The ad campaign for the "8 Films to Die For" is dripping with hyperbole and intrigue. It promises a collection of films that Hollywood is too pansy to release so this festival grabs them up and presents them for viewers willing to be shocked and disturbed. Far too often the movies don't live up to this premise. In fact, this year's films have smacked of overproduction and manufactured jump scares and everything the ad campaign warns against. Telling me a movie is too dangerous for theaters leads me to believe that I'm going to see a neo-grindhouse flick, something sick and grainy and gritty and violent, something nasty and mean-spirited and dangerous. To date, I've seen all the "8 Films to Die For" from both years the festival has been around, and I can say that only one of them has ever lived up to this potential. That film is "Mulberry Street."

Movies generally come with unspoken promises. The camera will cut away before we see TOO much violence, the main characters will be likable and they will live to triumph over evil, the evil will be defeated and everything will be ok in the end. Filmmakers expect these things subconsciously. Not every movie lives up to these expectations, but so many do that once you notice this pattern you will see it played out in so many movies, over and over, that even movies you once would have thought shocking will become predictable because you will see the tricks filmmakers use to keep you watching. I'm not being condescending, either. Some of my favorite movies follow these conventions. I like seeing good triumph over evil. I like being scared to a point and then seeing evil defeated, I fall in love with characters and cheer when they succeed.

What do I mean (and what the fuck does this have to do with "Mulberry Street")? "The Hills Have Eyes" was mean-spirited. It killed off some of the nicest characters halfway through the film in horrible ways, it killed a mother right in front of her baby, it did nasty things. As I was watching "Mulberry Street," with its low-budget feel and cast of committed actors who were in the role from the first frame, making everything believable, I started to like them right away.
And then things got nasty. And then people started dying. People I liked died, over and over, characters I cared about and rooted for died and I was left totally unsure of what I was seeing and of what would happen next. I couldn't count on anyone surviving the film, and that made me angry but it also made the hair on my arms stand on end and for the first time in awhile I was totally engaged in the movie, on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened  next. That doesn't happen very often, and it's something I look for in a movie, something I don't often see when I feel like I've seen it all.

One scene in particular is so reminiscent of grindhouse that I have to mention it here, so skip this paragraph if you don't want any spoilers. At one point in the film two elderly men are trapped in their apartment fending off an onslaught of creatures when the front door breaks down and suddenly we have two trail old men in a bedroom trying to hold a glass door shut while zombies try to break in. One old man is trembling and he's hooked to an oxygen tank and it's so pitiful that I wanted to fast forward so I didn't have to see what was going to happen next but I couldn't look away. This wasn't the kind of movie where I could be sure someone would bust in and save those old men. This was me, sitting pale in my seat, clutching the arms of my chair, waiting to watch someone die. The same thing happened when I watched "The Hills Have Eyes," I sat terrified of watching a baby die in that movie, not knowing what I would see next. These filmmakers don't care about conventions or heroes or heroines, they recognize that a lot of the time babies and old people do die in crisis situations. We live in a world where the weak and frail are often unprotected and it's painful to watch this played out onscreen. But you know what? It's awesome. I want movies that make me excited because I don't know what will happen because I can't trust the filmmakers. If more movies had balls like "Mulberry Street" then more movies would be worth watching.

I'll be honest with you, the first ten or twenty minutes of this movie had me worried. I didn't like any of the characters and I didn't care about them and I was bored and getting droopy-eyed and the first one or two deaths did not live up to the goregasm I'd heard everyone else have over this movie. I almost turned it off, truth be told. That could perhaps have used some work because I almost missed out. One could say I'm being picky, but that's why they pay me the big bucks. I can forgive a few missteps but twenty minutes of them? That warrants a mention.

Don't give up on this. Give it a chance and see if you end up loving it as much as I did.

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