Indie Spotlight: Jug Face - Review

It’s true that Jug Face is one of the finest indie horror movies to come along in years.  It’s also true that Jug Face is one of the best horror movies of 2013 regardless of budget (it shares poll position with The Battery in my Top 10 of 2013).  It’s becoming increasingly apparent that if the devout, discerning  genre fan wants to find a movie that is both effective as a horror film and contains even the smallest shred of originality they must be prepared to look beyond the deluge of lacklustre bilge that Hollywood has been force feeding audiences for far too long now.  The most successful mainstream horror film of 2013 was The Conjuring.  I liked it quite a bit but even I have to admit that it was woefully lacking in the inspiration department.  Jug Face is one of a handful of low budget horror movies that went some way toward redressing the balance and making 2013 something less than an almost complete washout for the horror genre.

There is an overabundance of horror movies today that coast by on their ability to make an audience jump out of their seats and/or try to trigger their gag reflex by throwing an abattoir of blood soaked viscera at the screen.  I’m not denying that this approach can be fun.  The Conjuring is a great example of the jump-scare thing being done well but it’s doing nothing that hundreds of movies haven’t already done before.  I’m also fond of well-staged carnage but too often it’s used to prop up a dismal script with nary a new or interesting idea to be found.  So it’s truly a relief to discover a horror movie that isn’t heavily weighted in favour of jump scares alone and has more ideas than gore.  Too many movies forget entirely that a creeping sense of gathering dread is a far more effective way to unnerve and/or scare an audience.  This is an area where Jug Face (and many other indie horror movies) succeeds.  Perhaps it’s something that comes with a lack of money.  If you can’t scare an audience or make them throw up by launching moderately expensive set pieces at them then you have to rely on their imagination.  And a person’s imagination, guided skilfully in the right direction is a far more powerful way of scaring the shit out of a viewer.

Which brings me back to Jug Face; the brilliant directorial debut of Chad Crawfod Kinkle who, armed with very little money, a clever script (which he wrote) and a supremely talented cast has put together a tale of backwoods terror that not only works as a horror movie but also provides much in the way of riveting drama.  The story focuses on a tight knit community who worship a pit in the woods that surround their village.  Once in a while they have to make a sacrifice to this hole in the ground with the victim being selected when one of the villagers fashions a jug out of clay that bears the face of the chosen one.  When Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) discovers not only that she is pregnant but also that she is next in line for sacrifice she hides the jug bearing her likeness in the woods and starts making plans to escape.  Things do not go according to plan.

The performances in Jug Face range from good to quite exceptional.  I first encountered Lauren Ashley Carter in Lucky McKee’s The Woman where she gave the sort of performance that made me sit up and take notice.  In Jug Face she builds on the promise already shown to provide a perfectly pitched, subtle and at times heart-breaking performance.  She’s one of those special actors who can do more with her eyes than some actors can do with everything they have at their disposal.  She’s incredible here and although much of what makes Jug Face so special rests upon her capable shoulders she has impressive back-up from genre regular Larry Fessenden as her father and, surprisingly, Sean Young, who is terrifying as Ada’s granite hearted bitch of a mother.  Also of note is Sean Bridgers in the role of Dawai.  I was surprised to discover that he had a regular role in the HBO western Deadwood; a show I drank in like the heady, addictive brew it was.  He’s unrecognizable and thoroughly remarkable here.

There’s very little to criticize about Jug Face.  Given the budget it’s no surprise that the special effects, few though they are, aren’t terribly special.  But that’s not important because this isn’t a horror movie that relies on showy effects to succeed.  The community that the story centres upon is brought to life with a keen eye for detail and as a result feels totally authentic.  It’s the authenticity of this backdrop and the plight of Ada that drew me into the story and had me gripped right from beginning right up until the gut wrenching conclusion.  Those who have been raised on nothing but the wham, bam, thank-you ma’am (or no thank-you if you please) MTV pacing of the majority of mainstream horror movies would perhaps complain that Jug Face is slow.  Utter bullshit.  Jug Face is methodically but perfectly paced and understands that the best movies, regardless of genre, work when the audience is invested in the fate of the characters.  This isn’t achieved by racing from scene to scene like a cheetah on amphetamines.  This is accomplished by taking the time to tell the audience enough about the characters to allow a bond to develop.

