(REC) 2: A charming romp for all the family...
So Saturday was time to hunker down into the main bulk of FrightFest and get ready to enjoy the horrors soon to be on display, with Friday evening’s movies still fresh in the mind (I already did a comprehensive review there just to get any lurking terrors out of my system).
Fortunately it turned out that the day was centred around three movies that are among the finest I’ve seen of any genre this year, all enormously different in tone. Indeed, if FrightFest proved anything - well, apart from that it had a great audience - it was how extraordinarily broad in scope the horror movie genre is, showing off the sort of lush cinematic qualities that some of its features can possess while others are more than happy to take the opposite approach. How the day’s programme metamorphosed from A Lizard in a Woman's Skin to Harpoon: Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre I’m not entirely sure (even if I’ll do my best to describe), but it was one hell of a ride along the way...
As ever the main features were often preceded by some great trailers for movies it’s hard to believe could have been conceived in any sane mind, never mind actually financed and filmed - and though it would be easy to mock such past efforts, they still seem like they might prove something of a relief to an era which has seen fit to inflict All About Steve and Meet the Spartans upon us.
Luchio Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin was meant to initiate us uneducated types in giallo, an Italian 20th century genre of literature and film which had great influence on the following Amer. As an avowed ignoramus I have no problem I knew little about this strand of film-making, but this soon-to-be-restored 1971 classic provided a great introduction, an eccentric psychosexual thriller with some erotic imagery, surreal sequences and even a couple of hippies thrown into the mix for good measure. Also absurd enough in places to provoke plenty of laughter, it was must have been gratifying for aficionados to see the Glasgow Film Theatre nearly full on a Saturday afternoon to take in a spectacle that was anything but conventional.
Amer was perhaps my biggest personal surprise of the Glasgow Film Festival, a superb piece of film-making that uses little dialogue and instead relies on stunning imagery and devilishly sharp sound design to convey the burgeoning female sexuality of its protagonist (who remains unnamed throughout). By turns a disturbing ghost story, a breezy continental examination of sensuality and then a thriller of ominous foreboding, there’s such a boldness to Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s work that I found it almost insulting to discover afterwards that this is their first feature film.
Quite unlike anything I’ve seen, it’s success can be judged not only by the fact that I’d love to see the movie again immediately, but also that I now have an insatiable desire to plunge myself into the Italian giallo to which the film-makers apparently created Amer as a tribute. Plus if its soundtrack isn’t released soon I think I’ll have to top myself to stop the main theme from swirling around in my head. Very much the type of movie which by lack of narrative could be seen as strictly arthouse, it simply requires to be seen on the screen.
Next up was something entirely different in shape and form, though just as compelling. (Rec) 2 is the sequel to 2007’s Spanish horror movie which garnered a whole host of critical plaudits for doing something quite different with the zombie-like horror movie (very important to note that they’re not undead and are closer in type to those who marauded around the settings of 28 Days Later).
A FrightFest organiser introducing the movie beforehand said that if (Rec) was Alien, then by comparison (Rec) 2 is Aliens, and I can’t put it better myself. Picking up just where the first movie left off, and using the same device of the previous movie and Cloverfield of using footage purportedly shot by the film’s characters, the sequel follows a group sent into a contained apartment to try and stop a viral outbreak that could have devastating consequences.
Grander in ambition this is perhaps the superior of the two movies so far, and there were a couple of great kills that brought rounds of applause from the audience, for whom this was perfect fodder. There’s a noticeable drop in pace midway through the movie, for understandable narrative reasons, but other than that (Rec) 2 is entirely gripping and sets up the scene for at least one more movie, which with any luck won’t be the Alien 3 of the franchise...
Then there was a special appearance before Splice by Neil Marshall (director of Dog Soldiers and The Descent), on hand to introduce an exclusive preview of historical epic Centurion,shot in Scotland and chronicling the legendary Ninth Roman Legion who mysteriously disappeared somewhere in North Britain sometime in the second century AD. It stars, among others, Michael Fassbender, Dominic West and Axelle Carolyn (who was also around to answer questions afterwards). The sequence we saw was bloody, brutal and boded well for its full release in April.
As for Splice itself, I’ve already detailed my thoughts on that in a dedicated review, but as part of FrightFest it was also a joy to behold. Given that some were unsure of how to take the dark humour (I believe it intentional, though could see why others might think not) it didn’t have quite the straightforward thrills of (Rec) 2, but it managed by the end to become something of a mix between David Cronenberg’s body horrors and Jeepers Creepers, and is just as unique a spectacle as you might expect from that description alone.
Finally we had Harpoon: Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre, which still had a sizeable crowd even after its post-1130pm start, no doubt many staying for the name alone, in which case they were unlikely to be disappointed.
The movie can be summed up simply by saying that yes, there was indeed a harpoon (yay!), there were some brief glimpses of Reykjavik, even briefer glimpses of whale watching, and by God there was a massacre. Schlocky and silly, it provided plenty of splatterings of riotous fun and was a fitting end to the festival, though it did make you wonder how on earth the Icelandic Film Industry got away with funding a film custom-made to torpedo the country’s tourism trade. Just as well for us they did, though!
Roll on next February’s FrightFest trip to Scotland, though I may find it hard to resist the lure to make the journey down south for its main August five-day festival in London, despite the costs it may incur to both my wallet and my moral fibre. Oh, the horrors, how I shall miss them.
