Coulrophobics look out, “The Night Watchmen” is easily your worst nightmare come true, but it’s also one of the best horror comedies I’ve seen in a while. Director Mitchell Altieri delivers one of hell of a great horror gore fest that imagines the world overrun by vampire zombie clowns. “The Night Watchmen” is set primarily in an office, and Altieri makes great use of it, picturing the night shift from hell. You could make a sub-genre out of horror movies set in an office work place, these days, but “The Night Watchmen” has a great time making use of the back drop, with the various halls and corners of the office, and the typically monotonous setting.
Tag Archives: Comedy
Dead Man Tells His Own Tale (El Muerto Cuenta su Historia) (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
A man who can best be described as a misogynist cheating liar finds himself undead and bound to do the biddings a coven trying to raise their goddess to take over the world.
Written by Nicolás Britos and Fabián Forte with the latter directing as well, Dead Man Tells His Own Tale sets up its lead to be despicable and dislikable, doing so very successfully and keeping that up almost throughout the entirety of the film. Then it attempts to make the public care for him and his undead plight, something that works a lot less given that he’s still an unlikable being and still is trying to do what he always has and wanted to without much care about how it affects the people around him. The way they build him makes it very hard to care for him. Most of the characters built are hard to care for as most are written in a way and into situations where they do things that make them less than likable. This creates an atmosphere of negativity that evolves towards the ending here which makes sense, but does not make this viewer want to care.
Small Gauge Trauma 2017 [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
Small Gauge Trauma is a programming block of shorts at the Fantasia Festival that sort of functions as a two hour anthology movie without a wraparound story. The shorts can be in any genre and are chosen by rough theme. In the 2017 edition’s case the theme was “Family” and while I know that this doesn’t sound overtly ominous, trust me when I say that it should.
Before I even start the review(s) I’m going to issue a mild to medium spoiler warning. Short films are, well… you know… short. So I have to talk about something and because the various runtimes are often under ten minutes I may mention stuff that happens towards the end. I promise I won’t ruin any twists and I will try not to describe every aspect of the plot and story, but I have to work with what I got.
68 Kill (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
A man living in an abusive relationship is put through the ringer and finds his inner strength to survive and move on following a wild and crazy night and day.
Based on the novel by Bryan Smith, written and directed by Trent Haaga, 68 Kill is an insane ride filled by crazy, lunatic characters. The whole thing seems completely nuts and ludicrous but it works. Somehow, Haaga took all the most ridiculous characters and situations and makes them work in a sort of white-trash opera. Here all the characters do dumb things for dumb reasons and they almost all are assholes and lunatics, yet the film is crazy fun to watch and has a story that moves at a good, fast pace and leads to a satisfactory ending. Haaga took all of the most unlikely elements to make one of those film that should not work yet does so beautifully.
You Only Live Once (Sólo se vive una vez) (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
After witnessing a crime, a con man goes on the run and hides as an orthodox Jew, bringing his problems to an unsuspecting community.
Based on a story by Sergio Esquenazi, written by Esquenazi and Axel Kuschevatzky, and directed by Federico Cueva, You Only Live Once is one of those completely insane action comedy films that should not work but does. The film is filled with a series of crazy ideas and turns into a partial comedy of error while also being a good thriller-ish comedy. The story takes odd turn after odd turn until the very last frame to say the least. Oddly enough, the entire insanity works, which shows good writing and talented directing. Of course, a few jokes or attempts at jokes do fall flat and a few are offensive, but the film has so much going on that it’s easy to be entertained by it.
Karmina (1996) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
On her 140th birthday, young Karmina flees her native Transylvania when faced with being promised to the horrible Vlad. As she arrives in Montreal, she has difficulty adapting to the local customs and ways of life.
Slither (2006): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]
With the outstanding success of James Gunn’s blockbuster films “Guardians of the Galaxy,” it’s the right time to re-visit the roots upon which Gunn established his film career. Gunn is of course a student of Lloyd Kaufman who began his filmmaking career working at Troma, and eventually worked his way up to his first feature film debut in 2006, directing the schlocky and fun “Slither.” Gunn’s 2006 science fiction horror thriller is very much what you would expect from a Troma alumni, as Gunn conjures up cult stars, and builds a premise that’s ridiculous but oddly entertaining. Scream Factory takes it upon themselves to not only deliver a deluxe edition on Blu-Ray (after originally being ported to the now obsolete HD-DVD), but to celebrate everything weird and wild about James Gunn.