It’s truly sad that it takes a first time director working on a shoestring budget to show us what a horror movie can be when it’s produced by a group of people with the ambition to create something that isn’t a facsimile of everything that’s gone before.  Jug Face is a unique movie, that, in a year that cannot be described as anything other than disappointing where genre offerings are concerned should, along with a handful of its peers (all low budget, indie movies), be held up as proof that US horror is not as uninspired as mainstream Hollywood would have you believe.  Highly recommended.

STEVE'S SCORE:

Interview with Chad Crawford Kinkle

AOTD: Your script for Jug Face won the Slamdance Screenwriting Competition back in 2011.  Did your original vision make the transition from page to screen intact or did you have to scale things back a little to accommodate the budget?

Chad Crawford Kinkle: I tell people that maybe 40% of what I wanted is in the movie. If I had the experience that I gained from making Jug Face, my first feature, I could have added about 30%. The rest was due to budget and other reasons that were out of my control.

   

AOTD: On Jug Face you were blessed with a talented group of actors to work with. What was the casting process like? Were there specific actors you had in mind for certain roles or was the movie cast entirely through auditions?

CCK: Andrew van Den Houten, the producer, really lead the way as far as casting was concerned. He would come up with names and pass them by me. The only one of the major roles that I came up with was Ada, Lauren Ashley Carter. But of course, I was familiar with her only after watched a blu ray of The Woman that Andrew gave me. We did have auditions for the secondary roles.

AOTD: Are there any past masters of horror cinema whose work you particularly respect and who have had an influence on your approach to film-making?

CCK: I respect them all. Even the ones who didn’t make great movies. They all set out to make horror films the best that they could. But my favorites would be Argento, Hitchcock, Hooper, Polanski, Friedkin, Browning, Bava and so on.

AOTD: Did the central conceit of the clay jug faces and the pit spring entirely from your imagination or did something inspire you? It has the feel of something from folklore.

CCK: Face jugs are a real part of souther folk art for the past 160 years. I saw one for the first time at a museum in the north Georgia Mountains and came up the concept for the movie on the spot. The jugs were used to hold moonshine and poisons for farming.

AOTD: The sense of place, customs and history of the community in Jug Face is vital to the movie's success.  How did you go about ensuring that this felt authentic?

CCK: For one, I shot the movie in the area where the story’s culture comes from. Basically, the region of Tennessee where I grew up. But a Director’s job is to control the “vision” of the film so that it feels whole and concrete.

   

AOTD: US indie horror is creatively far more interesting than anything mainstream Hollywood is producing at the moment.  Why do you think this is the case and what movies and/or directors from that scene have made a real impression on you?

CCK: You can be more adventurous with the subject matter if the budget is low. Big budget movies have to get people into the theaters so those ideas need to be more mainstream to make back all the money. Film making is a business at any level. Ben Wheatley is someone that comes to mind who I admire.

AOTD: What should we expect from your sophomore effort and do you have anything on the go yet?

CCK: I’m trying to finish up my next screenplay, another southern gothic horror film. If that doesn’t go anywhere, I have a number of other horror ideas that I want to explore.

AOTD: What horror movies are you looking forward to in 2014?

CCK: I have no idea what’s coming out. Before Jug Face, I read the horror sites everyday and was up on everything, but now I have a lot of catching up to do.

AOTD: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

Indie Spotlight: End of the Line - Review

I first encountered End of the Line at the Dead by Dawn horror film festival in Edinburgh back in 2007 where it rightly won the audience award for best feature and pretty much blew my mind.  Director Maurice Devereaux had created the sort of movie that demanded I would be paying close attention to his development as a film-maker.  Years passed and End of the Line seemed to be a full stop at the end of his career.  I was and remain dismayed by this.  Here was a visceral gem of low budget, apocalyptic horror that managed to find the perfect balance between crowd pleasing scenes of carnage and an escalating sense of dread as the true scale of what is happening gradually becomes apparent.  I honestly thought I’d found a director who could potentially fill the boots vacated by John Carpenter when he lost his mojo.  End of the Line is that good.

The movie is set against a backdrop of murderous civil disruption and focuses on a disparate group of unfortunates who, after their train breaks down, find themselves lost in a labyrinth of subway tunnels and at the mercy of a group of homicidal religious lunatics who believe that the end of days has arrived and that in order for the souls of unbelievers to be saved they must be killed in cold blood.  The resultant game of cat and mouse develops into a brutal fight for survival with casualties mounting up on both sides.

