Monster Fest hits Auckland’s Academy Cinemas from June 6th, with a dozen genre films spanning horror. sci-fi, action, comedy and more. We’re excited about getting the chance to see some of these films on the big screen, so have asked a few genre aficionados amongst the Flicks writing staff to share a Monster Fest film they are looking forward to seeing at the festival. Have a read and then check out the full programme and session times.
The Collection
It might be inaccurate to call Marcus Dunstan’s 2009 home invasion horror The Collector a “pleasant surprise”, since it’s considerably not pleasant in that bear-traps-crushing-your-face- kind-of-way. But I’ll say this: it’s unexpectedly entertaining. Dunstan’s claim to fame has been writing chapters IV – VII of the tiresome Saw franchise, thus initially The Collector just struck me to be in the same sadistic vein. To be sure, the over-the-top gore, courtesy of a killer with a penchant for rigging booby traps to inflict maximum bodily harm, is at times uncomfortably gleeful. But Dunstan’s film is also a tightly constructed, feverishly paced and genuinely suspenseful confined-location B-thriller that delivers on the promise of its fiendish, laughably implausible premise.
So that’s enough to get me psyched for The Collection, Dunstan’s sequel which promises to continue the reign of terror wrought by its people-collecting psychopath, albeit at a completely reconfigured scale. The plot finds Arkin (the likeable Josh Stewart), the thief “collected” at the end of the first film, returning to help a team of tough mercenaries to retrieve the daughter (Emma Fitzpatrick) of a wealthy man from the Collector’s lair. With an expanded cast that includes much welcome familiar TV faces like Beecher (Lee Tegersen) from Oz and Bubs (Andre Royo) from The Wire, The Collection has been compared to Aliens in its sequel one-upmanship, with grislier, more elaborate booby traps and a higher body count. Morbid curiosity piqued.
Aaron Yap
Dark Skies
I’ve always found it hard to immerse myself in supernatural or satanic horrors because I can never believe in the threat. Demons, Mummies, Vampires, Werewolves, The Creature from the Black Lagoon – they can’t win my conviction or stoke my fears. However, I’m certain that aliens exist – and their bastards – which is why I’m looking forward to Dark Skies exploiting my extra-terrestrial paranoia.
The Thing, Xenomorphs, Predators, The Blob, the Martians from Mars Attacks! – those are the monsters that terrify me. I can fully believe some elusive organism from another planet can crash land right next door and start messing us up. But there’s a breed of aliens that are even more horrifying, the ones that already KNOW they can mess us up but choose to sit back and be dicks by screwing with our sense of reality. They’re Descartes-ian dicks, if you will. This is essentially the premise of Dark Skies, where a good-natured family are being tortured both physically and mentally by an extra-terrestrial presence.
Wearing its “from the producers of Insidious and Paranormal Activity” badge loudly and proudly, the film looks to bury its scares into your skin through minimalistic and suggestive means, which is exactly how I like my horror. It’s also been too long since I’ve seen a good paranoid E.T. horror in the cinema, the last one being The Forgotten – a film whose title is more appropriate than intended.
Liam Maguren
The Death and Resurrection Show
A title like The Death and Resurrection Show looks on first inspection to be a perfect fit for Monster Fest, but I’m picking many people being surprised that sitting alongside the festival’s horror, sci-fi and assorted weirdness is a bloody band documentary. That said, with a subject like post-punk and industrial innovators Killing Joke, The Death and Resurrection Show promises – like the band itself – to be quite unlike the norm.
“I am a student of theology” frontman Jaz Coleman states in the trailer. “No-one really understood about Killing Joke – you have to understand that Killing Joke was started from a ritual”. Expect plenty of this sort of insight into the occult and mystical practices undertaken by the band over their 30 year tenure, the film being made up of archival footage, new documentary material and interviews with the likes of Jimmy Page (who says of Coleman “he’s either playing with magic or magic is playing with him”).
That’s not to overlook the musical component, Killing Joke having influenced countless acts from Nirvana to Shihad, Nine Inch Nails to Soundgarden since forming in 1978 and releasing landmark records that include two self-titled albums, Night Time, Pandemonium and 2010’s vital return to form Absolute Dissent. With Killing Joke playing their first ever New Zealand show in June, they’ll also be at the Academy for the world premiere of this doco and on hand for a Q&A that, like much of what Killing Joke do, is itself bound to inspire as many new questions as they answer.
