Fantastic Fest can loosely be divided into two groups of people. The first group comprises the die-hards, those stalwart individuals who, come hell or high water, see a movie in every time slot. Their film count tops out in the mid-thirties, with a select few counting even more to their total thanks to press screenings and access to the screening library. These people are insane and I wonder what deal they made with the Devil to give them the mental endurance to sit through that many films in one day.
Then there are people like me. I have the constitution of an 80 year old man. Back-to-back movies are anathema to me, and made worse only by my terrible attention span. This is why I’ve only seen (to date) thirteen movies in theaters during this year’s fest (and walked out of one, but that’s only because I fell asleep, like, as soon as the movie started).
Although slick as Hell in the visual and audio department, Revenge is mostly a tedious exercise in excessive gore. The themes and subtext can’t support the thin story, and at 108 minutes, much of the film is a test of the viewer’s patience. It gets some respite during the film’s climactic fight scene, which sees the blood flow in unrealistic proportions, but by then I just wanted the movie to end.
To say Day 6 was tame is an understatement. After almost a week of this, I’m ready to call it quits. But there’s two days left! Onward to Day 7!
Echoing real-life horrors, Tigers Are Not Afraid is similar to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan Labyrinth in that it relies on fantastical and at times horrific elements to help drive Estrella’s quest. The subtext is relatively clear: a rivulet of blood, a tiny dragon, and a stuffed tiger come to life to remind her, in part, that the life she lives, whether she likes or not, is one in which death is always present. Blending horror and fantasy in equal measure, Tigers Are Not Afraid is a gut-punch of a film that found me wiping away tears on more than one occasion.
And with that, the second-to-last day of Fantastic Fest has come to a close. My back hurts. My heart hurts (from fatty food, not emotion). But through it all, I’ve had a huge smile on my face. Don’t worry. I’ll be sappy during the fest end recap.