Celluloid Screams 2015 Roundup: Reviews, Pics, Videos and More!
Gareth Jones
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From October 23-25, we spent three days in the comfy environs of Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema for the city’s annual fear fest, Celluloid Screams. On tap for you right now is a selection of reviews, images and videos straight from the fest – including a look at the utterly fantastic closing performance by Italian legends Goblin – for your ocular enjoyment. Get stuck in!
A number of the films screened at this year’s fest have already been covered by us throughout the year. You can find links to those reviews below. For the others, check out the capsule reviews that follow.
The Invitation review
Goodnight Mommy review
He Never Died review
These Final Hours review
Emelie review
Deathgasm review
YAKUZA APOCALYPSE (2015)
Directed by Takashi Miike
Starring Yayan Ruhian, Rirî Furankî, Hayato Ichihara, Mio Yûki
Takashi Miike’s yakuza vampire horror/action flick is, as expected, utterly bonkers. When his boss, the good-natured head of the local yakuza gang (who also happens to be a vampire), is double-crossed and murdered, an up-and-coming enforcer is given the gift of vampirism and decides to use it to exact revenge.
Things get more complicated, however, when the stakes (no pun intended) are revealed to be much higher than expected – including the appearance of a coffin-bearing vampire hunter, a part-turtle Kappa demon and the most dangerous entity that the world has ever known… a terrorist dressed in a full-body frog costume.
Yakuza Apocalypse defies description – but it’s packed full of enough martial arts action, violence, comedy and outright bizarre behaviour to make it worth a spin despite a dragging second act. You’ve never seen anything like it.
3 out of 5
EXCESS FLESH (2015)
Directed by Patrick Kennelly
Starring Bethany Orr, Mary Loveless, Wes McGee
Frumpy, jobless Jill is a young woman with an eating problem. Between binging and purging on a regular basis, she’s also enviously obsessed with her alluring fashion hotshot roommate, Jennifer. Jill clearly has issues far beyond this dysfunctional relationship, and Jennifer soon bears the brunt of them when she’s imprisoned in the apartment and brutalised by her unhinged friend.
Whilst at the core a respectable attempt at deconstructing self-hatred (one particular scene involving swathes of macaroni cheese is a powerful highlight), Excess Flesh as a whole is unfortunately devoid of empathy, slovenly paced and far too reliant on the hope that displays of slow-mo gluttony will make you queasy. It simply doesn’t have quite as much of worth to say as it appears to think it does.
2 out of 5
THE WITCH (2015)
Directed by Robert Eggers
Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
In 1600s New England, puritanical patriarch William and his family are banished from their community due to William’s highly vocal condemnation of what he believes to be a lacklustre approach to the word of scripture amongst the townsfolk.
Building a new homestead in a clearing on the outskirts of a forest, the family raise livestock and farm their own crops. Life seems good, but when their baby son disappears – apparently abducted and murdered by a witch living in the woods – and their corn crops wither, they soon turn against each other in a superstitious frenzy.
Beautiful to look at, with a remarkable sense of place and steeped in inescapable dread, The Witch delivers hopelessness with searing authenticity. Whether through supernatural influence, willing religious sacrifice or simple personality conflict, the fates of this family are lifted completely out of their own individual hands on a trip down a path that can only end in damnation.
Central performances are excellent across the board, with an especially powerful turn by Ralph Ineson as William and Anya Taylor-Joy as daughter Thomasin, who is forced to take the lion’s share of grief-stricken backlash after an innocent joke regarding witchcraft comes back to bite her in the worst possible manner.
The supernatural and the real are juggled and blended with aplomb by director Robert Eggers throughout what is a mesmerising cinematic feast. The finale falls somewhat flat, but it’s a tiny sliver of complaint for what is sure to be regarded as one of the best true horror films of the decade. It’s a bleak, darkly magical experience that shouldn’t be missed.
4-1/2 out of 5
DARLING (2015)
Directed by Mickey Keating
Starring Lauren Ashley Carter, Sean Young, Larry Fessenden
Hired to housesit an imposing, grand property by its wealthy owner, the eponymous protagonist of Darling finds herself descending into a very personal hell following the discovery of the building’s chequered history of suicide, a locked door at the end of hall that she is forbidden to open and esoteric scrawling on her bedside table that appears to be related to demon worship.
