Three Films Make A Post: In the cruel, ruthless world of country music, she made it the hard way!

Most Likely to Die (2015): Even though the presence of Perez Hilton as an “actor” and Jake Busey as the star power in the cast and a deeply generic sounding set-up don’t exactly promise a world of excitement, I did expect this to be quite a bit better than it actually was because its director Anthony DiBlasi has a track record of making not terribly original but very decent to very good low budget horror films. Well, at least the not terribly original bit still holds, for this is as generic a slasher as you could (not) ask for, with basically nothing happening on screen I’m still going to remember a day after watching it.

DiBlasi’s direction is disinterested, the script yawn-inducing, and the acting goes from pretty damn bad (Hilton) to kinda okay (Heather Morris and Tess Christiansen) to painfully neutral (everyone else). There are some okay effects somewhere in there but honestly, who cares?

There’s Nothing Out There (1991): Of course, it can always be worse. Case in point is Rolfe Kanefsky’s spam in a cabin horror “comedy”. It’s self aware horror of the kind that thinks stating how awful and dumb it is somehow makes it less awful and dumb, and that being crap on purpose will somehow magically transform it into something not crap. After all, it worked for some other films, right? Alas, the bad movie fairy didn’t kiss this one, so we get lots and lots of nudity (Kanefsky looking into the future of his career as softcore director?) – this being a film where a short skinny dipping sequence is directly followed by a shower scene –, a really crap (on purpose yet still CRAP) monster, “funny” dialogue that’ll make your ears bleed, and lots of self-conscious shittiness that lacks the charm that would make it entertaining or the cleverness that’d make it bearable.

The Devil Complex (2016): Rounding out this trio of films I never need to see again is this POV horror outing shot in Romania with Romanian actors directed by a Brit. I do hope everyone planning on watching this likes shots of the backs of people wandering through snowy woods, because that’s what half of this is. As the “woods” parts suggests, this is the traditional would-be Blair Witch Project style of first person horror, just without any focus, mediocre acting, writing that does seem to try to get away from the original a little by going the “the supernatural reveals dark secrets” route but is just too crudely realized to manage anything with it, and disappointing sound design. It drags, it has about 0.5 interesting scenes, and there’s just nothing else to say about this thing.

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Three Films Make A Post: Watch. Learn. Don't have nightmares.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014): If you’re like me, and going into Mark Hartley’s documentary expecting to learn anything more about Cannon and its films than you could via a Wikipedia entry, you’ll quickly realize you’ve come to the wrong film for that. This is nearly exclusively a series of chronologically sorted anecdotes and jokes as told by various talking heads once involved with Cannon. Some of the anecdotes are funny, and the film is well paced, but I can’t say I found myself all that riveted by this one, perhaps because I expect from a 100 minutes plus documentary to actually have something to say about its object, or because I found the large swathes of irony the filmmakers use to hide their own opinions about Cannon and what it was annoying. It’s a rather un-visual film too, with a lot of short, often decidedly random feeling clips from Cannon films breaking up lots of footage of interview subjects sitting in front of a black background, and very little reason for this not to be a piece made for the radio. But then, I’m quite clearly not the audience this was made for.

Last Shift (2014): Rookie cop Jessica’s (Juliana Harkavy) first shift as an actual cop is the last shift in an old police precinct, where she’s working a night watch job alone. Unfortunately, the station is haunted as all get out, and a past concerning a dead cult leader and Jessica’s own father just won’t stay buried. For most of its running time, Anthony DiBlasi’s satanic cult leader ghost movie (that’s a genre, right?) is a rather focused and effective little number. Sure, there’s a decided lack in originality on display, and the film has the tendency to throw in the whole kitchen sink of spooky phenomena but DiBlasi handles most of this stuff with enough aplomb it results in a rather entertaining, if not particularly new feeling, time.

Enter the Void (2009): I had avoided this particular void until now because most of what I had read about Gaspar Noé’s inspiring and self-indulgent head trip of a movie let me assume this to be one fast, flashy, loud, yet still very long piece of sensory overload.

It’s rather the opposite, apart from the sensory overload, though, the film winning its often dream-like quality through a calm and floating approach to, well, everything, Noé hitting the spot where a just ridiculously showy sounding visual approach feels rather natural, and like the only way this particular narrative could have been realized. The floatiness of, well, being dead, makes a fantastic contrast to the rawness of the characters’ emotions.

From time to time, particularly in the last third or so, the film does drift off into moments I don’t think are supposed to be funny yet are, pat Freudianisms make themselves known, and the silliest money shot never to have made it into a porn movie makes an appearance. Of course, Noé makes up for that with what looks like a deep compassion for some deeply messed up characters to me, as well as with the little fact there’s  little else quite like Enter the Void.

In short: Cassadaga (2011)

Some time after deaf art student Lily (Kelen Coleman) has lost her teenage sister and only living relative in an accident, she decides to step back into life again. With the help of Claire Anderson (Louise Fletcher), an artist herself, Lily gets a stipend (as well as free board in Claire's mansion) that provides her with the ability to study and paint at the university of Cassadaga.

The painter also teaches the basics of her craft to children. During the course of that particular activity, Lily meets Mike (Kevin Alejandro), the father of one of her students as well as a quite eligible and clearly interested bachelor. When out on a date with some of Mike's friends, the idea comes up to visit the spiritualist enclave at the edge of town and go to a séance. And wouldn't you know it, Lily, not quite surprising given her still wavering mental state, makes contact with her sister, even hearing her voice? But the séance also attracts a different ghost, a murder victim who latches onto Lily and doesn't let go of her afterwards, plaguing the woman with terrifying visions and a lot of maggots.

It's clear the dead woman wants Lily to do something for her, probably finding her body or her killer, and won't leave Lily in peace until she has done it, but how exactly Lily is supposed to go about that, the dead girl ain't exactly clear about.

Eventually, Lily will cross paths with said killer, a man who likes to turn women into living dolls.

Anthony DiBlasi's Cassadaga is - despite marketing that rather suggests just another film about people bound to chairs or hanging from chains from a ceiling - a neat little ghost story that may not do much that is new for its given sub-genre, yet that goes about its job effectively enough to make one forget about that flaw.

A large part of the film's effectiveness is based on the time and care it spends on developing its characters. DiBlasi shows just as much - if not more - interest in providing Lily (and to a degree Mike) with a believable backstory and depth of emotion as he does in showing us the spooky stuff. Of course, this makes Lily's misadventures more interesting than when they'd happen to our usual horror movie heroine, blonde bimbo number two.

Speaking of Lily, I found it quite admirable how the film treats her deafness. Even though it is used as a plot mechanic in some of the suspense scenes, the film treats the deafness in more complex and interesting way than I would have expected it to do, never reducing the character to "that deaf girl", using her disability as a normal part of her life that influences her in many ways but not as her defining character trait.

When it comes to the more horrifying stuff, DiBlasi demonstrates a sure hand for atmosphere and the creepiness that comes from things one doesn't quite see or understand. Cassadaga's more blunt moments are slightly less effective: while the film's conception of living dolls is disturbing enough, I don't think the film would have lost out if the dead girl's killer would have been your more day-to-day murderer. That could also have saved the film from its worst moment, an intro scenes that shows us the killer's origin complete with bad acting and a cut off penis, a scene which sets a tone the following film then doesn't share at all.

Despite these slight misgivings, Cassadaga is an always competent, often good effort, another pleasant demonstration that indie horror doesn't have to be crap.

 

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