The VVitch (US 2015: Dir Robert Eggers)

It's over a week since I saw The VVitch. I'm usually much quicker at applying finger to keyboard when reviewing films, but lots of things have conspired to prevent this piece appearing before now. So I'm writing this with some week old memories of the movie and a few notes I jotted down at the time, but it doesn't really matter because The VVitch is still firmly imprinted in my mind and probably will be for weeks to come. It's an extraordinary film.

Subtitled A New-England Folktale, the movie is that rare thing, a genuinely gripping slow burner. William and Katherine, two devout Puritans living in America in the early 17th century, are exiled from a community who cannot tolerate their levels of religious fanaticism. Forced into the wilderness to be closer to God, they set up a homestead in the middle of the country at the edge of a large forest and eke out their existence with their five children, often living at near starvation levels. When the youngest child Sam mysteriously goes missing (the initial belief is that the child has been abducted by a wolf but the audience know different) the family, steeped in grief and with their crops failing, gradually turn their suspicions on each other and then to Thomasin, the oldest child, suspecting her of being a witch. Their concerns are misdirected, but the truth is much closer to reality than they think.

If you haven't seen the film yet, it's best not to read on. One of the clever things about The VVitch is how it subverts our accepted understanding of history, which tells us that the witch trials which followed in the US later in the century were about the subjugation of uneducated women by male dominated authority figures rather than anything supernatural. This film defies that understanding by showing us that the things these women were accused of were real. That first time feature director Robert Eggars achieves this without any of it seeming silly is in part due to the script being written using authentic dialogue of the 17th century - the awkward verbosity requires the audience to listen closely but never to be comfortable with what they're hearing. There is some fine acting here too. Ralph Ineson's performance - and his sonorous, portentous voice - makes us easily forget his roles in TV comedies and voice overs for adverts. Kate Dickie as his wife Katherine has less to do but is convincingly distressed (she has one scene, towards the end of the film, that will haunt you for days), and the children, particularly Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, are all very effective.

But it's the visuals that elevate The VVitch above the usual genre fare. The forest that is the backdrop to their homestead - actually filmed in Ontario, Canada - is one of the most frightening uses of exteriors I've seen in a movie, and the sense of isolation and the threat of what might lie in those woods is palpable. The small details of farm life leap from woodcuts of the time and the horror, when it arrives, is very well handled by being glimpsed rather than overtly shown. The final scene, which in most other directors' hands would appear perhaps clumsy and obvious, provides a strange almost optimistic coda to a film which spends most of its time mired in pessimism.

Yes I loved The VVitch. It's slow, sometimes dangerously so, and although critics have generally loved it it's perhaps too niche for commercial success. But in its way this is a Haxan for our times, and I can't give it a bigger compliment than that.

The Other Side of the Door (UK/India 2015: Dir Johannes Roberts)

Johannes Roberts' last film, Storage 24, although low budget and only mildly diverting, was a distinct improvement on his previous films which have ranged from the occasionally interesting to borderline unwatchable. The Other Side of the Door is such a progression from Storage 24 in terms of casting, production values and money spent it's hard to believe we're watching the work of the same director.

The Other Side of the Door borrows heavily from Pet Sematary and its literary antecedent 'The Monkey's Paw' to tell the story of an American family in India, trying to piece their lives back together after the tragic death of their young son following a car accident. Mum Maria blames herself as she was driving the car when it left the road and plunged into a river, and had to choose between saving the life of her daughter or her son. Her Indian nanny tells Maria about an ancient temple where the scattered ashes of a loved one can summon up the spirit of the departed, giving grieving people the chance to have one final conversation with them. But the conversation must happen through the locked doors of the temple, and on no account should the person summoning the spirit open the door to try and see their lost loved one...

That Maria does open the door to get a final look at her dead son you can probably predict. From here on in we're plunged head on into evil spirit territory which, with its plentiful supply of actually quite effective 'boo' moments could easily just be business as usual for this type of movie. But two things elevate The Other Side of the Door above the rest of the pack. One is the solid acting from leads Sarah Wayne Callies - best known for her roles in The Walking Dead and Prison Break - and Jeremy (Law & Order) Sisto. Both actors play their roles absolutely straight, resist over-egging the terror, and help disguise any inadequacies in the script. The other factor is the Mumbai setting, which adds a richness to the tone of the movie. To be fair the actual location scenes are a classic bit of second unit filming - the actors only ever appear on an Indian dressed set, which is itself an impressive colonial house mock up. But the Indian setting gives a much needed break from the urban surroundings normally utilised in films like this, and horror regular Maxime Alexandre's photography makes the most of some beautifully lit scenes.

I also liked the climax's refusal to go over the top, which meant that Maria's plight in tussling with evil entities for the safe passing of her son retains its emotional core rather than being simply a noisy final reel.

