How to Play the Exists (2014) Drinking Game

February 28, 2015February 28, 2015 / swampflix / 2 Comments

Yesterday I reviewed the found footage Sasquatch movie Exists, directed by former Blair Witch luminary Eduardo Sánchez. The film is fun, but somewhat campier in premise than in execution, as it takes the threat of the Bigfoot very seriously and plays the material straight. I honestly believe that playing it straight was the right choice and the movie is all the goofier for it (even if Sánchez was aiming to make a serious work). Yesterday I wrote, “Its opening title cards read ‘Since 1967, there have been over 3,000 Bigfoot encounters in the U.S. alone. Experts agree that the creatures are only violent when provoked.’ While some may find this kind of self-serious nonsense to be a huge warning sign, it speaks to me as a fan of schlocky horror. It says to me, “This movie will be silly. Bring liquor.’” And since I recommended that you bring liquor, I guess I should provide you the rules for the Exists drinking game.

As I explained in my review, characters in Exists have a tendency to punctuate each & every sentence with either the word “dude” or “bro”. I even suggested that an alternate title for the film could be The Adventures of Camera Dude & Deer Bro in the honor of the film’s most entertaining characters’ personal preferences for the two words. Camera Dude & Deer Bro are not only the heart of the film; they’re the heart of the drinking game as well.

For a multiplayer experience
Assign each player either to drink every time a character says “dude” or every time a character says “bro”. I did not count how many times each word was uttered, but if I had to guess I’d say whoever gets assigned to “bro” would probably do most of the heavy lifting.

For a single-player experience
Just drink every time you hear the word “bro”. Deer Bro is the most likeable of the two characters so you might as well commemorate every goofy moment you get to spend with him by celebrating his favorite word.

Bonus points
Hell, drink every time you hear “dude” or “bro”. Just because I picked Deer Bro as my favorite doesn’t mean you have to take my word for it, bro. Maybe you’re more of a Camera Dude, dude. Dude, just make sure you remember to hydrate, dude & don’t plan on driving anywhere after the game is done, bro. And dude, watch out for Sasquatches, dude.

As always, play safe, bro!

-Brandon Ledet

Exists (2014)

February 27, 2015February 27, 2015 / swampflix / 4 Comments

I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly why mainstream critics were so hard on last year’s found footage Sasquatch movie Exists. The movie’s been called everything from “dismally generic” to “aggressively unimaginative” to “fucking stupid”. I’m not saying those claims aren’t at least partly true (especially that last one; the movie is stupid), but dumping this much vitriol on a low budget horror film about Bigfoot feels a lot like punching down. Exists is a straightforward horror cheapie that makes few to no attempts to stray from genre clichés, but does it really deserve to be trashed more than last year’s equally pedestrian (but far more expensive) I, Frankenstein, Annabelle, or Dracula Untold? All three of those films didn’t exactly run up great scores on Metacritic either, but they were mostly brushed off as boring, not spat on as “fucking stupid”.

The best explanation for this vicious critical beating I can come up with is that Exists’ director Eduardo Sánchez was one of the two minds behind the surprise cultural hit The Blair Witch Project. By punishing Sánchez for making a generic, post-Blair Witch found footage horror flick, critics are by extension punishing him for all the other generic found footage horrors we’ve suffered through since Blair Witch’s success over a decade ago. It’s an almost cut & dried case of Schadenfreude. I’m not saying Exists’ straightforward approach to the genre is criticism-proof; I’m just saying that if it weren’t for Blair Witch the film wouldn’t have been deemed worth the time of a lot of these one-to-zero star reviews.

