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 COTTAGE
Written and Directed by Paul Andrew Williams
Starring Andy Serkis, Jennifer Ellison, Simon Schatzberger, and Reece Shearsmith.
A pair of bickering brothers (Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith) kidnap the daughter of a fearsome crime lord, with the intent of ransoming her. Unfortunately, their hideout is all too close to the home of a disfigured madmen with a hankering for human hands. Hilarity ensues!
Before entering a late-night showing of THE COTTAGE, I had heard it compared to SHAUN OF THE DEAD – making it a very hot ticket indeed. Sly British comedy, it should be noted, has invaded my psyche these last couple of years, with films like SHAUN, and t.v. shows like THE OFFICE, SPACED, and GARTH MERENGHI’S DARKPLACE (a must!) uniformly making most American comedy look downright doltish…
The comedy in THE COTTAGE is not sly, however; it’s broad and wacky. Less a sarcastic quip than an overeager slap to the back. And that’s not to say it’s not frequently funny, I was just surprised by how proudly “low brow” it is. Indeed, it has more in common with last year’s goofy BLACK SHEEP than anything else I can immediately think of.
The story moves along at a nice swift pace, with the initial kidnapping caper/comedy easily giving way to the gorier, but no less silly, horror section. But a problem soon becomes obvious: the film’s score. Not content to let semi-amusing scenes play out naturally, a bouncy, almost cartoony soundtrack is employed time and time again, urging us to find the naughty hi jinx utterly hilarious. This quickly becomes a nuisance. When the film reveals its true plot – and its main villain is introduced – an intriguing shift toward a darker tone seems to be at play. At yet, to my considerable dismay, the music continues to chime in, negating any serious tension the film attempts to build.
The actors can’t be faulted at all: Serkis, in a rare recent role where a motion-capture suit isn’t required, proves to be a forceful, and entertaining, screen presence on his own. Shearsmith, playing his brother, is a much more over-the-top creation: screaming, whining, and pleading his way through the movie – it’s not as annoying as it may sound, but some less patient viewers might find themselves gritting their teeth at his antics before long. For her part, Ellison – who is a huge personality in England – is surprisingly capable as an obnoxious tart who specializes in outsmarting the men around her and breaking their balls (figuratively, literally). It might be “method acting”, but I was impressed.
The movie’s gore will undoubtedly make sensitive audience members cringe, but seasoned horror fans won’t find anything they haven’t seen before (although a shovel figured in a couple of nice “whoa!” moments). Entrials spill, some limbs are severed – really par for the course… The main baddie, “The Farmer”, isn’t all that unique either – looking something like the horrid love-child of The Elephant Man and HATCHET’S Victor Crowley (there’s a coupling for ya). His backstory, aside from some newspaper clippings, remains tantalizingly obscure, although director Williams doesn’t seem to interested in the character on the whole – he’s just another gag.
6/10
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist (based on his novel)
Starring Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, and Henrik Dahl.
Tomas Alfredson’s sensitive, twisted coming-of-age fairy tale LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is the kind of horror movie we love to see from time to time, one that doesn’t wear its genre on its sleeve or fill the screen with hellish imagery just because it can. Oh don’t worry, it does, and when it does it’s potent. But this is more in the vein of the quieter Guillermo Del Toro films like THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE – where supernatural chills fit snugly next to the all too real horrors of adolesence. It’s also very “Swedish” if you can dig that.
Oskar is the prototypical bullied boy – friendless, isolated, not without charm and imagination. He spends his free time playing with a knife, although he’s not the type to freak out. The kind of kid who just seems weird even though he really isn’t… One day, he meets his new neighbor: a 12 year old girl named Eli, who seems weird because she is weird. She’s a vampire, something that Oskar gathers slowly but surely (although we’ve locked onto it early on, as her “father” has a tendancy to kidnap strangers and bleed them to death for his daughter). This isn’t a deal breaker by any means. The two outsiders develop a tentative bond, a happy pseudo-sensual friendship that, of course, can’t move smoothly along. Aside from her bloodlust, there’s her unhinged guardian coming closer and closer to getting found out. Meanwhile, a man mourning the murder of a friend seeks answers – and revenge.
What at first appears to be a somber affair reveals itself to have impressive dexterity of tone. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN moves from whimsical, to sad, to darkly funny, to shockingly gruesome – and everything in between and back again – with surprising ease. Alfredson gives us many striking images: a man half-frozen in ice, a woman – hilariously, horrifyingly – besieged by a swarm of cats, a head gently plopping into a pool, a startling glimpse of a scar… As grotesque as it sounds (and sometimes is) the ethereal mood and deliberate pace keep the film from becoming a freakshow. If I had to use a word to describe LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, it would be “haunting.” And that’s the kind of horror movie we love to see from time to time…
8.5/10