So Johannes has pulled it off, after quite a few years of trying but failing. Well done, although I suspect he had quite a bit of help. But keep the team together Jo, they're a winning bunch.

The Forest (US 2016: Dir Jason Zada)

A few reviewers recently have been bemoaning the rise of PG horror - scary movies that limit gore, violence and intensity to ensure they play to as wide an audience as possible - and including The Forest as a prime example of why this strategy doesn't work. There are lots of reasons why The Forest doesn't work, but it's nothing to do with toning down the content - the movie's been given a 15 certificate in the UK anyway, a classification which is a pretty broad church and which most modern horrors seem to get awarded. And there are plenty of films that are scary without being overtly gory.

No, first time feature director Jason Zada's The Forest doesn't work because it's a tedious, derivative and wholly pointless film, which makes absolutely no sense even as you're watching it (as opposed to those movies where you get a 'no sense' hangover trying to understand a movie after you've seen it).

Sara Price learns of her twin sister Jess's disappearance while teaching in Tokyo. Jess apparently took a class of kids into the infamous Aokigahara forest in the shadow of Mount Fuji, and disappeared. This place is known as 'Suicide Forest' because of the number of people who enter the area to take their own life. Refusing to believe that her sister has killed herself, Sara travels to Japan to locate Jess, enlisting the help of Aiden, a guy she meets in a bar and Michi, a park ranger.

The first thirty or so minutes of The Forest had me looking up various sources to confirm or deny that it was a remake of a Japanese horror movie, a habit so beloved by US film makers a few years ago. As well as the 'authentic' locations (although apparently Serbia stood in for Japan) we get the familiar homespun exposition delivered as warning - the forest contains spirits, unhappy ghosts of previous suicide victims, seeking revenge, who will cause you harm if you stray from the path etc. But this is no remake, although it may as well have been as it's so derivative. To be honest the early scenes were well set out, good to look at, and boded well for something, if not original, then at least engaging.

The trouble starts when Sara arrives at the forest visitor centre and shows a photo of Jess to the proprietor (yep, she shows a photo of her identical twin for recognition purposes). In a nice bit of cross racial profiling the lodge lady confirms that Jess has been found and takes Sara down to the basement morgue where a number of bodies are laid out under sheets. Bodies. In a morgue. In a tourist lodge. In summer. Now I know that the Japanese way of death is rather different to western traditions, but this is, well I was going to write ridiculous but that becomes relative once the film progresses. However in trad DEoL fashion I won't divulge any more of the plot, except to mention that the body in the morgue isn't Jess, Sara does stray off the path, there is a lot of screaming and running, and the audience is left wondering what is real, what is in Sara's mind, and did Jess really exist in the first place? You probably don't need me to add that I cared not a jot by the end.

Acting wise it's all fairly efficient if unremarkable. Gimlet-eyed Brit girl-who-is-in-everything-at-the-moment Natalie Dormer stars as Sara and Jess - you can tell the difference because Jess has dark hair, although they both have reasonably convincing US accents. She does a pretty good job of being scared, and the camera can't take its eyes off her (I still think she looks like a skinnier version of Charlie Brooks but that's probably just me).

There's a rather unsavoury footnote to all this. Apparently Aokigahara forest is an actual place, in the shadow of Mount Fuji in Japan, and is renowned as a suicide site - sources tells us that there can be up to 100 deaths a year here - and a number of the details about techniques used by the suicidal are included in The Forest. Nice. No wonder that the film makers had to find another country for their location. Now I'm not an overly sensitive person but this all left a rather nasty taste in my mouth. Not recommended for all sorts of reasons then.

The Sacrament (US 2013: Dir Ti West)

Oh dear. After the slowburn delights of Ti West's earlier films, The Sacrament, with its bigger budget and more ambitious sweep, is, I must confess, a huge disappointment.

West deploys the done to death 'found footage' approach (although more accurately as a friend of mine calls it the 'first person' filmmaking style) to tell a story of a group of edgy TV documentary makers heading out to a remote jungle location to track down the missing sister of one of their party and (of course) document the whole thing. When they eventually find her she's living as part of a blissed out community called 'Eden Parish', presided over by 'The Father', an enigmatic figurehead who has gathered his flock to him to create a seemingly idlyllic life free of the constraints of capitalism and politics. Sound familiar?

People of a certain age may recognise this setup as sounding rather like the People's Temple which Jim Jones founded in Guyana back in the 1970s, before encouraging all 910 of the community's occupants to kill themselves by drinking cyanide laced Kool-Aid. And they'd be right. Without giving the plot away, The Sacrament pretty much re-tells this story - ok, I probably have. Sorry. 'The Father' even looks a lot like Jones and although the names have been changed, once the community's overweight leader hoves into view (complete with Jones-esque glasses) it's fairly obvious how this is going to turn out.