The most common complaint about Exists is what I believe to be its biggest strength: the fact that it plays its material straight. The campy appeal of a found footage Sasquatch movie is silly enough in concept that it would’ve been a huge mistake to adopt a winking, ironic tone to back it up. Exists is fully committed to its genre, for better or for worse. Its opening title cards read “Since 1967, there have been over 3,000 Bigfoot encounters in the U.S. alone. Experts agree that the creatures are only violent when provoked.” While some may find this kind of self-serious nonsense to be a huge warning sign, it speaks to me as a fan of schlocky horror. It says to me, “This movie will be silly. Bring liquor.” When the film’s narrator/camera-operator/resident goofball first becomes aware of the Bigfoot that ruins his vacation in the woods, he drops his sad stabs at comic relief and adopts a serious tone similar to the one in the title cards. He says, “Years ago my uncle saw something out here. Something that freaked him the fuck out. Bad enough that he never came back to this beloved hunting cabin.” The film knows when to be dour & when to be playful. That line is so goofily ludicrous it had to be said with a straight face to work.

Unfortunately, Camera Dude (which I will henceforth call him, since he punctuates nearly every sentence with “dude”) isn’t always as charming as he is there. Mostly, he’s a device. The film’s five protagonists include two cute couples & one hairy hipster bro in a Daniel Johnston t-shirt, our beloved Camera Dude. As a 5th wheel, Camera Dude is free to document the goings on of the cabin trip & subsequent Sasquatch attacks, filming his buddies as they crack wise, swim, sleep (weird), fuck (super weird) and get torn apart by a Sasquatch (thank God). Why exactly is Camera Dude filming every mundane second of his vacation in the woods on his ungodly stockpile of GoPro cameras? To make “The Best YouTube Video Ever”, of course. If this sounds obnoxious, it’s because it is. Camera Dude’s best moments are when he drops the loveable goofball act and tries to convince his buddies that they’re under attack by a Bigfoot. He tells the audience, “I’ve got some GoPros set up all over the forest,” setting up a laughably implausible excuse for the film’s multiple camera angles. Camera Dude eats up a lot of the film’s run time but when he switches from Best YouTube Video Ever mode to Bigfoot Believer mode he becomes a fairly amusing one-dimensional plot device. I also enjoyed that the moment you can tell his spirit is broken is when he’s too sad about his dead friends to smoke weed.

Despite Camera Dude’s attempts to steal the show, Exists’ true comic relief comes from another character: Deer Bro. As the title cards revealed, Sasquatches will not attack unless provoked, so the film needs to set up the five victims’ reason for being hunted by the hairy beast. Borrowing a page from I Know What You Did Last Summer, they strike a Bigfoot with their car early in the film. A few characters are convinced that they clipped a dear, but no, not Deer Bro. He warns them all, “That wasn’t no deer, bro.” As far as terrible characters in horror movies go, Deer Bro is a gem. When he isn’t tossing out an indiscriminate amount of “bro”s with every awkward sentence, he’s claiming he should be in charge of the group’s sole rifle because he plays paintball or he’s accidentally sitting down on his best bro’s broken legs. Classic Deer Bro. If Exists is to be understood as The Adventures of Camera Dude & Deer Bro, Deer Bro is the clear winner as an audience favorite. Every idiotic moment he’s on screen is a gift to schlock lovers everywhere.

Enjoying Exists, much like surviving an encounter with a Sasquatch, requires approaching it the right way. Critics looking for Eduardo Sánchez to justify his fluke success with Blair Witch were wrong to expect anything but a silly trifle out of a found footage Sasquatch movie. At this point, it’s nearly impossible to make a Sasquatch costume 100% menacing. Audiences will always see a little Harry & The Hendersons or Geico Commercial Cavemen in Bigfoot, whether or not he’s crushing skulls & hurling bicycles. As a straightforward B-movie about a Sasquatch attack, Exists is a pleasant enough picture. Its clichéd plot devices about strategically placed GoPro cameras & lack of cellphone reception are excusable as modern horror tropes and the quiet calm of its pacing is much preferable to the shrill panic of other found footage cheapies. It’s far from the most inventive horror film I’ve ever seen, but it’s also far from the worst. As a schlocky genre diversion it’s a fun, inconsequential film. Especially if you focus on the goofy charms of Deer Bro.

