INFRARED

Stars: Greg Sestero, Jesse Janzen, Leah Finity, Ariel Ryan, Samantha Laurenti, Nicole Berry, Ian Hopps, Randy Nundlall Jr., Austin Blank, Robert Livings and Romulo Reyes.
Writers/directors: Robert Livings and Randy Nundlall Jr.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Don’t let the internet naysayers convince any prospective viewer that the found-footage sub-genre has breathed its last breath. Of course it’s not soaring as it did in those halcyon years post-Blair Witch Project, but nor is it the minefield of mediocrity and derivation that keyboard commentators would have you believe. In the second half of 2021, Shudder’s anthology pic V/H/S 94, Banjong Pisanthanakun’s The Medium, William Eubank’s Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin and the French thriller The Deep House, from Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, displayed technical invention and narrative beats that made the shaky-cam cliches feel fresh, all over again.

Add to the list of better-than-expected first-person shockers Infrared, a blackly-funny, legitimately creepy riff on paranormal investigation cable shows. Some may argue that the night-vision fakery and “Did you hear that?” silliness that is de rigueur for the format makes them low-hanging fruit for satire, but co-directors Randy Nundlall Jr and Perth-born expat Robert Livings smartly conjure frights and fun with this low-budget, hi-energy effort.

Jesse Janzen plays the charismatic ghostbuster Wes, whom we first meet expunging an evil spirit from a possessed young woman. He is the host of ‘Infrared’, a showcase for his talents that he hopes will make him a reality-TV personality. His sister Izzy (Leah Finity) shares the same spiritual connectivity but prefers a quieter life, servicing those who think their homes have unwanted ghostly presences. But Wes and Izzy don’t get along, falling out over “an exorcism incident’ several years prior.

Izzy and Wes are brought back together by ‘Infrared’ producer Randy (co-director Nundlall) when the opportunity to explore the supposedly haunted Lincoln School building is presented to them by Geoff, aka “The Owner’s Manual”, played with a typically focus-pulling energy by cult figure Greg Sestero. Destined to be forever known as ‘Mark’ in Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, Sestero is an always engaging presence and is called upon to do some feverish improv and ‘big character’ work as he guides the crew around the shadowy halls and abandoned classrooms.

There are hints that the building is more than it seems (Geoff continually refers to it as ‘her’ and ‘she’) and soon, even as they start to repair their fractious relationship, Izzy and Wes find themselves at its mercy. Janzen and Finity have great screen chemistry, their sibling energy convincing and crucial to making some familiar runnin’-&-screamin’ in the final act as involving as it plays out. 

In the hands of its young helmers, Infrared employs elements of the found-footage pic that are as old as handheld photography itself yet crafts them into an assured, refreshingly gore-free, gleefully good-time frightener. 

ANTRUM: THE DEADLIEST FILM EVER MADE

Stars: Nicole Tompkins, Rowan Smyth, Dan Istrate, Circus-Szalewski, Shu Sakimoto, Kristel Elling and Pierluca Arancio.
Narrated by Lucy Rayner.
Writer: David Amito.
Directors: David Amito, Michael Laicini.

Available in Australia on all digital platforms including Foxtel Store, iTunes, Google Play and FetchTV.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The 1977 horror film Antrum began to travel the festival circuit in the early 80s. Its legend grew after the strange deaths of several festival programmers, each of whom had only just watched the film. In 1988, a screening in Budapest ended in tragedy, when a cinema appeared to spontaneously combust, killing 56 patrons. In 1993, a San Francisco theatre owner dared moviegoers to defy the cursed movie, only to have a panicked audience flee the screening, trampling a pregnant woman to death. The lone print of Antrum, the deadliest movie ever made, was thought to be destroyed…

In Antrum: The Deadliest Movie Ever Made, Canadian filmmakers David Amito and Michael Laicini challenge doubters of the curse to endure the original film. They begin their potentially lethal resurrection of the work with academic, psychoanalytic and festival director types, who put their own spin on the legend of Antrum; then, a ‘Legal Notice’ fills the screen, exempting all who brought the film to you of any claims should you, indeed, die. The film’s header frames blur by, numbers and scratched images merging…

Antrum is the story of a teenage girl, Oralee (Nicole Tompkins), and her younger brother, Nathan (Rowan Smyth), and the gateway to Hell they uncover while trying to recover the soul of their dead dog, Maxine. The pair head to a clearing in the woods, Nathan having been convinced by Oralee that it is the exact point on Earth where Lucifer landed when God cast him out of Heaven. As they begin to dig, chapter headings herald the uncovering of each new underworld layer, until soon the kids’ fading sense of reality and the exponentially increasing grip of insanity are melding.

