Horror Arrives: My (late) Overlook Film Festival 2023 Review Report, 1
Better now than never, here's five flicks to look out for.
Dear Moviegoers,
For the last several years, the Overlook Film Festival has filled a horror movie void in New Orleans that grew from the sad closing of the homegrown NOLA Horror Film Fest and has provided the area with preview screenings of soon-to-be-released genre fare that may or may not come back around upon regular theatrical approach. For a few days out of each year, moviegoers come far and wide to catch high and low-profile premieres that have consistently thrilled every time out, from in-person showtimes to the virtual streams that were done twice during the Covid quarantines.
I chose ten films out of a pretty stacked slate of independent productions to watch and briefly review across two reports, the second of which is coming up soon. For now, enjoy the first half.
Quentin Dupieux continues his theatre of the absurd, his surreal circus of comedic errors with Smoking Causes Coughing, the feature that the great auteur of filth John Waters described as stupid in the positive. Indeed, the film is pretty "stupid," though I'd rather play things nice by calling it a "farce." It's about a superhero team known as the Tobacco Force who, after obliterating a turtle monster with their gauntlet-mounted cancer-emitting rays, are informed by their superior officer - a rat puppet that drools a mysterious green liquid that the female teammates speculate is detergent - to go on a team-building retreat.
The beach battle is performed with no music or dressed-up cinematography. In fact, much of it is shot from a distance, expressing just how weird and awkward such fighting would be in reality. Moments like that, where the quiet part is yelled loudly across the screen, make Smoking Causes Coughing a hilarious ordeal to behold. Not a negative ordeal, but a conflict nonetheless, especially for a world oversaturated with comic book adaptations and conventions.
Dupieux and crew embrace the strange through various conversational segments and skits, told either over a campfire or by a fish being cooked on a grill. These skits, meant to be scary tales by the storytellers, are almost go-nowhere anecdotes with punchlines hidden in the behavior of the characters and not in the stories themselves. Of course, there's a punchline to the framework's main plot too, and it's also semi-go-nowhere. Almost, semi, nearly - but not without a porpoise.
Is that a joke? Maybe. Read into it what you will. 5/5
The French Quarter holds many secrets and surprises around each and every corner and alley. But, as the lead in A Street Cat Named Desire plainly states with some annoyance to an attractive stranger from out-of-town, Bourbon Street isn’t close by. And neither is Kansas, sir.
This short horror entry is true magick and gothic-lite, haunting a place in New Orleans that all local workers recognize far too often: short respite. The lead is a bartender at a dive who just barely accepts a hookup with an ignorant but charismatic hunk. They fool around at her small but cozy home, then stop when he holds back from playing into her fantasy of loving. Things might've resumed later had her more regular lover and maybe roommate not spoiled the fun.
Is there voodoo? Is there transformation? How about deeds born out of exhaustion, frustration, and regret? All of the above. Desire isn't just a part of the film’s title or the name of a streetcar, as it's the central theme and the dangling fruit that's just out of reach in the movie. Such comfort may not be in the cards for a 24/7 workforce, at least not all of the time, but tomorrow night is another shot of drink and another shot at happiness.
It could happen. 3.5/5
In a development of great creative haste, the anthology film Give Me an A has screened almost a year after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned the landmark women's healthcare rights case Roe v Wade, which has now greatly hindered abortion care all over the country. This movie is made up of various short stories from an all-female directorial crew, and ranges, as all anthologies do, in interest and in quality. There are favorites and there are less than’s, but overall the collective feature is a triumph in skill and in urgency.
The short segments run from a minute or so long to almost ten full, each moving at an anxious pace, almost as if they're looking over their shoulders out of danger of being discovered. And for sure, there are tales here that depict the potential for religious rightwing dystopias if legislation isn't updated and enshrined quickly. Some people might see these bits and chuckle, believing the terror fantasies as being nothing more than just that: fantasies.
To think this way is to dismiss art and ignore history.
Give Me an A is a challenging watch and one that understands how the repetition of the message, drawn in different colors from portrait to picture, is one of the best ways of playing to the mind's eye of people from all backgrounds and with shared experiences. Movies are empathy machines, right? Correct. The whole film is also challenging for its duration, which can become daunting. The filmmakers should be commended forever for how they pulled together such resources for such quick and responsive productions within productions, but it must be noted that to keep such high emotions running throughout one film, from beginning to end, across many individual stories, is a Herculean task, and will be too much to handle for any one viewer and any one filmmaker.
Of course, so is the pain of persecution. So is the panic of having rights stripped away. So is the depression of one's future being lost to someone else's beliefs. Give Me an A isn't meant to be easy. Maybe match it with a clear mind. 3.5/5
Almost as if ripped from a classified roll of private Sputnik footage, From.Beyond unravels as a report meant solely for government agents of shadowy duty. It's a mysterious collection of data and observations on alien contact, from arrival to news broadcasts to depravity and experiments.
Shown in black & white and with flashy grain, From.Beyond performs a what-if scenario in a what-will manner, assuredly suggesting the events covered to be likely and inevitable. It's distressing to see tentacled blobs being treated as packs of meat and objects of twisted playfulness, especially considering how their existence sets historic and unprecedented meaning to life as it's understood.
Like a good Lars Von Trier or Werner Herzog film, Earth is an evil place in this short, and the technique of documentation/found footage-ish filmmaking here only confirms this idea. From.Beyond is all killer and no thriller, or rather it's “been there, but man did it just do that!?” Spooky images and ghastly suggestions are nice, though there is a black hole present.
I'm not speaking to a heart or soul element that’s needed, but maybe something more akin to a pitchfork. Ugly, but audacious. 3.5/5
For three hours, We Kill for Love dissects and picks apart the erotic thriller industrial complex of the 1980s and 1990s cinema, more specifically the direct-to-video (DTV) variants. This docu-essay-forensic study is a goldmine of the obscure and the obsessions in the world of softcore-lite thrills & chills, of noir-ish femme fatales and cool hunks with guns. It's an epic, quite frankly.
Not once during its duration did I feel overwhelmed or tired. Not once during the interviews and analysis did I lose interest and drift in thought to something else. Thorough to an infinite degree and academic in almost Pulitzer territory, this exploration into a hush-hush and purposefully underappreciated genre is an oh-so delight.
From actors to producers to critics, We Kill for Love goes over any and all angles on the subject, even maddening itself in the process. The film is kind of a character, a detective losing himself to the rabbit hole of his own investigation. As things progress, so does the chaos of what's being depicted and what's being felt. It's expressed with subtleness, but there's an awful weight carried over too. Somehow, someway, We Kill for Love turned a VHS industry of repeated covers and similar titles and stars, into a channel of discovery and revelation, of suspense and of cathartic curiosity. 5/5
Five more are on the way. Patience, moviegoers.
Sincerely Yours in Moviegoing,
