Tuesday 1 November 2016

CELLULOID SCREAMS 2016: DAY ONE

If it's October, it must be Celluloid Screams and Sheffield's horror festival began its eighth run with an evening of almost indescribable weirdness...


THE VOID

 
When a cop (Aaron Poole) brings in an injured man to a local hospital things rapidly take a turn for the worse as 40% of Astron-6 (Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie) serve up something rather different in tone to what we're used to seeing from this film making collective.
 
A rather long way from the zany antics of previous Astron-6 features such as Manborg, The Void is a much more serious and atmospheric piece altogether, instantly recalling early John Carpenter movies - specifically, for me, Assault On Precinct 13 - as a small group of people is trapped inside the hospital by an ever-growing menace outside.
 
My main issue with The Void isn't actually with the movie itself but with the amount of chatter I'd heard about it in the lead-up to the screening. There was so much buzz about it that no film could possibly live up to the hype and the movie I'd expected wasn't quite there. Even so, the performances are good, the plentiful practical special effects are truly excellent, it's resolutely downbeat and any movie that references The Beyond scores points in my book.
 
Now I need to watch it again with a clearer head - I think I'll enjoy it much more without that weight of expectation hanging over it.
 
 
ANTIBIRTH
 

It would be fair to say that Lou (Natasha Lyonne) parties hard. Most of the time she's either smoking pot or drinking booze or combining the two. However, after a particularly epic night on the drugs and sauce she awakes feeling very odd and with the feeling that something very odd happened to her. She could be pregnant, only there's no way that could be possible...could it?

Lyonne is on top form here, throwing herself with gusto into a role that many others wouldn't dare to take on. Whether or not you enjoy the majority of this film probably depends on your ability to tap into its merry-go-round of stoners, alcoholics, drug dealers and general misfits and at times the plot does seem as aimless and shambling as many of its characters.

However, the final ten minutes throws in a left turn so bizarre that the ensuing pay-off is head-scratching, horrible and hilarious. If you predicted where this was going, your mind works on a totally different level to mine. If you were fidgeting for the first eighty minutes, does the demented denouement make it worth sticking around for? Personally, I would say yes but I was already taken by its innate strangeness and experimental qualities to begin with.


CAT SICK BLUES


After his cat dies, Ted (Matthew C. Vaughan) suffers a mental breakdown which leads to him dressing as...well, see the picture above...and stalking the streets, convinced that he can bring his beloved feline back from the other side if he takes nine lives. Meanwhile, Claire (Shian Denovan) is wondering how to revitalise the popularity of her own moggy whose popularity on the Internet is starting to wane...

I've tried to be very careful about how much detail I give away because I feel you should go into this one knowing as little as possible about how the plot develops. I also feel I should warn you that this fully lives up to its "horror" tag and then some. Even as someone who's seen more than his fair share of the more extreme genre titles out there, Cat Sick Blues contains sequences which, to my mind, are jaw-droppingly disturbing and upsetting. There were walkouts at the screening and I don't blame those people one bit for getting out of there.

Make no mistake, this is a challenging movie which you're unlikely to forget in a hurry. It's been a while since I watched a film in a state of such constant unease and its a credit to everyone involved for producing such an uncompromising piece of work. Lead actress Shian Denovan was in attendance and although I could have wandered over to chat to her afterwards I was shocked at what I'd just viewed and genuinely didn't know what to say.

I'll say it now instead. You were great, Ms Denovan, and I spent most of the film feeling sick and anxious for your character. I still feel slightly queasy now thinking back to the movie. Will I ever watch it again? I'm not sure I want to put myself through it a second time. Perhaps Cat Sick Blues is a film to be experienced rather than enjoyed but for anyone who's ready for something that has no intention of letting its audience off the hook, prepare yourself...

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