-Brandon Ledet

Septic Man (2014)

February 25, 2015February 25, 2015 / swampflix / 2 Comments

Watching a filth-covered man roll around in a septic tank for an hour and a half didn’t turn out to be as fun as I expected. The 2014 gross-out horror film Septic Man had the potential to be like a darker Toxic Avenger but instead has none of Troma’s charm and ends up being every bit as bad as its premise would imply.

Jack, a soon to be father and self-described “civic minded shit sucker” is hired by a mysterious organization to combat the city’s water contamination crisis and, after accidentally locking himself in a septic tank, diagnoses the problem as “shit zombies backing up the water supply”. In what amounts to The Fly in a septic tank, he begins to transform into a hideous poo beast. The septic plant is also inhabited by two in-bred monsters: an emotionally fragile giant and his seemingly rabies-infested brother whose teeth he helpfully sharpens with a piece of steel. In a bittersweet moment, the giant sobs over his brother’s death while simultaneously vomiting profusely.

Director Jesse Thomas Cook does a competent job and the soundtrack is actually pretty decent, but that can’t change the fact that the film is drab, ugly, and depressing. It’s also disappointing because the grossest scene happens before the opening credits. Sure, there are gross-out moments involving fecal fountains, intestines, and a sewer baby but the movie never tops the nastiness of its first scene. Most of the film is simply Jack wallowing in a single septic tank, covered with escalating degrees of bodily fluids.

Ultimately, Septic Man fails because it is boring and not nearly as transgressive as it could have been. Gross-out fests can be ridiculous fun (like Zombie Ass) or truly disturbing (like The Human Centipede), but Septic Man just ends up being crap.

-James Cohn

The Other Vincent Price Masque: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

February 23, 2015September 15, 2015 / swampflix / 5 Comments

Vincent Price’s fey, effete, menacingly campy persona made him a natural for old-school horror. It was a persona he intentionally cultivated. In his transition from 50’s monster movie classics like House of Wax and The Fly to the 60s Corman-Poe Cycle that made him infamous, he gradually ramped up the eccentricities in his voice & mannerisms that established him as a horror staple. By the 70s Price had devolved into delicious self-parody. His playful demeanor was perfect for the horror genre: his characters were not only evil; they took great delight in their wicked deeds, proudly snickering at the depths of their own cruelty.

It was this persona that made Price perfect for the Prince Prospero role in February’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death. The film’s masquerade setting not only afforded Price the chance to be sadistic to a large group of costumed guests, it also gave the sadism a party setting. That mischievous combination of pleasure & pain was positively ideal for the Vincent Price aesthetic. The masquerade setting was so perfect for Price, in fact, that it was recycled years later in another one of his iconic roles: 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

By the time Price starred in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, he was in full self-parody mode. Where Corman’s Masque is a trippy horror show with occasional, unsettling touches of humor, Dr. Phibes is a full-on horror comedy. Price’s Phibes is a horrifically scarred car crash survivor hell-bent on avenging his wife’s death against the surgeons that failed to save her life. The pattern of his revenge mimics the seven Biblical plagues. Despite that disturbing premise, it’s a deviously fun film and one of Price’s most memorable performances. Phibes himself wears a prosthetic mask to hide his facial scars, but that’s not the common thread it shares with Masque. In the film’s best scene (or at least my personal favorite) Phibes offs one of his deceased wife’s doctors at a masquerade ball. His murder method? He supplies the doctor with a mechanical frog mask that crushes his head. The frog mask is not only a beautiful work of art; it also cleverly fulfills the frog plague requirement of the film’s premise.