As a fan of apocalyptic fiction with a religious leaning this is a movie that pushes a lot of the right buttons for me.  It’s a fictional sub-genre I’m constantly drawn to.  Perhaps it’s because I was raised Catholic.  I still remember being handed a bible at school and told to turn to some psalm or other.  Instead I used to skip forward to the Book of Revelations because, with it's terrifying prophesies, it gave sustenance to the seed inside me that would ultimately bloom into a lifelong love of the horror genre.  One of the great thing about End of the Line is that as the characters debate what is actually happening the viewer's perception of events is pulled in multiple directions.  Are we really witnessing the end of days? Is it just a bunch of religious loons on the rampage at the command of their deranged leader?  More importantly are those delicious muffins spiked with hallucinogens?

Another ace in this movie's hole is the abundance of gore.  To say that this movie gets splashy with the claret would be an understatement.  If you like your horror movies with an extra helping of red sauce you’ll lap this up.  If you took a shot of something strong every time someone gets stabbed in End of the Line you’d be in an ambulance heading for the hospital with alcohol poisoning long before the end credits roll.  Writer/director Devereaux is also unafraid of pushing the envelope of nasty.  One scene in particular dropped the jaws of a cinema full of veteran horror fans with an act of violence so ostentatious and thrillingly wrong that it doesn’t so much step over the line of what is often seen as taboo as set fire to the Church of good taste and piss on its ashes. 

In terms of performances barely anyone hits a bum note.  Particularly impressive is Robin Wilcock who chews the scenery with vitriol as one of the most irredeemably vile, breathtakingly repugnant movie baddies you’re ever likely to come across.  Something about this expertly crafted personification of evil reminded me of a young Andrew Robinson as Scorpio in the first Dirty Harry movie but with the volume turned up to 11.  Every time he’s on the screen End of the Line’s ability to entertain (and often repulse) goes up a notch.  Everyone else acquits themselves well and coupled with a script that finds the b-movie sweet spot and hits it with laser guided precision for ninety-five minutes the movie succeeds in being shocking, thrilling and a whole lot of fun often all at the same time.

All in all End of the Line gets my highest recommendation.  Its ambition on what must have been a very low budget is remarkable.  Cruel misfortune ensured that it didn’t find much of an audience outside of the festival circuit.  It didn’t even see a UK release on DVD or Blu-ray and as far as I’m aware it’s never been screened on TV here.  This movie is an absolute must see for any genre fan.  It’s an expertly paced piece of pure entertainment from start to finish that comes fully loaded with perfectly staged scares, atmosphere, great heroes, awesome villains, a breath-taking quantity of beautifully staged slaughter and in the end it’s just great fun.  I urge anyone who reads this review to seek out and buy the Canadian DVD release immediately.  You will not regret it.  This is a scary, tense masterclass in terror and I personally hope that this isn't the last horror movie we see from Maurice Devereaux.  That would be tragic.

Steve's score:

Indie Spotlight: Colin - Review

I remember back in 2009 reading about Colin in a UK newspaper and coming away intrigued.  After finding success at a number of festivals around the world it became a critical hit at the Cannes Film Festival and found itself being released into UK cinemas with writer/director Marc Price transformed into the poster boy for zero budget film-making almost overnight.   Celebrated for the fact that it was reportedly made on the sort of nano-budget that wouldn’t cover the cost of a family trip to the cinema I made a mental note to check it out when the opportunity presented itself.

Fast-forward to 2014 and a couple of days back I announced on Twitter that once a week I intended to ask my followers to recommend a movie for me to review with the first suggestion out the gate the winner.  I was aware that this was an idea that could explode in my face if someone decided to maliciously offer up an Uwe Boll movie or something similarly unbearable.  But this week some kind soul took mercy and suggested Colin.  This was fortuitous for two reasons.  1. I already owned the special edition DVD but hadn’t taken the opportunity to watch it yet.  2. The movie is really good.

What we have here is an existential zombie film.  The movie opens with the eponymous character arriving at a friend's house with a bloody hammer clenched in his fist.  Outside the sound of gunfire, screaming and explosions fill the air.  Clearly this isn’t a typical English afternoon (if you come from a particularly rough area feel free to disagree).  It soon becomes apparent that he’s been bitten and to add further injury to insult he is attacked in his kitchen by his best friend who has joined the ranks of the living dead and proceeds to bite our "hero" on the back of the neck before himself suffering an intense cranial battering with the aforementioned hammer.  Colin proceeds to pass out and when he awakens he’s a card carrying revenant.  So begins a tale that despite being created on a budget most big movies would waste on a pause between takes has been made with a great deal of love for the genre and more than a few smarts.

