Deathgasm

ArtsFestivalsFilmFriday Film Review

Being the upstanding crew that they are, the folks at Fantasia saw fit to extend the festival by an extra day, giving me and others time to catch up on some of the more popular films we may have missed the first time around.

While I could have used this opportunity to check out Attack on Titan, I elected instead to hit up two of the smaller releases from this year’s line-up, Deathgasm and A Christmas Horror Story. Both films are Fantasia to the bone, fun, gory, clever crowd-pleasers that kept me entertained throughout and left me smiling. So for my last piece of Fantasia 2015 coverage, let’s take a look back at these two gems.

DeathgasmDeathgasm poster

Since Peter Jackson burst onto the scene with Braindead and Bad Taste, New Zealand splatter flicks have garnered a rep for being fun, gloriously low brow exercises in excess and black humor. Deathgasm, which takes this formula and adds a whopping infusion of Heavy Metal antics, might just end up being one of the best examples of the burgeoning sub-genre, a definite future cult pick and a must-watch for metalheads and horror fans alike.

After our hero, lonely metalhead Brodie, is moved out to a small New Zealand town, he befriends the only other metal fan for miles, Zakk, and starts up a band. But when the two find a set of mysterious pages of music clutched in the manic grip of a burned out former metal legend, they inadvertently unleash hordes of demons on the town. Demons that only they, naturally, can stop.

Deathgasm is an archetypal Fantasia movie, drenched in gore, full of tongue-in-cheek humor and tripping balls on its own manic, gleeful energy. The gags come hard and fast, the soundtrack is a constant barrage of roaring chainsaw engines and squealing guitars and it’s basically impossible not to have barrels of fun with the thing. It’s a cult tour-de-force, already bound for a place of honor in the collections of cult horror aficionados.

If there’s any one thing that kept coming back to bug me, it’s the films depiction of women. Specifically Medina, the popular girl who strikes up a romance with Brodie and joins him in the demon-slaying antics of the last act. She reminded me a lot of the female lead from Some Kind of Hate, a film I thought far less of. Both fall into a few stereotypes that I’m growing increasingly weary of, and which continue to not go away despite our best wishes.

Both are dating the resident bully when the movie opens, in flagrant defiance of prettymuch everything we learn about them later on, but almost immediately fall for the hero. At best it’s a bit of juvenile wish fulfillment, the attractive popular girl who likes bad boys but falls for the hero as soon as she sees what a sensitive soul he is and yada yada yada.

Based on what we learn about her, it seems completely unlikely she would ever have be dating the bully, but character consistency takes a back seat to how well she can serve as a fantasy for introverts and quiet types. Of course, “juvenile wish fulfillment” is basically Deathgasm’s log line, but that doesn’t totally excuse the film from engaging in this tired trope.

Also, in both cases, the female lead has metal bestowed on her by the male lead, implying that metal is an entirely male domain into which women must be led. And that just ain’t true, man. Tons of women find metal on their own, the same way as men do, and it would be nice to have seen this rather than portraying metal as something inherently foreign to women. Deathgasm sorta makes up for this by implying that by the end of the film, Medina has become more of a metal expert than Brodie, though.

But these problems aside, Deathgasm is still tons of fun, and I look forward to revisiting it in years to come.

A Christmas Horror Story

Anthology horror is something that keeps trying to make a comeback, with efforts like the much-seen V/H/S series and the under-watched gem Trick R’ Treat. A Christmas Horror Story is the latest film to try and rejuvenate the old formula, and arguably one of the most successful at recapturing the feel of classics like Creepshow and Body Bags.

Weaving multiple tales of Christmas-themed terror together, Christmas Horror Story is a rollicking good time at the movies. Like Deathgasm it’s gleefully gory but combines that with some terrific ideas and execution from the group of writers and directors who brought it to life.

As is always the case in anthologies, there’s a clear favorite, in my case the tale of a group of teens filming a project on a series of murders in their school. This story thread cleverly subverts expectation in a lot of ways, keeping the audience on their toes by subverting and conforming to horror tropes in equal measure.

Christmas Horror Story

At times I found myself a bit underwhelmed by the creature effects. While competently brought to the screen, the creatures of the film (including a murderous changeling and everyone’s favorite Christmas Demon, the Krampus) felt like they were missing something in the visual department. They aren’t as eye-catching as Sam from Trick R’ Treat, for example.

But there’s still a hell of a lot to love about A Christmas Horror Story. It’s smart and fun, packs a few great surprises, and if nothing else gives audiences the chance to bask in the glory of Shatner in what could be called the framing story.