The masquerade scene in Dr. Phibes is brief, but beautiful. It not only echoes Corman’s Masque in the setting, but also in the gorgeous saturation of color and in the other guest’s nonchalance at the frog-mask victim’s pleas for help. Just as Prospero laughs cruelly at his party guests’ demise, Phibes casually looks on from behind a crystal chandelier as his frog mask contraption exterminates his prey. The two films are tonally different works from two opposing phases of Vincent Price’s career, but in the brief moment at the masque in Phibes, The Masque of the Red Death and The Abominable Dr. Phibes are spiritually linked.

For more on February’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, visit our Swampchat on the film, the round-up of its dueling 1989 knockoffs, and last week’s photos of The Red Death at Mardi Gras. Coverage of our next Movie of the Month, 1957’s The Seventh Seal, begins early next week.

-Brandon Ledet

Possession (1981)

February 21, 2015 / swampflix / 22 Comments

Let’s just get this out of the way: Possession is a masterpiece. It’s a cold, incomprehensible film that confidently unleashes cinematic techniques like deadly weapons. Filmed in Berlin in 1980, Possession occupies harsh, uncaring architectural spaces, but populates them with passionate characters that remain in constant, violently fluid motion. The camera moves with them, rarely allowing the audience to settle as it chases its tormented subjects down sparse rooms and hallways like a slasher movie serial killer. In one shot the central couple undulates back & forth in front of a blank white wall, constantly swirling around each other during a bitter argument, but seemingly going nowhere as if trapped in a void. The film feels like a visual manifestation of madness, inertia, and heartbreak all rolled into one dizzying package. It captures the cold horror of divorce & separation and transforms it into an unknowable evil. It’s one of the scariest movies I’ve seen in quite some time, but finds its horror in ambiguity instead of a tangible, comprehensible threat.

That’s not to say there aren’t the typical on-screen genre-signifiers of horror in the film. There is gore. Characters bleed at the impact of sharp instruments and are confronted by humanoid demons, but these aspects serve more as exclamation points than the main attraction. With a title like Possession and the heavy synths in the opening theme, it’d be reasonable to expect a straight-forward 80s zombie or vampire flick, but the film refuses to be pinned down so easily. If Possession were to be understood as a creature feature, the monster in question would be the coldness of romantic separation. When a character supposes early in the film, “Maybe all couples go through this” it seems like a reasonable claim. The bitterness of divorce, loneliness, and adulterous desire then devolve into a supernatural ugliness. The main couple frantically move about Berlin as if drunk or suffering seizures, downright possessed by their romantic misery. Their own motion & inner turmoil is more of a violent threat than the film’s most menacing blood-soaked monsters or electric carving knives.

For a taste of the film’s fascinatingly bizarre sense of movement, the Crystal Castles music video for “Plague” samples key scenes and repurposes them as demonic, Kate Bush-style interpretive dance. It could possibly spoil some striking images, but the film’s plot is mostly spoiler-proof in its intentional obfuscation. The Berlin setting, the sound design in the final scene and the protagonist’s confession that he’s “at war against women” all allude to the possibility of a war allegory subtext, but it’s not explicit or concrete. If anything, characters are at war with themselves and the uncaring nature of the world they occupy. When Sam Neill’s protagonist confesses “For me, God is a disease” it’s easy to empathize. Whoever created the cruel, heartless world of Possession and brought life into it must have at least been as callous as a disease. With its brutal momentum & inevitable bloodshed it’s a terrifying hellscape, especially if it’s something that “all couples go through.”

-Brandon Ledet

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

February 20, 2015April 3, 2015 / swampflix / 18 Comments

Although it was made a few years before the term “documentary” was coined, Häxan was far from the first non-fiction film ever made. It may, however, be the first documentary to ever be billed as a horror film. Based on the painstaking research of Danish writer/director Benjamin Christensen, Häxan is a hot-button doc that pretends to be about the “real” history of witchcraft, but is in truth a condemnation of how modern society deals with mental health. Although it begins & ends with lectures on antiquated notions of geography and health care, most of the film consists of live reenactments of medieval depictions of witchcraft that often blend the film’s documentary genre with classic silent horror. The reenactments are not only the sugar that helps the medicine go down. They’re also technical marvels that made Häxan the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made and a cinematic outlaw in countries that found its depictions of witches & devils to be blasphemous.