Director Mickey Keating’s elegant black and white visuals fuel a compelling opening – graceful lighting, strong composition and measured movement working in tandem to create a promising atmosphere that grips with indisputable foreboding.
It’s all undeniably Polanski, and pleasingly so… but very quickly, Darling takes a straight dive off the balcony as its true construction comes to the fore. A mishmash of art-house experimentation by way of Polanski and Lynch – but lacking the grace of either – and any number of ill-considered film school student projects, sound and visuals soon become too shrill, overwrought and obnoxious to have any solid effect other than to annoy.
An array of sudden musical stingers attempt to jolt through an overbearing score that is doggedly determined to convince you to be afraid, but fails in much the same way that the chainsaw frenzy editing fails in obvious, cynical attempts to shock.
Much too forthright (and forced) in its attempts to conjure a chilling sensory experience, Darling is, instead, a snooze-inducing discordant mess which against all of the wishes of its over-eager score and constant smash cut visual segues makes a prime antidote for insomnia – the sole redeeming quality being a enthralling turn by lead actress Lauren Ashley Carter, whose captivating gravitas deserves a much better platform than this.
1 out of 5
THE CORPSE OF ANNA FRITZ (2015)
Directed by Hèctor Hernández Vicens
Starring Albert Carbó, Alba Ribas, Bernat Saumell
Following the sudden death of superstar actress Anna Fritz, her body is secreted away to a hospital morgue, hidden from the prying eyes of the public. There, the worker in charge of the corpse decides to snap a picture with his phone and send it to a couple of his friends.
Unable to resist the opportunity to take a peek in the flesh, said friends turn up for their chance to get face-to-face with an (albeit deceased) celebrity. Things quickly turn dark, however, when simply looking isn’t enough for these coked-up chaps. After all, who is it hurting when she’s dead?
With its critical observations of celebrity worship being surface level at best, The Corpse of Anna Fritz struggles to rise beyond a serviceable thriller. Featuring a perverse and topical setup and enough tense sequences to get by, it nevertheless routinely misses chances at more twisted opportunities – opting to play it safe despite an initially ballsy, promisingly unpalatable direction.
2-1/2 out of 5
Alongside the features on show, Celluloid Screams also included a hefty bunch of short films and its annual bookend shorts — this year’s theme being “60 Second Remakes.” Here’s a peek at one of the funniest bookend entries, and you can check out the rest at the Celluloid Screams YouTube channel.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cNcs4G0uPM&w=560&h=315]
Shorts to look out for include Kevin McTurk’s fabulous puppet show The Mill at Calder’s End, a chilling tale of esoteric horror rendered almost entirely in miniature; Jason Kupfer’s hilarious Invaders — in which an attempted home invasion goes incredibly wrong for two indecisive, bumbling criminals; and Nick DenBoer & Dave Foss’ utterly indescribable The Chickening, which takes footage from Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining and applies a level of digital manipulation that sees it transformed into a chicken-filled 5-minute slice of total insanity that has to be seen to be believed.
Winner of the Sheffield Hallam Award for Best Short Film at Celluloid Screams 2015 is director Melanie Light’s The Herd. Making an impactful point through its transplantation of dairy cows for human women, this is a grim and shocking piece of work that refuses to beat around the bush regarding its animal cruelty message.
It’s a pity, however, that the film’s determination to see itself felt results in a thoroughly shot foot when it labours the point beyond all reason throughout two separate credit reels — finally ending with an overly emotive, on-the-noise vegan diatribe splashed across the screen. Just in case you didn’t get it.
So, despite the film itself being well made and brutally uncompromising, the laboured agenda — much like rotten milk — leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
Also on offer throughout the weekend were a couple of Oculus Rift-based horror experiences, a Celluloid Screams horror quiz (which, surprisingly, focused on the festival itself rather than genre trivia — something which places non-regular attendees at a disappointing disadvantage) and, of course, the amazing closing gala which saw composer Claudio Simonetti’s group Goblin take to the stage to perform a live score accompaniment to Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso (Deep Red).
Following the screening, the band remained on stage for renditions of some of their greatest soundtracks, including Demons, Suspiria, Zombi/Dawn of the Dead and the absolutely rocking Tenebre. Catch some of the sights in our gallery below.
Goblin made for a superlative end to a strong year for Celluloid Screams. If festival organiser Robert Nevitt and co. can keep up this kind of exclusive treat for their audiences, the future of support for horror in Yorkshire looks very bright indeed. Bring on 2016.
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