Now, someone get to work on an Easter-themed horror anthology flick so we can complete the trilogy.

And with that, my Fantasia 2015 coverage comes to a close. I’d hesitantly call it the best iteration of the fest I have yet to attend, and can’t wait to see them try and top themselves next year.

ArtsFilmFriday Film Review

The three weeks that make up the Fantasia International Film Festival are always my favorite of the year, twenty-one heady days of filmic delights and unwise dietary choices broken up only by manic writing sessions and bleary-eyed journeys home on the night bus. This will be my fifth year covering the fest, my third for FTB, and already I can feel the pure Dionysian joy that awaits me.

The main release of the 2015 schedule has yet to happen, but the fine folks at Fantasia have already released more than enough of what’s to come to get me and every other film nerd salivating with anticipation, and this week on FFR we’ll be looking at some of the highlights of this year’s Fantasia line-up.

Assassination Classroom

It wouldn’t be Fantasia without something delectably weird and inimitably Japanese, something that by all sanity shouldn’t be a live-action film, but somehow is. I’m sure we’ll get several such films at Fantasia this year, but the one that’s caught my eye so far is Assassination Classroom.

Based off the hit manga and anime, the film centers on an all-powerful alien lifeform that comes to Earth, partially destroys the moon, and…..becomes a homeroom teacher. Naturally, the Japanese government places a reward of 10 billion yen to any student who can manage to kill the alien before it destroys the planet, meaning every student has come to class armed for war.

So it’s basically Great Teacher Onikuza meets Battle Royale with a grinning, yellow, be-tentacled monstrosity at its center. Yep, that’s a Fantasia movie all right. And I’m DOWN.

The Hallow

What’s that now? Practical monster effects? Congratulations, with those three words you’ve piqued the interest of every old-school horror buff worth his or her salt, myself included.

The Hallow looks like a classic creature feature, playing on well-worn but still rich themes of nature and old world monsters and myths wreaking havoc on the lives of us ignorant city folk. In this case, a married couple move to a remote village in Ireland, only to be warned by the local Scary Older Gentleman to stay out of the woods, lest they disturb something best left to itself. Naturally, they don’t, and much screaming ensues.

The Hallow is already garnering great reviews from its run at Sundance, and should be drawing additional attention for its director, Corin Hardy, who will sit in the director’s chair on the long-gestating remake/reboot of The Crow.

Deathgasm

Want something that’ll get a Fantasia crowd pumped? Get something loud as a piledriver, gory as a weekend internship at a slaughterhouse, metal as Optimus Prime’s ass and involving at least one chainsaw.

Deathgasm looks to be all those things. Coming out of New Zealand, home of such favorites as Brain Dead and Housebound, Deathgasm looks like the quintessential “Hall Theatre Midnight Screening” experience. This is the movie you go to see with a raucous audience of devoted gorehounds and metalheads, the movie Mitch Davis spends five minutes gushing over before the screening, God bless his heart.

The director, Jason Lei Howden, already has an impressive resume working on big Hollywood features in the digital effects department, and with such experience under his belt I think we may be looking at a festival favorite with this one.

Big Match

Past readers will recall me being a bit cynical about Korean films in the past, harumphing at the gray and blue action thrillers and raising an eyebrow at the period dramas. Korean film is something that I have a hard time connecting with, for one reason or another, but Big Match looks more up my alley and may just be the film to turn me around.

Zombie, an MMA fighter, is thrown in the clink on suspicion of kidnapping his coach and older brother. But just as quick, Zombie is released and finds himself a pawn in a city-wide board game masterminded by a mysterious genius.

Big Match looks, above all else, fun. Bright and colorful, not-too-serious, and with plenty of well-choreographed stunt work and fight scenes. I’m sure there will be more than enough dead-serious political action thrillers out of South Korea at Fantasia this year, but Big Match looks more my speed.

Miss Hokusai

Of course, it wouldn’t be Fantasia without anime, and this year’s fest will be opening up to the tune of Miss Hokusai, the story of Oei Hokusai, daughter of famed Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, who produced woodblock prints during the Edo Period.

What draws me to this film most is the director, Keiicha Hara, a relatively recent talent who got his start on the Shin-Chan movies. Miss Hokusai also comes from Production IG, a studio whose watermark is usually a stamp of quality, and who have previously wowed me with efforts like Giovanni’s Island and A Letter To Momo at previous Fantasia Fests.