In its reenactments, Häxan looks like what you’d get if Fritz Lang’s Metropolis were set in Hell. Devils wag their tongues and suggestively churn butter while witches make potions out of thieves’ fingers, cat feces, and doves’ hearts. Women are lured out of their marriage beds by demons for late night naked dance parties and rub salves on each other’s backs that give them the ability to fly around on brooms. In these scenes, Häxan is the most metal 20s movie I’ve ever encountered. There’s so much wild imagery in the costuming and practical effects that I swear I’ve seen directly echoed before in VHS-era creature features like Nightbreed, Demons and C.H.U.D. The movie’s late night witches’ councils could also pretty much be considered source material for Kate Bush’s incredible “Sat in Your Lap” music video. Although Häxan boasts a serious message it deeply cares about, there’s no denying that it has a lot of fun in scaring the shit out of people with the medieval “The Devil takes many shapes” concept. Recreating live-action versions of witchcraft from art history is the film’s bread & butter, even if Ben Christensen had a loftier purpose in mind.

As devilishly fun & influential as the reenactment scenes are, Häxan (like a lot of hot button documentaries) is ultimately a huge downer. When the film returns to the real world to draw the thread between how women with mental illness have been treated in the past (as witches) and how they’re treated in the present (as lepers & pariahs) the naked dance parties are a far off memory and a flood of more sobering thoughts comes crashing through. The narration explicitly states “The Devil does not belong to the past” and asks “Isn’t superstition still rampant among us?” as depictions of the horrors of modern mental institutions and shady health care practices play out on the screen. Christensen then smartly returns to the opening depictions of the crystal spheres & bowl-shaped landscapes people once believed to be the science of the Universe’s structure, calling into question the validity of modern scientific consensus. Even nearly a hundred years since Häxan’s release, the sentiment is still potent. There are still huge flaws in our treatment of mental health & we still need flashy, sinful entertainment to draw our attention to them. Along with its hellish practical effects & creature design, the film’s central message has a surprisingly long shelf life.

Häxan is currently streaming on Hulu Plus.

-Brandon Ledet

Zombeavers (2015)

February 19, 2015February 19, 2015 / swampflix / 14 Comments

Zombeavers is a deeply stupid movie. Just a remarkably dumb piece of work. Its irreverent “potty humor”, skin-deep characters, theatrical sex, and leering lipstick lesbianism all feel like the musings of a particularly gross twelve year old boy. Its endless fascination with the double entendre of the word “beaver” is about as corny as its central conceit. A lot of the dialogue is merely a long string of insults (so much so that you could probably apply our See No Evil Drinking Game here and leave fairly sloshed). The zombie-beaver hand-puppets look like garbage. It’s just an undeniably bad movie. I enjoyed it anyway.

Zombeavers is not just a dumb movie; it’s a faithful sendup of dumb 80s horror. Sorority sisters on retreat in a remote cabin find flimsy excuses to strip nude and have loud sex with their airhead boyfriends. They’re punished for their transgressions by an army of murderous, undead beavers that have been transformed by toxic waste polluting the river. As if toxic waste & horny campers being murdered isn’t enough of an 80s throwback, it also boasts a John Carpenter nod in its opening credits & title card to drive the point home. Thankfully, its most faithful 80s sendup is in the practical effects of the beavers & the gore. The beaver puppets don’t look particularly professional, but they have a handmade charm to them that’s missing from a lot of modern horror cheapies, especially in The Asylum mockbusters like Sharknado & Mega Piranha. If the movie had opted for CGI over practical effects, it would’ve been a total slog, but it instead manages to succeed in the choice to chase a homemade, DIY, VHS aesthetic. I might not have laughed at most of its verbal stabs at humor, but the beaver attacks had me howling.

