As the new kid in town, Sam makes friends with a local group of teens who loves ghost stories and comic books.
Written and directed by Luca Jalbert, this film will be of limited appeal to audiences outside of Quebec and likely outside of those who already love Jalbert’s work. To be honest, getting through this one was a bit of a chore as the story needs more time to cook until it’s ready, a few more passes likely, and the direction seems to be just there. The story has a few good ideas, but between borrowing from the Frog Brothers, a bit of Are You Afraid of the Dark, Les Intrepides, and a few others, it feels like a mod podge of random ideas just gathered together to try and create a film which doesn’t come together all that well.
The cast here is clearly inexperienced or has very little experience, so a strong director and a solid script is needed to keep them on point here. While the lead Mathieu Alain eventually grows on you, most of the cast seems to either not have the training for this or not want to be there. A few of them look straight up bored with their jobs here. The lack of enthusiasm from the start disconnects the viewer from the material early on and the performances do not evolve much, so there isn’t much there to help salvage things and bring the audience back into the film and its story.
Now, one might have hopes that the technical side of things would help save this movie. Well, no. The cinematography here is painful and not because of choice of angles and framing, those are fine, but the lighting, or rather the lack of adjustment to the different sources of light, is painful and frustrating. In this day and age where one can learn photography (and cinematography) almost fully online, learning to adjust your camera for the sun or a shaded area outside versus controlled indoor lighting is not that difficult, so failing to adjust this many times in one film makes it hard to the discerning film fan to stick with the film.
While there is plenty more negative to be said here, there is not real need as the point as been made. The film was selected for one of the most prestigious genre festivals in the world, so clearly someone saw something here that this reviewer did not. They connected in a way this reviewer did not. This to say, others may have a different experience with this film and like it a whole lot more. As it stands, this viewer will not be watching the second part.
This year the Fantasia International Film Festival runs in Montreal from July 18th to August 4th.