Another GRIMMFEST down. I'm going to try and do a rundown of the films screened.
Thursday
Re-animator
Hard to say anything new on this. Barbara Crampton was present throughout the festival. She introduced the film and it was damn nice to see it theatrically. Forget nonsense like the integral cut, the beauty of Re-animator is the ruthlessly efficient pacing and Stuart Gordon's ability to see that pushing everything as far as he can is both thrilling and hilarious. Its why the integral cut fails as a film, there's too much footage that wile interesting wrecks the films pace and makes it boring.
Await further instructions
A family Christmas starts of badly when the son comes home from Uni with an Asian girlfriend. Racist Grandpa and stuffy patriarchal dad begin making things difficult. As does his rather dim sister and her boyfriend. Things get worse however when the family wakes to find themselves sealed within the house. The TV begins giving instructions for the family which get steadily darker and more lethal.
There's some problems with the film. Mainly continuity and editing issues.Also some extremely heavy handed satire. It also fails to do anything original with the concept. However its worth checking out as its throws in some interesting moments including some genuinely bizarre body horror.
Girls with balls
A french Vollyball team end up getting lost and running into a village full of hicks intent on hunting them. So far so predictable. However director Olivier Afonso is fully aware of this so decides to have some real fun with the concept. Every cliche of this kind of film is present however its all done with a sense of ludicrousness and an almost pythonesque sense of humour, essentially dissecting the rural horror genre with wonderful precision without becoming scream or scrimping on the brutality and gore. It's very new and I'm not sure it's screened anywhere else yet, one i'm definitely buying when it gets released.
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