The presence of Eli Roth in the production of course ensures that any scenes of death are as protracted and exploitative as possible (you want to see a mother slit the throat of her own daughter before being shot at point blank range? Step this way). The performances, as in all of West's films, are very good, particularly Gene Jones as 'The Father' and Amy Seimetz as Caroline, the missing sister (and who was one of the few good things about Upstream Colour). But as the film is set in the present day, why is it retelling a story of events that took place in 1978? Did West think that the majority of his audience wouldn't know about Jim Jones, leaving him free to rip the story off? And why did the (presumably culturally clued up) filmmakers, when they stumble across the community and its leader in the first place, not immediately make a comparison to Jonestown, or indeed other cults they would have been familiar with like the Branch Davidians lead by David Koresh?

One of the film's key limitations, and annoyances, is the first person camera work. West gets around the traditional shaky cam issues by having the footage filmed by a proper documentary crew, hence the cinematic quality of what we're looking at. But in the second half of the movie the audience is left to wonder why the crew haven't abandoned their cameras when they're forced to make a run for it - a standard problem for a film shot in this way, and one that I thought West might solve.

So The Sacrament, while well made, convincingly acted, and never boring, is just a bit pointless, and a massive let down from a film maker who has previously been consistently exciting in his output. Let's hope this is just a blip on his CV.

The Last Exorcism Part II (US 2013: Dir Ed Gass-Donnelly)

We’ve all got used to movie franchises working in planned trilogies or quadrilogies, where viewers are aware that they will have to watch three or four films in order to experience the whole story. In the first film the audience is typically introduced to all the main characters, then the second is usually a bridging story which acts more as a vehicle to get the audience to the exciting denouement rather than a film in its own right. This is a relatively modern phenomenon, driven in part by the cynicism of big movie companies and also by the appetite and ability of modern viewing audiences to cope with long, relatively complex story arcs. Some of these middle films are more successful than others, but what they all benefit from is a great degree of calculated planning so that the story is eked out with just enough content to keep viewers from being bored, and likely to come back for the next, more thrilling episode.

The Last Exorcism Part II however is an example of a linking movie that develops a story never intended to continue beyond the first instalment. The original The Last Exorcism (2010) was a passable if uneven film which I actually liked better on second viewing at home rather than my first experience at the cinema. It contained a now fashionable ambiguous ending which didn’t seem to hint at a sequel. However a sequel is what we have, and one which includes an ending that clearly decides it now wants to be a franchise.

TLE II has all the hallmarks of the typical link movie. It continues at the point where the first movie left off; not much happens – Nell Sweetzer, the possessed girl from The Last Exorcism, is gradually reintroduced to teenage society only to face, er, re-possession; and is altogether a bit of a slow burner with a reasonably rousing last reel. In fact it feels just like a link movie - treading water before we get to the good stuff, but you have to pay more money to see that. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense, but for me its biggest problem is the central character of Nell, played by Ashley Bell. In the first film Bell’s portrayal of the troubled Nell was one of its strongest elements. You could see why she had been chosen for the role, with her piercing dark eyes, her ability to look like an old soul in a young body, and her impressive bodily contortions, reminding viewers of a similar role played by Jennifer Carpenter in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). Bell’s vulnerability was a good contrast to the brash exuberance of the first movie’s fake exorcist Cotton Marcus, and her gradual possession was effective and carefully handled - amazing in a film produced by Eli Roth. In TLE II Bell takes centre stage, but her character is too wishy washy to make any impact – she also fails to convince as a seventeen year old (Bell was actually 27 at the time of making the movie). The first two thirds of the film are so lacking in pace that the viewer is left drumming their fingers waiting for Nell to transform from the vapid girl-next-door to kick ass demon, but unfortunately when she does the scenes are clumsily staged and lacking in horror.

TLE II abandons the ‘shaky cam’ approach of the first film (and who exactly was operating the camera in much of The Last Exorcism?) for a more languid style, but with too many forced ‘jump’ moments. In fairness the film looks good and the relatively new on the scene Ed Gass-Donnelly directs confidently (Variety Magazine tipped him as one of 2011’s ’10 Directors to watch’ but TLE II is his only full length movie since 2010). But looking back on this film, one has to question why it was made? It isn't a three picture franchise, it feels like a director chancing his arm and hoping to be asked back to the party for another go, except the movie is such a slog viewers are unlikely to come back for TLE III. Modern filmmaking, huh? 