Steve Newall
Father’s Day
For legal reasons this Troma film about the hunt for a maniacal killer and rapist of fathers can’t be screened to New Zealand audiences, and so the sessions have had to be cancelled.
I can’t remember how the tweet was worded that alerted me to the red band trailer of Father’s Day, a low-budget gory comedy shocker with a faux-grindhouse look and very Troma-rific dialogue, but I remember it got me clicking that link very excitedly, carelessly disregarding the “VERY NSFW!!!” warning [you can see it here, billed as Original Trailer, but consider yourself warned]. Said trailer has some teeth torture, eyeball violence, head crushing, gratuitous nudity and an altogether gross vibe that I kind of dug, but it was how the woman in it says “All fathers, all raped… see a pattern?” that really sold the ticket to me. Why does the Father’s Day Killer only rape fathers? I can’t wait to find out!
A squiz at some online reviews and critics promise me a “triumphantly diseased”, “wretched and nonsensical” film that includes a “Ray Harryhausen-inspired vision of Hell” and a “villain that mutilates his own penis in rather realistic fashion”. With main characters named Twink, Ahab and Fuchman (the ‘h’ there is pronounced like a ‘k’), it’s clear that humour is a major part of Father’s Day, something the reviews back up.
Whether or not the film works will be largely dependent on this humour and too often, in low-budget shockers, the jokes are painfully lame. So this will maybe be an interminable piece of shit, but I hope it’s instead a hilarious and fun homage/satire piece to giggle and gasp at. Either way, it’s sure going to provide some serious gore and shocks – check the trailer for a taste. I recommend you watch it with your father.
Daniel Rutledge
Grabbers
For a film that failed to make an impact at the box office when it was released 23 years ago, Tremors casts a long shadow. While few people went and saw it at the cinema, the Kevin Bacon/Fred Ward/Giant Worm movie generated great word of mouth and ended up being such a success on VHS that it generated two direct-to-video sequels and a cable TV series. It has repeatedly been held up as the ultimate combination of knowing B-movie humour and monster mayhem. Many films have attempted to follow in its footsteps in this regard – 2002’s Eight Legged Freaks and 2006’s Slither are two valiant efforts – but Grabbers looks like the worthiest successor to come along in a long time, and I cannot wait to see it on the big screen with a game crowd.
The small Irish island location makes for a refreshing point of difference in today’s America-dominated monster movie landscape, and the utterly genius premise of needing to be drunk to avoid getting eaten by the beasties is so blindingly awesome it seems crazy that nobody has thought of it before. It’s gonna be great seeing how this film engages the stereotypical Irish propensity for booze. We really should’ve made this film in New Zealand twenty years ago. If all goes to plan, Grabbers should function as a delectable amuse bouche to savour before Pacific Rim comes out.
Dominic Corry
Thale
I like to have at least one wild card pick on my viewing list at a film festival, and while I’ve been looking forward to Father’s Day and Grabbers for yonks now, Thale is only on my radar after reading the Monster Fest programme. Apparently following Troll Hunter’s model of “Nordic folk tales are actually real, and scary”, the film follows two professional crime scene cleaners who one day discover a mute woman hiding in a basement. She’s nude and possesses a tail, which identifies her as a Huldra (a “seductive forest creature” Wikipedia tells me). Then – this being a horror film – things go pear-shaped. The atmospheric trailer shows that the movie follows through on the sexuality and violence implied in the synopsis. For some reason seeing ‘folk tale’ in the description made me think it might be a PG affair but it looks dark, macabre, and definitely one for adults.
Adding to the wildcard aspect is the fact that I haven’t seen anything by director Aleksander Nordaas before – unsurprisingly, as it’s only his 2nd full-length. Seeing a horror film by a new director always has a certain thrill to it, and Nordaas looks to have made something that oscillates between stately and gonzo. It’s always a treat when programmers take a chance and bring such obscure genre fare to the big screen in New Zealand. Norwegian horror has seen a resurgence of late, with the aforementioned Troll Hunter as well as the Nazi zombies of Dead Snow and mountaintop slasher pic Cold Prey. I’m looking forward to seeing where Thale fits into the ranks!
Tony Stamp