Colin himself is less a character and more a mirror held up to the rest of society.  He shambles from one vignette to the next somehow surviving calamity after calamity and as the camera follows in his shambling footsteps we see the world around him and how different facets of humanity deal with a zombie apocalypse.  And it’s mostly grim.  Most of the human beings who cross his path are less human than he is despite him being a flesh eating, increasingly decaying wreck.  In terms of narrative it’s very episodic but nonetheless gripping once you acclimate yourself to the often languid pace.

I was especially impressed by the performance of Alastair Kirton as Colin.  The focal point of the entire movie and with the added burden of having practically no dialogue he is nevertheless a wonderfully somber presence throughout.  We've sympathised with zombies before; most notably Bub from Romero's classic Day of the Dead.  But I don't recall any movie where one of the undead was the centre of attention for the entire duration.  Kirton exudes restraint and delivers a subtle performance without which the movie would have fallen apart within the first five minutes. 

Another area where the movie shines is in the music.  Assuming we believe that the movie only cost £45 to make (do we believe this?) it’s simply astonishing that Colin comes complete with a wonderful, melancholy, almost post-rock soundtrack that provides the perfect sonic backdrop to the story that unfolds.  This movie has been described as moving.  Well a lot of the depth of feeling that can be found here is down to the music.

What Colin doesn't deliver in big budget spectacle it more than makes up for by taking one great idea, a cheap camcorder, a laptop and some obvious talent, not to mention the generosity of all the people who worked for nothing, and from those elements forging something that negates entirely the idea that money is a crucial part of making a worthwhile movie.  I believe that given the right circumstances and with the right people on board inspiration can blossom in the face of adversity and/or a meager budget.  It's alchemical. Turning very little into something with substance.  In recent years we've been subjected to a deluge of cheap, straight to DVD zombie movies most of which are the reverse of this theory.  In the face of this, gems like Colin become essential viewing for horror fans.  If only to remind themselves that there's life in the undead yet.

Steve's score:

Indie Spotlight: Resolution - Review

Resolution is an awkward movie to review given that many of the things that make it stand out from the indie horror herd should be left to the viewer to discover and not tossed off irresponsibly as spoilers in a review.  The movie follows the story of two best friends one of whom is married with a baby on the way the other a drug addicted loser who has lost most of his friends as a result of various betrayals and misdemeanours.  The latter has taken up residence in an old deserted cabin on an Indian reservation.  The former joins him there after he receives a mysterious video via email that he perceives to be a cry for help.  Once he arrives at the cabin he handcuffs his friend to a pipe and forces him to go cold turkey.

As the week progresses and Chris (Vinny Curran) struggles with methamphetamine withdrawal Peter (Michael Danube) discovers a variety of fragments of a story related via various different mediums; a book; some photographs; an old film reel, a video tape etc.  The central mystery of the movie revolves around where these artefacts come from, who left them and how, if at all, they relate to Chris and Peter and their on-going story.  As the movie progresses the content of these mysterious fragments becomes increasingly alarming and the two friends find that control of their destiny is becoming ever more fluid and difficult to grasp.

Various secondary characters are woven into the story in often random fashion; a couple of Chris’ drug dealer acquaintances; the Native Americans who own the cabin; a French archaeologist played by growing indie horror legend Bill Oberst Jr who lives alone in a trailer in the middle of nowhere.  Some of these characters have no real impact on the narrative and although they could be perceived as red herrings I also looked upon them as ingredients that sharpened the overall atmosphere of steadily mounting dread that develops as the movie progresses. 

The vast majority of the movie’s ninety minute run time is focused on the two main characters with their decade’s long friendship wonderfully convincing.  It would have been very easy to paint Chris as an irresponsible, junkie loser.  It’s far more difficult to create a sympathetic, often funny character whose addiction is presented to the audience in a refreshingly non-judgmental fashion.  Part of the reason why this works is the remarkable writing.  Script writer and co-director Justin Benson has a keen ear for naturalistic dialogue.  Much of the interplay between the two main characters comes across as being skilfully improvised but for the most part the line readings are exactly as they were in the script.  Likewise the character of Peter, a role which could have so easily have been written as worthy and self-righteous is revealed as a truly compassionate, infinitely patient human being who just wants to stop his friend from killing himself.