I hope it is obvious by now that the legend of ‘The Deadliest Movie Ever Made’ is an intricately staged cinematic con-job; there was no Antrum, the doco is a mocko, and any convoluted backstory about dead Hungarian cinemagoers is pure fiction. But Amito and Laicini ensure it all unfolds in an earnestly told and legitimately chilling manner, both their faux-70s filmmaking technique and pretend ‘experts’ convincing. Though shot entirely in 2018, ‘Antrum’ (Latin for ‘cave’) is an authentically arty, folk-horror facsimile that could have emerged from the distant decade.

As the horror becomes tangible for Oralee and Nathan, so must it have for Tompkins and Smyth; the young actors are, quite literally, put through Hell by their directors. In one shocking scene, Smyth is dragged from a cage and placed in the cast-iron belly of a goat-demon oven. Both are called upon to do hard physical work in the course of their performances, while Tompkins especially conveys the emotional and mental cost of her fight with demonic forces.

There is just enough research afforded the meaning of sigils, pentagrams, biblical references and Latin text to make the ‘cursed film’ construct believable. The film’s bookends - the ‘documentary’ parts - examine key frames, where semi-subliminal imagery of the kind that welcomes demons into our world is revealed. The film is rich with subtext exploring how a young child deals with death, grief and spirituality; ambiguous but compelling parallels are drawn, for example, between Nathan’s connection to Maxine after her passing and his fear and fascination with Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards Hell’s gates.

Most fascinating is the challenge that Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made sets for you, the viewer who wants to know how effective a film that causes madness and death in those that watch it can be. You will register the scratched frames; you may glimpse split-second scenes of torture; you’ll likely see shadows that seem alive, or discordant sounds that unbalance you. Rest assured, it’s all a brilliant fiction; if it wasn’t, this review, deliberately and dangerously leading you astray, would be the work of the Devil...    

OCCUPANTS

Stars: Briana White, Michael Pugliese and Robert Picardo.
Writer: Julia Camara
Director: Russell Emanuel

Rating: 4/5

Two engaging central performances and a director determined to maximise the potential of his premise ensures Occupants emerges as one of the most effective and satisfying low-budget genre works of 2016.

A low-key alt-universe/time-portal two-hander, director Russell Emmanuel’s crowd-pleaser exhibits all the character-driven drama and high-concept smarts of the best Twilight Zone episodes. He’s probably scratching his head at the protagonist’s home-tech set-up, but somewhere Rod Serling is also smiling warmly that his legacy is embraced with such skill and affection.

Annie Curtis (Briana White) is a LA-based documentary maker who makes herself and good-guy husband Neil (Michael Pugliese) the focus of her latest project, in which she subjects the household to a diet cleansing regime and captures its impact upon their dynamic. Scripter Julia Camara’s narrative kicker is not especially sturdy (what exactly does Annie expect to capture via her multi-camera set-up apart from inevitable mood swings and weight loss?), but there is some sly social satire in the notion that only Californian millennials would assume there is an audience interested in watching them turn vegan.

Showing a sure touch with a series of slow-burn reveals, Emmanuel (a journeyman talent credited with solid home-vid titles like P.J., with John Heard, and Chasing the Green, with William Devane) amps up the tension when Annie’s footage reveals a window into a parallel plane of existence in which two far less happy versions of her and Neil struggle with a miserable life. Presented with undeniable evidence this extraordinary event is in fact real, Annie and Neil take on the roles of voyeurs, peering intently at and slowly identifying with their darker selves living another life.

Annie can’t help but get involved with the ethereal doppelgangers when her cameras reveal hot-button topics like pregnancy and potential homicide; what neither Annie or Neil count on are the consequences when their other selves take a vengeful ‘Mind your own business!’ stance. Events become worrisome, then menacing, the stresses of a life without beer and pizza amplified by nocturnal visitations from beyond this world.

