#HungarianHorror

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THE SITGES FilmFest 2020 / Happy All Saint’s Day REVIEWS & REPORT, VOL. III: by Lucas Avram Cavazos!

Getting a chance to screen so many horror films just before and as these ‘harvest moon’ holidays push us even closer to Las Fiestas serves as a reminder that this ‘covid19-awareness’ life most of us lead, has not been great for anybody, no less for cinemas, filmmakers, distributors, and the like. It also helps a reviewer like myself see how damn near anything can get a green light if the mood and money is right. Take, for example, the first film I screened this year at the Sitges Film Festival ’20, Black Water:Abyss. Looking like a good idea does not always spill out so astutely on celluloid, and this brave attempt at a sequel to Aussie cult fave Black Water (2007), where a giant croc terrorises a battered group of stranded folks, now serves us a group of spelunkers in search of a gnarly body of water deep within a cave. Note: The Descent this is not, and although there are a few scares and startled moments, a good dose of the drinky-drinky is quite in order to make this one remotely as fun and palatable as the original. ### (release date TBD soon for Spain/Catalunya)

Hosts is at once mesmerising in its brutality before devolving ever so steadily, mid-way through the film, into a maddening tour de force of heinous ways to try and knock a family off. What can certainly be said is that directors Adam Leader and Richard Oakes have done well by bringing the human element and emotional connection to the viewer about the family-at-hand. When a family invites their neighbours over for holiday dinner, what commences is something so brutal yet telling, it is very hard not to be driven into the darkness of the movie in hopes of perhaps seeing the perpetrators meet a grisly end. But, after all of that, much is just left blowing in the wind like an ill-fated song by Kansas... the group, not the US state. ###-1/2

Relic…is this where such a lauded name in Australian stage and screen winds up? YES! And grandmother Edna, played by Robyn Nevin, slays her performance in this creepy if a tad bit lacklustre haunted house film. Also starring Emily Mortimer in an annoyingly stealthy yet oddly unfulfilled role as mother Kay, the film starts slow initially. When grandma disappears without a trace, mother and daughter (Bella Heathcote) team up to find her only to then discover elements of hoarding and intense senility. And then, there is…the other house! While director Natalie Erika James certainly brings a different view to ageing-in-a-horror-movie fare that have dotted the cinematic landscape in recent years like Goodnight Mommy, Paranormal Activity (3) and The Visit to name a few. That said, there is still much to be desired, but despite the formulaic semblance of irritating scenes, we do get a few thrills and decent acting to boot.  ###-1/2 (release date TBD in Spain though some screens do play it in France…if you can travel [inject maniacal laughter here])

Can we say FUN, because this film was perfect oddball fantastical horror-comedy…is that a genre? Starring yet another Stranger Things alum, this time John Reynolds with Sunita Mani as Su, his hilarious and cute girlfriend, Save Yourselves! is, for all intents and purposes, going to become a cult fave by select, prime dorks in years to come…a quasi-playbook for millennial horror-comedy, if you will. Because then we have the killer pouffe-ball. Out of nowhere, what starts to happen is the demise and takeover of the world by alien invaders, apparently in the form of destructive pouffe-ball interlopers. Camp as all hell, with a few thrills and jumps and a barrel of laughs thrown in, this film was a pleasure to watch and slightly begs for a sequel. (Film now streaming on Movistar+ and some RakutenTV outlets, as well) ###-1/2

Vicious Fun takes a dollop of fun and spins it on its axis, taking a sharp knifing to bounty killers by placing them in some therapy-styled comic tale. Minnesota 1983 and Joel (Evan Marsh) has a hankering for his roomie, but she is mos def not on that tip, so a drunken bar encounter then leads to taking part in the aforementioned self help group for killers. Director Cody Callahan and debut writer James Villeneuve paint a self-actualising group of nut cases in a sharp, witty scripted plot and presses PLAY, and we the audience get to sit back at the silliness and gore and take part in the festivities of the socio-psychopathic mind. ###-1/2

Post Mortem takes a little-discussed fact in history and begs some modern day questions, such as What?! and Why? and basically WTF?! After the First World War, it was also notably an age of pandemic, where the 1918 Flu began ravaging the world and the stark notion of Hungarian director Ptere Bergendy’s usage of the occasional bag-mask and the macabre idea of post-death photography with staged corpses to enliven them one last time before burial is stunningly off-putting. So, when Tomas (Viktor Klem) survives the war and makes his way back to his little Hungarian village, he comes across little orphan Anna (wee actress Fruzsina Hais) who, it soon becomes clear, sees dead people…just as Tomas does, and not just because he takes to becoming a post mortem staged photographer. The usage of historical aspects to set a tone, the stark scenery adding its own aplomb and actors who know how to creep an audience out helped this slightly dragging film keep its mystical, ghost-like clasp on me. ###-1/2

The Belgian production Yummy takes its cues from stereotypical zombie-horror comedies and has some fun with it by throwing a monkey wrench into the situation, a wrench called plastic surgery! When a young couple decides to make their way through Eastern Europe so as to get the girlfriend a breast reduction, it just so happens that they are also accompanied by her mother, who is hellbent on a facelift. Belgian director Lars Damoiseaux serves up an experimental-comic piece that dives into zombie-film territory just after arriving at the rhinoplasty clinic. Intensely gratifying for comic thrills and the like, this very Euro-centric zombie piece is one to watch drunk and for laughs. ###-1/2