I discovered “What The Fest!?” film festival while attending a screening at the IFC Theater here in NYC. The ad was this cute purple poster with a girl holding a popcorn bag full of eyeballs and I thought, yeah, this is right up my alley! So I got in touch with the big folks in charge to make sure I could get the opportunity to view a few films that weekend. I was happy as a clown when I got approved and couldn’t wait to see the films I had chosen from the list! If you haven’t heard of the festival before, it is a 5-day event featuring some really awesome movies that seemed more horror, thriller, psychological trip-themed. I expected nothing less from IFC because they always show the best movies from all around the world, especially the really cool indie ones you don’t see at bigger theaters.
I had the pleasure of seeing two features and the first one was called “To the Night.” If you are into deeply emotional films that have you messed up in the head long after you leave the theater, this one is for you. Norman (Caleb Landry) struggles with a form of PTSD onset by a house fired that happened when he was a child in which he was the only survivor. The opening scene of Norman being released from a hospital sets the mood for the entire film. At first, you think he’s an ex-drug addict but it is soon revealed that he is actually this amazing artist who is just trying to put the pieces of his life together. Every day he is intensely haunted by the incident while his girlfriend Penelope (Eleonore Hendricks) tries everything she can to hold their relationships together.
Norman fights just to function day to day. He is completely obsessed with trying to figure out what happened the night of the fire and with the help of others, he reenacts the event using dangerous measures like starting a fire and seeing how quickly they get to the escape route. He also tries drugs to put him in a sedative state thinking he will get the memories back. His friend Andy (Christos Haas), who is not mentally able to care for himself, relies on Norman to watch after him. Norman convinces him to assist him in the first attempt to reenact thefire but Andy, who is virtually blind, can barely take care of himself and becomes more of a burden. There is a heavy theme of co-dependency in this film that plays out with each character. Norman to Andy, Penelope to Norman, and then Norman meets a young runaway name Luna (Janna McKinnon) whom he caught living in the abandoned home. She is a pregnant teen and clings to Norman and there he begins another co-dependent relationship. He uses her to assist him in his second attempt to go back into the house and reenact the incident that night of the fire, each time becoming more and more psychologically damaging.
This movie is so emotionally driven, you feel like you never come up for air but that’s what I liked about it. It keeps you right in the zone of trying to push through each moment with the character while you are dying to find out how it will end. Will Norman die in the process? Will Penelope finally leave him because she can’t cope any longer? What will become of Andy without Norman? All questions I had the whole time.
The cast was amazing, I love Caleb Landry’s work as an actor, he does heavy poignant scenes very well. When I saw him in “Get Out” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” I became a fan of his work, so I knew he would take this character to a whole other level. Christos Haas was incredible and played his role very gently, meaning he was careful to come across as authentic and not seeming to make fun of the character. Eleonore Hendricks did an amazing job of expressing such loyalty, patience, anger, and sadness and then giving up and the cycle went on and on. I carried so much hope for her but at the same time, I wanted to slap her. I loved this film, it is a heavy one without very few light moments that get under your skin, which is why I wanted to see it so badly.
The second film was called “The Dead Center.” When a dead body, who we later find out to be a man named Michael Clark (Jeremy Childs) comes back to life and turns up at a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Daniel Forrester (Shane Carruth) a psychiatrist, gets tangled up in trying to find out who he is and how he ended up there. Not being able to remember his own name, Michael starts showing signs of episodes where he starts to attack and kill by sucking the life out of anyone in the same room. When the morgue finds out the body went missing, the examiner, Edward Graham (Bill Feehely) looks for him and his relatives. He discovers a burned down home where apparently his wife was killed and he survived. Edward tracks down more details about his death by the hotel manager where he was staying. As he visits he witnesses the blood, a knife, and a circular symbol that is carved into the tub. When he tracks down his parents to inform them about the case, it is revealed that the very same symbol that was carved into the tub was in his home as well.
Stay with me, because this gets more interesting or confusing, you choose! While Edward is gathering information about Michael and trying to locate him, Dr. Daniel Forrester has taken Michael as his secret patient, administering heavy medication that allows him to remember and recall past events. He reveals that there is something inside of him that makes him do dangerous things, even kill, and as the movie progresses, we see the killings begin. First with a nurse, then moves on to other patients and administration of the hospital.
With this particular film, I felt like I’d seen it before. Something invades the body and prompts the subject to kill but here we never understand why it entered the body and when and why. The way in which he kills is by sucking the life out of them and they are left lifeless with mouths open. Michael does explain that he has died many times before. By the time the examiner puts all the pieces together and finds out that the body is alive and is at the psychiatric ward, it’s a bit too late.
I thought the movie needed a bit of help with a stronger back story. Tell us why the demon entered his body and when. Why the killings? There are also small subplots that don’t help like the fact that he had a house fire and his wife died. Maybe that would explain the onset of depression but certainly wouldn’t call an evil spirit into a body. The director said in the Q&A afterward that he liked the mystery of not knowing but I as the audience needed to know. Anyway, it was a good film for the strong actors and somewhat of a solid story but it missed aspects that could have made it better.
I definitely want to attend “What The Fest!?” next year and hopefully get to see much more. Overall it was an enjoyable experience.