Yes, the humor is hokey and the “beaver” quips are especially relentless. One character even pleads “Can we please stop with the beaver jokes?” in the film’s most genuine moment. However, I’m going to choose to believe it’s cheesy on purpose. It’s not like corny jokes & shoddy puppets didn’t work for folks like Peter Jackson just a few decades ago. It’s a winning formula. Besides, there are a couple moments of absurd brilliance in the script as well, like in the line “We can’t turn on each other right now. That’s exactly what the beavers would want.” I also chose not to turn on the film, the same way the horny, beaver-persecuted sorority sisters chose not to turn on each other. Zombeavers’ hokey banter was bullshit, but the practical effects & 80s horror throwbacks really worked for me. It worked for me so much that when a post-credits stinger promised (or threatened, depending on your perspective) a second instillation in the form of Zombees, I was totally on board. I’ll even throw out a few suggestions for a Part Three: Zombeetles, Zombengals, Zombeagles. Keep ‘em coming, ya violent goofballs. And don’t lose the puppetry.

-Brandon Ledet

The Masque of the Red Death (1964) on Mardi Gras Day

February 18, 2015September 15, 2015 / swampflix / 7 Comments

In our Movie of the Month conversation about the deeply strange, beautiful and undeniably ahead-of-its-time The Masque of the Red Death, I pointed out how much the movie reminds me of Carnival season in New Orleans. I wrote, “With Fat Tuesday looming around the corner, it was impossible not to see aspects of Carnival in the masquerade ball hosted by Prince Prospero (Vincent Price). The cheap costumes & mockery of opulence is very much reminiscent of Mardi Gras parades. There’s even a scene where Prospero literally throws beads from a balcony shouting ‘Gifts! Gifts!’ and scoffs at the greed of the people below. As the threat of The Red Death plague becomes increasingly severe, the masquerade takes on a ‘party while the ship is sinking’ vibe New Orleans knows all too well. Horror films are usually tied to Halloween, but The Masque of the Red Death is distinctly akin to Mardi Gras in my mind.” In an effort to put my money where my mouth is, I took the Movie of the Month out into the streets on Mardi Gras, masquerading as The Red Death himself. Here’s a few pictures of the costume below to help solidify the memory.

I hope everyone had a great, safe Mardi Gras and maybe even costumed as their own pet obsessions, movie-related or not. It’s certainly been a fun Carnival season on my end and I was glad to take a little bit of Swampflix with me into the Quarter on Fat Tuesday. I might even do it again next year!

For more on February’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, visit our Swampchat on the film and last week’s round-up of its dueling 1989 knockoffs.

-Brandon Ledet

Near Dark (1987)

February 15, 2015August 29, 2024 / swampflix / 8 Comments

In 2009 the war drama The Hurt Locker won six Oscars, including Best Picture, becoming the lowest-grossing movie to ever sweep the Academy Awards. What’s more astonishing is that in the Academy Awards’ 82nd year, Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow became the very first & only woman to ever win an Oscar for Best Director. Five years later it’s still a feat that somehow has not been repeated. Unfathomably, no woman has even so much as been nominated for Best Director since Bigelow’s win. Bigelow herself struggled for nearly three decades to earn the accolade. With the exception of a couple box office successes like Point Break and (more recently) Zero Dark Thirty, her career is a frustrating succession of near-hits & complete flops. Her Hurt Locker Oscar was the pot of gold at the end of a very troubled rainbow.

