Spooky Movie 2012, an international horror film fest at the AFI Silver Theatre that runs from Oct. 12 to 18, is a veritable twilight zone of too ghoul for school films. This festival is the thinking horror fan's Mystery Science Theatre: the films will have you racking your brain for days afterwards, for better or worse.
In its seventh year of bringing mystery, mischief and mayhem to audiences, the festival delivers impressively on thrills and chills, with 21 feature films and 31 shorts, including festival standouts “Resolution” and “Excision.”
Another breakout film of the festival was “Chained,” the third major feature film by David Lynch’s progeny, Jennifer Lynch, which made its U.S. debut on Friday. A tour-de-force ride into the mind of an uber-misogynistic serial killer, “Chained” is the story of Bob and Rabbit (Eamon Farren), the boy whose mother Bob kills and who becomes a servant, a student and, for lack of a better word, a son to him.
Lynch initially wanted to title the film “Rabbit” to take the focus away from the depersonalizing surroundings of the character and focus on the psychological aspects at play. During the Q&A after her screening, she described her movie as a “tough watch, a story about how real monsters are made.”
When Lynch first read the “Chained” script, she said it ran too much like “torture porn” (a charge that was often leveled at her for debut film “Boxing Helena,” which she made when she was 19). Lynch wanted to make a film that delved more into “figuring out why he is doing this and the relationship between him and Rabbit.”
With no soundtrack to the movie, save for the creak of floorboards, the thud of footsteps and the screams of Bob’s victims, “Chained” is mercifully low on the gruesome and ghastly “Saw”-like sensibilities that have invaded recent horror fare.
“Resolution,” directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, upends a number of horror movie tropes to create a strange amalgamation of buddy flicks and “Lost.”
Mike (Peter Cilella) goes to an abandoned cabin in the woods in a last-ditch effort to get best friend Chris (Vinny Curran) to stop his downward descent down the crack pipe by literally chaining him to a pipe so he can detox for a week. That one week proves eventful as Mike starts finding various eerie antique objects in the house and encounters a series of strangers, including drug dealers, a space cult and a French gentleman.
Mike and Vinny yield comedic gold through the dramedy but also paint a poignant portrait of a relationship weather-beaten by the buffeting of life. Curran is compelling in his portrayal of an addict hell-bent on convincing everyone to leave him alone to his “destiny,” which he perceives to be drugs.
The horror story aspect of the film is almost an afterthought, although Mike’s increasing obsession with figuring out what is happening eerily parallels Vince’s own addiction. Ironically enough, “Resolution” does not offer one at the end. The ambiguous ending will have the audience scratching their heads.
thescene@theeagleonline.com