Ultimately Resolution is a puzzle and an incredibly well realised one at that.  Not only does it benefit from a second viewing but absolutely demands it.  After my initial viewing I came away thinking that certain elements were open to interpretation; something that certainly didn't seem to result from a lack of confidence and/or focus on the part of the film-makers but rather grew organically out of the way the movie was written, filmed and structured.  Having revisited the movie I realise that the film-makers intentions are there to be divulged.  I still think it's a puzzle but one with a clear and expertly constructed denouement that says a lot about the role of the viewer in a movie (or any piece of fiction regardless of medium).

Resolution earns its place within the growing pantheon of indie horror movies that have been surfacing of late that reveal mainstream horror as the largely empty vessel it has become.  As I indicated at the beginning of this piece this is an awkward movie to review.  But I state with absolute confidence that if you enjoyed Jug Face, The Battery or Absentia you'll likely warm to this little gem.  Alongside these films Resolution represents the true face of modern horror and I for one cannot wait to see what co-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead come up with next.

STEVE'S SCORE

Indie Spotlight: Coyote - Review

Trevor Juenger’s uncompromising micro-budget, art-house horror gem, Coyote, paints a relentlessly grim portrait of a man (Bill Oberst Jr.) whose sanity is slowly being eroded by insomnia.  As he slides into a world where reality and hallucination become inseparable he finds himself gripped by a deepening sense of paranoia that drives him to commit terrible acts of violence.

Imagine Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer if David Cronenberg and David Lynch had co-directed it.  That should give you a good idea of where Coyote is coming from.  It shares both the former auteur’s early fascination with body horror (just wait until you see the knife trick) and the latter’s knack for capturing the world as reflected in a warped and damaged mirror.  The end result is a dark and troubling downward spiral into madness and murder as Bill, a struggling writer whose life has become a sleep-deprived waking nightmare, finds himself rapidly losing his shit in spectacular fashion.

In the past I’ve referred to Bill Oberst Jr. as the Takashi Miike of the independent horror scene.  His work ethic is as insane as the fractured psyches of the majority of the characters he portrays.  A quick glance at his resume on IMDB reveals that since 2010 he has appeared in approximately 15 movies per year.  He brings to Coyote the customary intensity that has made him the go-to guy for film-makers who are looking for someone to play a convincing psychopath.  With his distinctive scarred features (the result of a childhood biking accident), piercing eyes and unique physique (his torso is nearly twice the average length for a male his height) it’s almost like he was custom built in some sort of nightmare laboratory in an attempt to create the perfect bad guy.  His performance here is typically unhinged and fearless.  As the movie progresses, becoming increasingly unnerving as it goes, Bill is never less than 100% convincing as a man rapidly losing his marbles and becoming increasingly dangerous as each one rolls down the drain.  It’s the kind of committed performance that makes the viewer want to check out more of an actor's work (something I fully intend to do).

Something else that struck me about Coyote was the effectiveness of its imagery.  This movie is from start to finish one of the most disturbing head trips in recent memory.  One scene features a video camera containing a vagina which is then, um, digitally penetrated by our “hero”.  That should give you an idea of the kind of twisted lunacy to expect here.   The movie’s low budget is at times apparent but nonetheless Juenger’s often surreal vision emerges almost untarnished and the end result is a wonderfully effective and phantasmagorical descent into madness that sheds all attempts at narrative coherence towards the end in favour of a fierce barrage of bleak unpleasantness.  Supporting the visuals is a wonderfully effective electronic score that underpins the onscreen horrors with an entirely effective and unsettling malevolence.

The only negative thing I can say about Coyote is that its appeal is likely to be a very niche one which isn't really the film-maker's fault as they obviously didn't set out to create something with mass appeal.  It accomplishes what it sets out to do and does so with no concessions.  Gruelling from start to finish I imagine it will find a welcoming audience among the growing army of horror fans whose preferences lean in the direction of independent fare with strong ideas over the blandness of a Hollywood that has transformed itself into a factory only capable of churning out mostly insipid sequels and remakes.  If you don’t mind low-budget horror with an art-house mentality Coyote is an excellent example of that sort of thing done very well.  Trevor Juenger is a name worth watching.

STEVE'S SCORE:

Bill Oberst Jr. was kind enough to provide us with a 90 second clip from Coyote to provide our readers with a taste of the sort of nasty thrills it has to offer.

Coyote from Trevor Juenger on Vimeo.