In Memorium (US 2005: Dir Amanda Gusack)

Now that the 'Found Footage' genre has pretty much disappeared up its own aperture, one almost looks back fondly to the days before FF became shorthand for tiresome people running around an empty building screaming their heads off, and when some of the early exemplars - The Blair Witch Project (1999), the rich-kid-trying-not-to-be a-moneybags Cloverfield (2008) and the first couple of Paranormal Activity outings - showed true innovation. One addition to the canon that deserves to be included in the 'pioneers' list is In Memorium, a film hampered by such a limited distribution that very few people have seen it. Which is a great shame as it's a terrific movie.

In Memorium focuses on Dennis and Lily, a likeable couple who have rented a house in Los Angeles. Dennis has been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer and has, in a slightly far fetched plot device, decided to rig up the house with security cameras and microphones to record his imminent decline for possible future use as a documentary. Once set up, the rather mundane existence of the couple begins to be underscored by glimpses of shapes caught on camera, and unidentifable sounds on the audio. Dennis and Lily become increasingly convinced that they are not alone in their new home, and that the presence which has joined them may be destructive and malevolent.

There are very few other characters in the film apart from Dennis's slacker brother Frank and a woman who rents the house to the couple, which focuses things tightly over In Memorium's brief 70 minutes. The claustrophobic surroundings (actually filmed in the Director's own house) are emphasised by the static underlit look of the film, most of the shots being generated from the closed circuit cameras.  Although I felt Lily's rather passive acceptance of her boyfriend's condition a little bewildering, the partnership between the two leads is otherwise convincing and their increasing fear very persuasive.

What makes In Memorium stand out is that, firstly, both the explanation for the visitation and the haunting itself are genuinely scary, something which is very rare in the FF movement. The tension towards the end puts the film up there with some of the great haunted house films, and makes you realise just how powerful this type of movie can be. Seondly, the film never loses sight of the essential plight of Dennis's illness which, when it becomes more pronounced, only deepens the mood.

Amanda Gusack's first full length film as a Director really is an overlooked gem. Made a couple of years before (and clearly influencing) the much more successful Paranormal Activity (2007) and perhaps taking its inspiration from the CCTV nightmare of My Little Eye (2002) In Memorium still packs a punch despite the FF saturation which has now all but extinguished the dramatic potential of this type of film making.

There's a Facebook page for the film here which is worth liking - maybe people power can trigger a DVD release of the movie.

Outpost 11 (UK 2012: Dir Anthony Woodley)

There are so many elements involved in making a film that, when pulled together as a finished product, can mean the difference between success and tragedy, sometimes just by a small margin. Films can have a great story with uninteresting visuals, or be badly acted but great to look at, or filmed in locations which almost but don’t quite compensate for the lack of depth or emotion in the script. But when a film’s basis is three people trapped in a small drab room quietly (and not so quietly) going bonkers for 91 minutes, all the elements have to work very hard to compensate for such a thin premise.

Outpost 11 locates itself in alternative 1955 in the midst of a new Hundred Years War, where a small team of soldiers occupies a remote listening post intercepting military messages, and looking after a large wheezing contraption called The Omega Machine. If I have made this sound in any way interesting, then forgive me. The soldiers bicker and fuss in a strictly Waiting for Godot manner, and gradually begin to lose their grip on reality after possible exposure to a psychotropic drug released by the enemy, hallucinating some joke shop rubber beasts and an astonishingly primitive stop frame animated spider.

Rarely have I seen a film that gets everything so wrong. The script is clichéd and leaden, the almost one room set depressing and totally uninteresting, and the acting flat and completely uninvolving. Any desire of the director to make something cinematically different is defeated by realising that you’ve seen the various elements deployed more successfully in any number of other films – the most obvious and consistent visual reference seemed to be David Cronenberg’s film The Naked Lunch, a movie which is itself problematic in terms of bizarre visuals coupled with impenetrable narrative. Outpost 11 drags itself agonisingly to the end of its hour and a half with no satisfying resolution, or chin stroking final shot that would at least cause the viewer to rethink what they’ve seen (a popular ploy when making movies whose meaning is hard to fathom).

Outpost 11 is a truly hideous film. I detected no spark of talent in Anthony Woodley’s direction that would make me seek out any of his subsequent output. Please avoid this movie unless you are a steampunk completist or thought that the animation of Morph in Tony Hart’s TV shows was brain warping.

Devoured (US 2012: Dir Greg Olliver)

There's something of the night about documentary maker Greg Olliver's second 'fiction' film. Actually make that Night, as in M. Night Shyamalan. For this is a film WITH A TWIST, and by the saints does it spend the whole film letting you know that.