Kudos to Emmanuel and his casting team for pairing White and Pugliese, who have a endearing, convincing chemistry, whether as the buoyant, sweet-natured ‘Annie and Neil’ or as the sad, increasingly tormented ‘Others’. In a bit part played directly to camera, veteran character actor Robert Picardo (The Howling; Star Trek Voyager; Inner Space) plays Annie’s mentor Dr Alan Peterson, a role that adds much-needed weight to some of the plot’s loopier developments.

A ‘found footage’ film by defintion, DOP/editor Emile Harris eschews the familiar shaky-cam, instead applying split-screen technique and believable graphics to convincing affect. The usual illogical elements continue to undermine the genre; why would Annie’s hours of footage be edited into this thriller-like construct? why not go public with such sensational evidence of supernatural phenomenon? But Occupants so convincingly plays to its strengths, such griping seems petty; Emmanuel and his leads provide a giddy sense of thrilling discovery and palpable tension that proves entirely winning.

SXTAPE

Stars: Caitlin Folley, Ian Duncan, Diana Garcia, Daniel Farado, Julie Marcus and Eric Neil Guiterrez.
Writer: Eric Reese.
Director: Bernard Rose.

Rating: 3/5

Although the ‘shakie-cam’ found-footage horror genre prides itself on a style-less aesthetic, the craftsmanship of a director with highly-regarded credentials is plainly evident in Bernard Rose’s LA-set haunted-hospital shocker, sxtape. This latest addition to the Brit’s eclectic career is as far from his period dramas (Immortal Beloved; Anna Karenina; The Kreutzer Sonata) as any film could be, but is steeped in the gritty, grimy minutiae of urban decay and chillingly well-defined supernatural components that made his breakout hit Candyman an enduring cult favourite.

Like the 1992 film that introduced horror fans to Tony Todd’s iconic ‘Man in the Mirror’ boogeyman, Rose finds old-school scares in the heart of the modern metropolis. Back then, it was the Chicago projects; this time around, it is in an abandoned sanitarium in the wilds of inner-city Los Angeles. A vibrant blonde artist named Jill (Caitlin Folley) is being followed about town by her horny new beau, Adam (the barely-glimpsed Ian Duncan), who is recording her as she prepares to launch her first exhibit. Sweet time together fills most of the film’s first act, which bounces from boho-loft bonking to playful public giggles and back again; Rose’s film takes a broadminded approach to energetic and frank lovemaking that will attract tough censor attention in some territories.

Adam surprises Jill by taking her to a dingy old mansion to get her thoughts on the place as a gallery space. He surprises her further when, as some kind of bad joke, he straps her to a guerney and briefly leaves her briefly; this allows for the film’s first big scare and the beginning of Jill and Adam’s descent into the vengeful spiritual memory of the building. The plotting comparisons to The Shining grow increasingly apparent (Rose references the ‘naked hottie/old hag’ mirror moment from Kubrick’s film at one point), though it is hardly the first to do so and ultimately carves out its own satisfying narrative path.

Just as fellow veteran Barry Levinson showed on his criminally-underseen handheld horror work The Bay, the format can reinvigorate a director who has spent a career grinding through the traditionally cumbersome production process. Rose held his own camera and cut his own footage on sxtape and the confidence of an old-pro given free reign comes through in every well-timed scare. He has major assets in leading lady Folley, whose all-or-nothing performance goes from darling free-spirit to bloody, shrieking banshee, and production designer Bradd Fillmann, whose vision of a hellish hospital landscape is clearly influenced by those first-person horror games that I refuse to play because they terrify me.

sxtape never fully overcomes the inherent problems that dog the found-footage film - why don’t they just leave? why would they keep filming? why doesn’t the camera battery run out? who adds the post-production elements? The film has its own unanswered conundrums, such as who would still  be running power to the clearly derelict building, although the biggest logical misstep in Eric Reese’s script comes in the form of a prologue in which a cop questions a bloody and distressed Jill; if she is seen to have survived and the fate of her companions is in no doubt, who finds and watches the footage?

Fortunately, Rose and his team generate enough goodwill with some solid scares and a truly icky final frame to overcome any shortcomings. sxtape breathes some fresh air into the handheld-horror genre via the skill of a deft, proven journeyman filmmaker who is clearly enjoying himself.