If any of Bigelow’s less-successful pictures were destined to hit it big, it was 1987’s vampire-Western Near Dark. Striking the 80s vampire craze instigated by Fright Night & Lost Boys while the iron was hot, Near Dark made a commercial gamble by simultaneously reviving the much-less-hip Western genre, but it was still packed with so much 80s cool that it should have been a huge hit. Not only did Bigelow craft a film with stark imagery that could rival, if not top, anything you’d find in Fright Night or Lost Boys, she also employed synth wizards Tangerine Dream to provide the film with an era-epitomizing soundtrack. Tangerine Dream’s nightmarish score for Near Dark floats moodily in the background, building slowly like a thick fog until its heavy drums interject to match the escalating violence of the movie’s action. There’s so much 80s-specific brutality, sexuality, and pop music aesthetic to the film that it’s difficult to imagine why it flopped in the box office (before later gaining its rightful cult classic status).

Audiences’ reluctance to embrace the film may have to do with the slow, brooding pacing of its first act. Near Dark opens with a teenage cowboy hitting on a female stranger, luring her into his pick-up, and refusing to driver her home as she ominously worries about sunrise. It’s a great reversal of the typical dangers of a woman accepting a ride from a strange man, as the man’s life is eventually threatened by a bloodthirsty vampire coven as a result. It’s an chilling initiation into the world Bigelow establishes here, but it’s one with a slow build. The film doesn’t truly become energized until it follows the ritualistic nightly feedings of the coven as they hunt for meals in small town bars & back alleys. The open Western nighttime sky gives the film an otherworldly look, which is starkly contrasted with scenes like a rather lengthy & violent barroom altercation that’s aggressively relentless in its cramped containment. The vampires in Near Dark are confined to hotel rooms & the backs of trucks during daylight, but at night they’re free to prowl like a pride of lions. In some ways they’re portrayed to be as unfairly persecuted as the monsters of Nightbreed, but with the major difference that they actually murder people regularly & viciously.

Near Dark is not a perfect film. It frankly gets by more on style & mood than it does on content, but it’s so stylistically strong that it can pull off a lack of depth with ease. Just the basic concept of a Kathryn Bigelow vampire-Western with a Tangerine Dream soundtrack is enough to inspire enthusiasm on its own. Performances from the always-disturbing Lance Erikson, Bill Paxton as a perfect 80’s alpha-male/blowhard/murderous monster, and the kid who played the creepy little brother from Teen Witch go a long way as well. The movie’s gore, especially in its burning flesh & gunshot wounds, is surprisingly up to par with its art house visual tendencies and there’s enough police shootouts and vocal posturing to make even the most casual Tarantino fan gush. The film even remains loyal enough to the Western format to conclude with a lone cowboy riding into town on horseback for a final showdown. Bigelow may have not had her first commercial success until Point Break or won her career-defining accolades until The Hurt Locker, but she had already established herself as a formidable creative mind with the cult classic Near Dark, box office numbers be damned.

-Brandon Ledet

UPDATE: The What We Do in the Shadows Kickstarter was a Success!

February 14, 2015 / swampflix / 2 Comments

Last week I wrote that the upcoming Jemaine Clement/Taika Watiti vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows was looking to fund an American theatrical release through a Kickstarter campaign. The film had already secured digital & home media distribution, but was struggling to reach American cinemas outside a couple screenings in New York & Los Angeles. At the time I wrote about the campaign to fund a wider theatrical release, it was barely more than halfway funded with only a week left to go. I am happy to report that the project has since reached its goal and will be able to hit a lot more local cinemas as a result (hopefully with New Orleans on its itinerary).

Last week, I described What We Do in the Shadows thusly: “It promises to take the same ennui employed by Only Lovers Left Alive into the satiric comedy territory of Vamps. Posed as a Christopher Guest-style mockumentary, the film follows modern day vampires as they navigate mundane activities like nightlife, dealing with roommates, and searching for a bite to eat. They clash with the likes of witches, zombies, werewolves, and plain-old humans in a loosely-plotted slice of (undead) life comedy. From the looks of the trailer, it could be quite funny as well as a fresh take on a genre I once thought hopelessly stale.” Judging by early reports it indeed is a very funny film and I hope that we will get to see & review it ourselves soon enough. Maybe even in the theater, thanks to the Kickstarter!

-Brandon Ledet