Lourdes is a Spanish woman working behind the scenes at a New York bar and restaurant, clearly with few employment prospects judging by her endurance of the abuse meted out to her by her female employer. As we watch her daily routines, often working into the night after all the guests have departed, we learn that she is in the US to earn enough money for her son's much needed operation back in Spain. We also learn that there are other shadowy presences in the resatuarant, just out of sight of Lourdes as she makes her rounds, which lead her (and us) to think that the place is haunted. Clearly struggling to build up some cash, she accepts the opportunity to increase her savings by going down on one of the diners who is looking for a quick thrill. Disgusted with her predicament, she nevertheless seems to repeat this service for other lone males as it appears lucrative. The shadowy figures become gradually more corporeal however, as Lourdes's predicament becomes ever more desperate.

That's about all I can tell you given the no spoiler policy of this blog. What I can mention is that Lourdes is found dead in the restaurant at the beginning of the movie, making Devoured a 'whydunit' instead of a 'whodunit'. Now the thing about a plot device like this is that the rest of the film has to be strong enough to make you forget the point where you started from, so that when the movie returns to the opening shot there's a renewed surprise and a sense of a satisfying ending. The problem with Devoured is that because the whole film is predicated upon THE TWIST it's presented in both a confusing and mundane way which is uninvolving - something which dogs many of Mr Shyamalan's films - so you never forget that Lourdes ends up dead.

I also found the central character of Lourdes similarly unengaging. Again, this is in service to THE TWIST (OK, I'll stop that now) but as she's in every scene in a film which is already flat and lifeless it made for a pretty tiresome watch. I may be in a minority here - many other reviewers have gone for this in a big way, mainly because of its 'indie' approach, similar to other recent films like The Pact and Lovely Molly. But despite its funky New York setting and some vaguely interesting camerawork, I found Devoured rather shallow and manipulative and not half as good as it obviously thinks it is.

Excision (US 2012: Dir Richard Bates Jr)

When trashmeister John Waters appears in a cameo role in Excision, it's not exactly a surprise. For Richard Bates's first feature, with its quirky characters, suburban settings and dubious taste, is clearly so heavily influenced by the later works of Baltimore's finest, like Polyester or Serial Mom, that it feels like a Waters film by default. But Excision is far better than just a Waters homage.

Pauline is a high school student whose world view is decidedly warped. She's a social outcast with an incisive mind and an aspiration to be something in medicine, plus a penchant for fantasies combining sex, blood and evisceration. Her sister Grace is seriously ill with Cystic Fibrosis, and in need of a lung transplant, which places a massive strain on her parents. Pauline's father is a classically 'put upon' husband who remains largely bemused at his daughter's wayward behaviour. His wife attempts to hold the whole family together with a 1950s style approach to motherhood and housewifery (including wine at lunch). As the family becomes more and more dysfunctional, Pauline's studies of medical texts in the local library lead her to think that she may be able to aid her sister's health condition while finding favour with her mother, and gaining some all important practical medical experience.

The character of Pauline is beguiling and central to the succcess of Excision. She's smart, funny, deadpan and quite round the bend, but also very sexy. The casting against type here of AnnaLynne McCord is a stroke of genius. McCord, a glamorous star of TV shows like 90210, is presented with ratty hair and complex skin, but is a force of nature and it's difficult to take your eyes off her. Traci Lords, playing her mother Phyllis, is also outstanding, barely holding it together as she loses battle after battle with her rebellious daughter whom she neither understands nor seemingly loves.

Quite how Richard Bates has surrounded himself with such a cast on his first feature is beyond me, but Excision also features great walk on performances from Malcolm McDowell, Marlee Matlin and Ray Wise, all clearly enjoying themselves. The full feature has been developed from a short film of the same name made back in 2008 (so it's obviously taken a while to get this movie together), and Bates has taken the opportunity to add a lot more gallows humour in this version - there are some great laugh out loud one liners - and slicker production values which add class to what could otherwise be a quirky gore movie. 

Only when Excision takes its almost inevitable dark turn into pure horror towards the end does it unravel a bit, but for the most part this is a great, smart and funny film which is worth ninety minutes of anyone's time. Well, maybe not anyone's.

Mama (Spain/Canada 2013: Dir Andres Muschietti)

Two children, Lily and Victoria, are abandoned in a woodlands hut after their father goes off the rails, and 'raised' by a strange and ethereal figure - the Mama of the title, who in an early scene shows herself to have, shall we say, a fiercely overprotective attitude to her new charges. Some years later the two children are found - in a semi feral state - by their father's brother. He rehabilitates them back into the real world, moving them into his home which he shares with his girlfriend, the bass playing (and reluctant surrogate mother) Annabel.

Annabel fairly quickly realises that something's afoot and that the childrens' references to Mama having followed them from the forest may be more than simple wish fulfilment on their part. Her own eventual development of a maternal instinct towards Lily and Victoria stirs Mama's vengeful side, leading to the inevitable showdown between good and evil, the real and the unreal.

