It's been a while since we've shown you a ’Horror Bites with Emily Booth’ – a monthly round-up of previews, exclusive interviews, movie clips & trailers plus the latest news of what is premiering on Horror Channel.
September is a beastly mix of sinful Satanism, evil embryos and
frightful fairytales, including the World SINema season
featuring Guillermo Del Toro’s The Devils Backbone, Italian Exorcist “homage” The Antichrist, and the little-seen French horror Baby Blood. September also sees the Horror Channel premieres of Breadcrumbs and Botched; along with an eclectic mix of world horror including Link from the USA, Holocaust 2000 from Italy and Night Drive from South Africa! Plus this month see The Cabin in the Woods director Drew Goddard takes over the channel for Director’s Night on 27th September – with An American Werewolf in London, Hellraiser and The Stepfather…
A big thanks to our friends at Blogomatic3000 who bring us this edition and we like to extend that thanks to the Blogomatic 3000 guys for helping us out with Film4 Frightfest 13th reviews
Unlike the majority of films to ride the lucrative “handheld”
wave that has flooded horror since Blair
Witch and more recently Paranormal Activity, The Lost Coast Tapes actually holds its own as an enjoyable
addition to a painfully tired sub-genre. Avoiding the now predictable “students
in an abandoned whatever” or “campers investigate bumps in the night” the film makes
the legend of Bigfoot its focus with its tongue very nearly in its cheek. The story follows an investigative journalist, his cameraman, a sound guy, and a producer who journey to Northern California’s “Lost Coast” to create a documentary around a hunter who claims to
have the body of an actual Sasquatch. As night falls and the crew settle into
the hunter’s small compound in the heart of the forest they discover the truth
behind they legend of Bigfoot.
From the second the camera kicks into gear, it’s impressive how well-scripted the
dialogue is. A snappy engrossing pace builds around an opening which sees the last
loose ends of the pre-production wrapped: the funding is collected, a last
minute drop-out is replaced, and then it’s on the road. The rest of the film
creeps forward in a suitable foreboding tone, rarely does the film reach a truly
taught atmosphere but it’s still pretty enjoyable to watch if only to find out what
the fuck is going on. Sometimes the pace
is lost and there are short sequences of boredom, but in the grand scheme of
the film these exist to protect the anonymity of the subject. A blatant assault
from Bigfoot (plural being Bigfeet? Bigfoots?) or proof of hoax would shake the
audience out of the film’s most important function: mystery. The brains of the
film lie in successfully hoodwinking the audience right up until the end.
Some of the dialogue pops the bubble in a big way. Kevin’s (Noah Weisberg) entire
character threatens to pull the film into the murky depths of some mystery
black comedy that it just shouldn’t be going for. His bumbling leaves the rest
of the cast looking like they are working on a separate film. Similarly Frank Ashmore’s Mr Drybeck seems laughably dramatic, wandering out of the woods to deliver a lone hunterperformance right out of the horror canon. His potentially wobbly slice of cheesy brooding thankfully simmers down, devolving from sideways glances and long
pauses to a more subtle performance that actually makes him the most enjoyable
person to watch on screen.
As for the actual Bigfoot? It’s surprising that the concept of a nine-foot throwback trundling around in the forest is actually particularly unnerving. Incredibly subtle shadow-play goes a long way here. Blink-and-you’ll miss-it moments are rewarding and far creepier than the all-out approach. The sightings are unfortunately too few and
a real sense of menace isn’t properly achieved until the last fifteen minutes
which throws everything in the air and lets the characters race around on the
verge of breakdown. A hard-hitting climax shows that the director can deal with
fast-pace mayhem, but leaves us wishing he’d pulled more moments like it
earlier on.
Earlier on I mentioned tongue and cheek, but it’s firm direction,
well-crafted dialogue, and good acting that ensures the film doesn’t spiral
into a childish mess. Some dud ideas and a lack of enough going on stop the
film being consistently good, thankfully the finale leaves the piece in good
stead.
Last Friday, 24th August 2012, the long-awaited and highly anticipated third
instalment of the planned four-part saga has finally arrived and, boy,
was it worth the wait, [Rec]3:Genesis. To celebrate the release of the third movie - Genesis, a seven hour
epic world first twitter-based theatre performance will take place as
infected discs of the film find their victims!
People will be able to follow this using the Hashtag #RECvirus
The show starts at 12pm UK time today Saturday 1st September.
Our Friends at Fetch Publicity responsible for the film's promotion kicked off the events at their offices where the person who
mailed out the infected discs out to the reviewers met a grisly end leading to this web-wide appeal:
On a serious note fans of the Rec films will love this event which is about to start anytime , lots of fun and we've been told lots of great twists too.
In the third movie - Genesis - (out now in UK cinemas and out on UK
DVD and Blu-ray Monday 3rd September) the virus spreads out of the
original building to a wedding - what we didn't reckon on was it
spreading to the Fetch offices and resulting in this hideous incident!Scott our resident Horror writer has reviewed the film, you can read his review here. Here at Cinehouse & The People's Movies HQ are concerned about Scott who hasn't been seen since he reviewed the film but we've been hearing of mass panic in Scott's hometown of Edinburgh.
We're appealing to anyone who got a disc not to touch them - the girl
in the video was the one who did the mailing and now unconfirmed reports of similar outbreaks after the screening of the film in London at Frightfest last week.
