears a growl, freaks out, is attacked, etc.) A subplot about a man who feeds the beast (whose journals this is supposedly based on), his wheelchair-bound wife, and their creepy helper has potential for TCM-style weirdness, but it’s not nearly as engaging. Also working against the movie is the harshly amateurish acting on display. At first, the people on screen’s “realness” comes across as an asset (most of the participants are non-actors), but it doesn’t take too many dialogue-heavy scenes to realize it’s not much fun watching unwashed geezers struggle through their line-readings (not nearly as much fun as you’d expect, I should say).
Still, I can’t get too down on WILD MAN because of its diligent attention to detail, and the frequent talent demonstrated by its filmmakers. They’ve proven they can imitate someone else’s style – now they’ve got to give us something that’s wholly their own.
6/10
FROM WITHIN
Directed by Phedon Papamichael
Starring Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Adam Goldberg, Kelly Blatz, and Steven Culp.
Sort of a cross between an American J-Horror flick and an X-Files episode without Mulder and Scully, FROM WITHIN is a serviceable spookfest that toys with some large issues like religion, but never truly distinguishes itself as a cut above movies in this vein that we’ve seen before.
A strange sort of phenomena is going down in Grovetown: people are just up and killing themselves without provocation. At first it appears to be explainable (a girl kills herself over her friend’s suicide, and in turn her father kills himself supposedly out of grief) but then the deaths become more random, and ghostly apparitions begin to appear to each of the victims right before they off themselves… It soon becomes obvious to good-girl Lindsay (Elizabeth Rice) that something is rotten in Grovetown, like a curse (obviously). Mopey emo badboy Aiden (Thomas Dekker – t.v.’s “John Connor” to you) is naturally suspicious, not so much for his grim demeanor as for the fact that his mother was an accused witch who was burned alive. Yep, that might get a curse going…. Throw into the mix a blow-hard pastor (Steven Culp), his fanatical son (Kelly Blatz), and some angry rednecks, and we’re in for some good old fashioned witch-huntin’ and religious hypocrisy!
While the fundamentalist aspect of the plot frequently takes center stage, I doubt the movie means for it to add much more than hissable human antagonists while we wait patiently for more ghostly fright scenes. Said scenes work about as well as can be expected, but as I mentioned earlier, if you’ve seen any of the countless J-horror movies out there (or their remakes), then you’ll know which jump-scare is coming when and how. In other words, been there, done that. That’s not to say that the story doesn’t have an inherent eeriness to it, but there’s just too much concentration on the stale relationship between Lindsay and Aiden – both of whom are about as exciting as mops – for the movie to fully delve into just how horrifying such an outbreak of suicides would be. Things are spiced up a bit when Aiden’s sinister cousin (Margo Harshman) visits, but not enough to raise the pulse rate much above flat-line.
This is the first directorial effort by Phedon Papamichael in 14 years, although he’s accumulated impressive work as a top-notch cinematographer for quite some time (SIDEWAYS, 3:10 TO YUMA). His work here is steady at best, late-night cable ready at the worst. The actors don’t provide much spark (although character actors Adam Goldberg and Jared Harris have good turns as a sleazy boyfriend and a gentle storekeeper, respectively); Rice in particular – while a lovely girl – just doesn’t have “it”, and the already dull character of Lindsay suffers for it. Everyone else does what they’re asked to do, I guess, which isn’t a whole lot.
5/10