As Executive Producer, Guillermo del Toro is himself an ethereal presence guiding the directorial hand of Argentinian newboy Andres Muschietti to create a fairytale feel to the film, which disguises its rather by the numbers story of a wraith hell bent on revenge: Mama has been extended to full length from a short 2008 film of the same name, also by Muschietti, which is a whole lot creepier for its brevity.

The early scenes are the best, with the eerie presence of the spirit fleetingly shown and punctuated by some genuinely creepy sound effects, and there's a lovely scene where the giggling children are briefly glimpsed playing with Mama through a door left ajar but then furtively closed to maintain privacy. The now obligatory revealed history of the spirit robs the film of much of its potency, and actually doesn't make too much sense - why would she angry enough to survive the grave? Towards the end Mama is revealed in all her CGIness, which is where the film ultimately fails in a swirl of mist and soaring Danny Elfman-esque strings. The final veil of credibility for me was stripped by noting the wraith's more than passing resemblance to Geordie funny man Ross Noble.

Acting wise the kids are the best thing in it, particularly Megan Charpentier as older sister Victoria, who does a lot to sustain audience belief in what they're seeing against the increasing ludicrousness of the plot. I just didn't believe Jessica Chastain as a rock chick (she's far more credible when she mellows later in the movie) and someone needs to tell film makers that in these days of the ubiquitousness of tattoos, having ink on your arm is no longer visual shorthand for being 'hard'.

Mama isn't a total misfire but it does blow its last reel with a pomposity that's pure del Toro. It could have remained creepier longer if the director had shown more restraint, but the story probably wasn't strong enough to allow for that. Shame.

Interview with David Campion, director of Patrol Men and Woodfalls

In my first batch of reviews on DEoL I've covered both of David Campion's recent films, Patrol Men and the as yet unreleased Woodfalls. I asked him a few questions about the making of his most recent film.

So, what gave you the idea for Woodfalls?

Finding the right subject matter for a film is tough. After Patrol Men, Ben (Simpson, co-director of PM) and I wrote a lot. We wrote a feature called ‘Video Nasty’, but realised it would cost too much to make. We worked on an anthology film, a serial killer film, a ‘Funny Games’ inspired invasion film and a ‘street film’. I was really into the street film. It was called ‘Sweetblade’ and it featured lots of stuff from my teenage years, but I couldn't finish it. It wasn't working out. Woodfalls came about during the Dale Farm evictions. Gypsies seemed to be all over the media and I actually have travellers in my family, so I had this different perspective of the culture. I felt we could portray them as simply and honestly as I knew how...so Woodfalls was born.

How much did it cost to make? And how did you go about raising the cash?

I’m not sure if I can give the exact figure, my producer might lose his shit with me. It was a little more expensive than Patrol Men (which cost £2,000), but not much. We started a Kickstarter campaign and felt confident that, after the release of Patrol Men, we could raise suitable funds. This was a mistake. We realised we had shit - no rich family, no real following...just a few supportive friends. After a few weeks, it became clear that Kickstarter wasn't going to work out.

In the end, I raised the money alone, in the form of a bank loan. If I'm not willing to invest in myself, how can I expect others to invest in me..?!

What did you learn from the making of Patrol Men that you applied when making Woodfalls? 

We made Patrol Men right out of uni, so the biggest learning curve was actually shooting for 4 weeks, rather than 5 days. A film shoot really is an endurance test. Patrol Men also made me more comfortable with actors and to a certain extent blocking, but I'm still developing my techniques in that area. 

Unlike other independent directors, you haven't re-used any of the cast from your previous film. Was that by accident or design? 

None of them wanted to work with me. Ha ha! Woodfalls felt like a new chapter, so yeah, I wanted to keep it fresh. However, Okie (Anthony Abuah) from Patrol Men actually produced Woodfalls. And he’s in it, briefly - we named him ‘Blaze’.  Anthony is also a director now; he made his directorial debut, Woolwich Boys, about nine months before he produced Woodfalls. He had a busy year. 

We're now used to you and Ben Simpson working together. Ben's given a co-credit for the story but this is your first sole directoral credit. What was it like going it alone? 

When Ben left the project, I felt a bit lost. We’ve been making films together since we were 15 and I honestly thought we’d be making them for the rest of our lives. That’s life I suppose. But, once I realised I was on my own, it was good. I actually enjoy directing by myself. I also had a lot of support from my crew. DoP Louis Corallo has been there since uni. He was DoP on Patrol Men and he was DoP on Woodfalls from the very start. In filmmaking terms, he has become as close as Ben - we collaborate very well. I don’t like the guy though - what an asshole (I think he's joking - Ed.).

