They Look Like People

"They Look Like People" (2015, Perry Blackshear, Signature Entertainment) is an independent psychological thriller about a man who is convinced that people are turning into evil creatures. He travels to stay with a friend in a bid to protect him.

Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews) travels to New York City to stay with his old friend, Christian (Evan Dumouchel). Both men have recently become single and Christian is tentatively seeing his boss, Mara (Margaret Ying Drake).

Wyatt is a withdrawn guy and it's slowly revealed that he believes that people are becoming possessed by some evil entity. He is seen to be stockpiling weapons in Christian's basement. Christian seems like a well adjusted guy, but he suffers from some insecurities and seems to be looking to find a purpose in life.

An arty film with a very slow pace and somewhat rudderless plot. It feels like it has a lot to say about mental health but the message, for me at least, was not particularly clear, and overall I found myself pretty bored throughout and have to admit that the film just isn't for me. The film likes to keep things unexplained, which can work in some ways, but in this case it just made the purposefully slow run time feel even longer.

The cast do a great job and the characters feel very human, but overall the styling of the film made my interest ebb after the first 30 minute mark and it felt like it was spending too much energy trying to be clever and not enough energy on actually being engaging.

For an early film from new film makers it's a good accomplishment and doesn't feel amateurish or badly made. Despite a low budget, the film uses the characters alone to build tension and does a good job of creating believable relationships between the characters; particularly between Wyatt and Christian.

If you're into slow paced, character-driven films this might be right up your street, but for me it missed the mark.

Hani

A Dark Song

"A Dark Song" (2016, Liam Gavin, IFC Midnight) is an indy horror from Ireland centred around the Occult.

Sophia (Catherine Walker) is a grieving mother who goes to an isolated house in the Welsh countryside with occultist, Joseph (Steve Oram), in order to perform a series of rituals to summon her guardian angel and speak with her deceased, 7-year old child. However, any slip can lead to the ritual going awry, with possible deadly results.

A slow, quiet movie with a really effective soundtrack and a stylistic storytelling method that doesn't particularly grab you by the shoulders, but does build up ominously. The black magic rituals have an element of realism to them that make the scenes effective. The magic is hard, and dirty and gross. The pretty stuff is simple and limited and the things on the other side are not friendly.

The gritty realism of the occult elements really play well with the disharmonious relationship between the determined, desperate woman and her reluctant, angry, world-weary spiritual guide. Sophie's inexperience and desperate resolution goes up against Joseph's seen-it-all-and-sick-of-it attitude, and his brash rudeness towards her drives her to fight against him, making the already gruelling process worse.

The quiet, desolate story telling style is effective, but it does make the experience of the film quite slow-going. While there were parts where I was on the edge of my seat, there were certainly sparse areas where I was just waiting on something moving the plot forward.

An altogether gloomy piece with a haunting impact. Innovative, if a little slow to get started.

[Image: IFC Midnight]

 

Hani 

Murder Party

"Murder Party" (2007, Magnolia Pictures, Jeremy Saulnier) is a "horror" "comedy" based in Brooklyn, New York.... I bought this film for three reasons:

1. It was cheap and had free shipping
2. The cover looked entertaining
3. It had one of those terrible horror names (a fact the film itself makes a nod to by including a video tape called "Scarewolf" in the plot)

A strange and lonely man called Christopher (Chris Sharp), who lives with his cat (who, as all cat do, owns the sofa), finds an invitation to a Halloween party called "The Murder Party" on the street and decides to go... He makes a Halloween costume out of duct tape and some cardboard and sets off.

He gets to the secluded spot to find a bunch of  'artists' wearing Halloween costumes and toting weapons... It turns out that the artists are looking to murder someone in the name of 'art', and Christopher has accidentally volunteered!

I'm sure they were going for 'ironically uncomfortable.'.. What they got was 'normal uncomfortable'. This film is not funny, at all. The only thing really going for it were some good low-budget gruesome moments (the "wolfman" getting burnt so badly his mask melted to his face being particularly yucky and some axe through the face action being quite impressively accomplished).

Other than the above mentioned effects and setting up quite a good 'weirdo' lead character in Christopher, the film achieved very little. The 'Patron' character is kind of like a badly written Will Ferrill character.

On the other hand, it's an independent film made by people with next to no money, so in that respect, deserves kudos. The special effects are impressive and the relative idea behind the film is otherwise sinister. Unfortunately, it just wasn't for me.

[Picture: The Lab of Madness & Magnolia Pictures]

Hani