The soundtrack is really good - the dubstep sound really suits the mood of the film. How did you find the bands to contribute? 

They are all local. Most of the music you hear in the club sequences are tracks from Planky, who has been on the scene for years. He puts out tons of drum’n’bass, hip hop, dubstep and house - the dude is constantly making music. I was looking for some rap tracks and I came across Lyrical Monsoon. They gave me permission to use their music, but one of them, Gav Roberts, took a real interest in the film and ended up scoring it. His score is so heavy, I love it. I think he would be great at scoring a horror film, something 80s inspired, lots of heavy synth and meaty bass. Gav came onto the project pretty late. I think he did a fantastic job. 

So now it's almost 'in the can', how do you feel about the film? Does it feel like the film you wanted to make? Were there many compromises? 

It’s weird. I'm too close to it to have any sort of real opinion. It’s not perfect and I definitely haven’t reached my full potential... yet. However, some of the stuff really works for me, the third act especially. I'm extremely proud of my cast and crew. People like Helen Nash (make up), Rita Colson (costumes) and our runner, ‘Super’ Ed Muir, went way beyond their call of duty.   

And finally, what's next for you? 

I'm writing. A lot. I have a script that I'm pitching as 'Byker Grove meets 8 Mile/John Hughes' with battle raps. I'm also working on a script about Backyard Wrestling, which I'm developing from a short I made in uni, entitled ‘Heel’. However, I went to You’re Next a few nights ago and that got me thinking. You could see the love and passion that went into the film and I realised how much I love making horror films. I'm taking notes at the minute, but another horror might be right what I need...

Truth or Dare (UK 2012: Dir Robert Heath)

Watching two of the four (!) executive producers in an extra on the DVD release of Truth or Dare talking about wanting to put money into a 'teen horror' as the best way to get a return on their investment, one gets a stark reminder that movie making is a 'for profit' enterprise whatever the artistic aims espoused by a film's director. It also doesn't bode well for the film itself. That the resultant product turns out to be much much better than maybe it has a right to be is an added bonus and a pleasant surprise, for Truth or Dare rises above its clichéd premise to become something very watchable.

The plot is simple and a variation on a now familiar theme. A group of rather unpleasant twentysomethings are invited to a party by Felix, a friend of theirs who we see being summarily bullied by the group in a prologue set some months earlier. The friends turn up, there's no party and no Felix. But there is Felix's older brother Justin, and before they can say 'set up' they're all tied to chairs in a remote shack with Justin meting out revenge for the misery heaped on his younger sibling, which apparently drove him to suicide - hence no Felix at the party.

Now I grant you that this doesn't sound very interesting, but hang on, there's something different here.

First, everyone can act, not just the leads. The film manages a rather clever trick of getting you to care for a group of people that we've seen capable of nasty bullying, and for that to work you need good performances. David Oakes (an actor whose previous work has included some high calibre TV appearances) as Justin is particularly strong, getting the balance between psychosis and shrewd, calculating meanness just right. Also Jennie Jacques as feisty complex Eleanor, leader of the twentysomethings in peril, turns in a really clever performance that confounds expectations.

Secondly, it's really well made. Impressively shot and tightly edited, Truth or Dare becomes increasingly claustrophobic and tense, although there's not that much going on and most of the action takes place in one small room. Third, the script isn't a string of tired clichés. OK it's not Pinter but it doesn't draw attention to itself thus ruining the atmosphere, and doesn't fall apart in the final third which is an increasing rarity these days.

Truth or Dare is definitely recommended. Robert Heath isn't a prolific film maker, but his previous full length output - the race and police drama Sus from 2010, and 2005's heist comedy Out on a Limb - are equally strong movies and are well worth catching.

Frightfest 2013 - well a day of it anyway...

So to Frightfest. Twenty five years ago if you'd have suggested to me that London could potentially host a weekend of horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies in a major West End cinema and repeat the event annually rather than as a one off financial car crash, I'd have laughed in your face and asked what was showing at the Scala. The success of Frightfest is testament both to the gradual mainstreaming of this genre of film (everyone's got some goth in them these days it seems) and some consistently bloody hard work by a fairly small group of people in making the festival work year on year.

2013 was the first time I'd actually bought a day pass - I normally tend to go to several films over the weekend and pay individually, but the increasing disappointment of early sell outs of many of the screenings I'd planned to catch at previous events drove me to upgrade this year. I had an idea that my lack of staying power couldn't justify buying a full festival pass and based on my stamina yesterday I was right. Now I'm no stranger to numbing my arse in the name of cinema, but there's something about 21st century horror at the moment that gives diminishing returns en masse. One day and five films was fine - the prospect of 25 (including the dreaded 11pm slots) was too much for me.

So, time to shut up and tell you what I saw:

THE DYATLOV PASS INCIDENT (USA 2013: Dir Renny Harlin). BLAIR WITCH PROJECT on ice is a fair summary of the first two thirds of this faux 'found footage' movie - faux not least because at various points there's clearly no character member who either could or would be able to maintain shooting the footage we see. A group of twenty somethings (mainly UK actors sporting dodgy US accents) find themselves deep in the heart of the Ural Mountains investigating - and, yes, video documenting - the truth behind reports of a group of Russian hikers who went missing fifty odd years previously. Based on a real life and unresolved incident, which arguably makes subsequent events in rather poor taste, TDPI's awkward merging of horror and sci fi with some straight out action sequences felt decidedly clumsy, and the increasingly implausible X File-y elements in the last third reminded me of a group of kids making up a game as they go along. "and then we were stuck in the snow, and then we found a door" etc etc. I'm a sucker for any film with real snow in it, but TDPI's charms failed to thaw me.


DAYLIGHT (USA 2012: Dir David McCracken). An actual FF film this time, and a very impressive one too, although for most of its running time it's pretty difficult to work out what exactly is happening. The story involves a team of Child Protection Service workers investigating (satanic?) abuse incidents in the town of Daylight, Indiana. The early scenes detail a series of interviews which set it up as a more po faced The Last Exorcism, but as the film unfolds the hold on reality starts to loosen, and the audience isn't really sure what they're seeing, when it's supposed to be happening or who it's supposed to be happening to. The trend towards non linear narrative in genre films is very welcome but the messing with time (and space?) in Daylight combined with the glitchy wonky sound/video footage (if you close your eyes at time you'd swear it sounds like Aphex Twin in his drill 'n' bass years) left the Frightfest audience open mouthed and scratchy of head by the end. I'd love to see this again, but I'm not sure I'd understand it any better.

SADIK 2 (France 2013: Dir Robin Eintringer). "There's no Sadik 1"
announced Alan Jones at the start of this "although why becomes apparent in the film". Yes, and no danger of the audience not missing why, as Sadik 2 sets its stall out as clearly as Daylight didn't. A sort of Scream parody about a group of friends who rent a house in the country, one of whom is a horror film fan who has lined up a VCR fest (yes, the films he's brought are all on tape, ha ha, knowing mockery etc). Lots of Scream like post modern film analysis ensues, but in the basement, unbeknown to our bickering friends upstairs, is a real film crew about to make a film of their own...Clumsy and puerile with a script that raised only a few titters, I was more interested in the Director and one of the actors in the film, who were present at the première screening of their minimum opus. They kept looking around to gauge audience reaction to the 'cleverness' of Sadik 2 and the eventual rather rubbish gore, thereby missing seeing a number of the audience taking the opportunity to quietly leave mid film.

HAUNTER (USA 2013: Dir Vincenzo Natali) I really liked this old fashioned fantasy chiller. It's pretty gore/scare free (if it gets a 15 cert I'll be shocked) and as such some of the FF audience didn't like it. While it is a bit overlong, its Groundhog Day/Pan's Labyrinth/The Others/A Nightmare on Elm St. mashup  - about a young girl seemingly living the same day over and over again who gradually discovers the reason why - was beautifully handled, well acted and had real emotional impact in its closing scenes. Possibly the full force of the film was slightly dulled by a rather over complicated layering of timelines, but it's difficult to give too much of the plot away without spoiling it (something the FF guidebook seemed to have no problems with). A solid fantasy that unfolds its story very effectively. Recommended.

V/H/S 2 (USA 2013: Dir various). When the sequel to a film is described as 'ramped up' on the original, I tend to think it can only mean trouble. V/H/S 2 was a movie made for Frightfest. Gore, nudity, deafening soundtrack, suicide, micro edits, it all went down a storm, each segment getting a round of applause. And I didn't like it I'm afraid. I thought V/H/S was patchy but good, and in places very good, a clever updating of the portmanteau films of yesteryear. V/H/S 2 uses exactly the same framing device as the first movie, and the 'films' watched are arguably more focussed (no pun intended) than the first film. They're also much more extreme, particularly the Gareth Evans story "Safe Haven" which is a really hard watch. Arguably the best was the creative take on zombies, "A Ride in the Park" which had some great laugh out loud moments, but as in all portmanteau films, the total did not equal the sum of its parts, and for all the editing wizardry and general nowness of the thing, both V/H/S films are unlikely to age well or function as anything more than an advert for a decent VCR head cleaner. Press the eject and give me the tape now is my advice.

So there we are - that was my day out. A big thanks to my Festival partner Tara for making it more fun than it may have been entirely on my own. Now I'm off for a lie down.