No Room In Hell

After a two year exile, I decided to grant After Dark HorrorFest another stab at being entertaining with the hope that this year’s choices would at least be “funny-bad” and not “I hope to choke to death on my popcorn bad.” As I discussed earlier, if you’re like myself and don’t have the time to see all eight films, then, as HorrorFest history has taught us, you’re at the mercy of a 75% terrible rate. Our choices were dictated by whatever the hell was playing on Saturday afternoon and evening, which basically left us to face Zombies of Mass Destruction and The Reeds.

While waiting for these flicks, Matt and I did our best to appreciate the diversity of the twenty other people who showed up for this thing. Our few but proud ranks consisted of a few single girls equipped with novels to read, some young couples, some older couples, a handful of the usual loud comment making riff-raff, and a dude in a twenty year old Starter jacket reading a week old newspaper.

Zombies of Mass Destruction was first and it started off with the typical zombie apocalypse trappings: a few rogue zombies lurching around going unnoticed, infected blood in the water supply, and of course some unforgivably bad “false alarm” jumps. While all this is going on we get a introduced to a split protagonist arc that plays out in the sleepy island town of Port Gamble, which is geography ambiguous but bears the stereotypical ignorant attitudes of The South/Middle America. One side of the story follows Frida Abbas, (Janette Armand) a pretty twenty-something of Iranian descent, who is trapped between her traditionalist father that wants her to honor her Middle Eastern heritage and the ignorant white-bred townies that barely accept her as an American despite the fact she was born in Port Gamble. The other half of the plot follows a gay couple, Tom and Lance (Doug Fahl and Cooper Hopkins), that have come to Port Gamble so Tom can come out to his mother.

Of course, we finally get back to the fact that there’s zombies taking over Port Gamble, showing up at the most inconvenient of times as Tom is about to come out to his mother and immediately after Frida has a big blow out with her father. Both parties are forced to seek refuge in the worst possible of places: the gay couple must hide in a Catholic church and Frida becomes a prisoner of her red-neck neighbor that wants to torture answers out of her after he discovers the zombie outbreak is the work of a Middle Eastern Terrorist group.

After the proverbial poop hits the fan, the film becomes a blend of borrowed slap-stick humor from Shaun of Dead, corny dialogue, some fun gross deaths, and a lot of preachiness about American attitudes and hypocrisies. Unfortunately, it’s an odd mix. It’s hard to swallow a serious commentary about post 9-11 paranoia after the corniest dialogue this side of porno.

One exchange between Frida and her boyfriend goes something like this…

Frida: You’re like the tenth person I had to tell I wasn’t from Iraq, today.

Derek: Maybe, it’s because you have ‘nice eyes-and-a-rack.’

Frida: Well there’s Nor-way you’re getting into my panties tonight

Derek: Kuwait-a-minute, I’m not from Norway….

And the humor only gets worse from here folks.  However, it’s a fun movie if you don’t take it too seriously and ignore any attempts at a political commentary. Zombie fans will enjoy faces being peeled off like Fruit Roll-Ups, gardening tools used as melee weapons, and the typical “boom-head-shot.” There’s even a couple chuckles if you relax (drinking heavily before watching wouldn’t hurt either) and enjoy the ride. However, I prefer my political commentary zombies flicks to either be a bit more subtle or directed by a guy whose name ends in “omero.” Still, all things considered, I easily would put this one in the top ten of HorrorFest’s best movies without thinking twice about it.

After a short coffee break, we returned to the theater to watch The Reeds and discover only the same twenty people were still there with very few new comers.  I’m pretty sure most of them didn’t even bother to get up for the hour and a half intermission, but I digress. The Reeds rolls out with another clichéd premise: the old “a group of twenty-somethings going off on a fun getaway” bit. How uncommon. Anyway, three couples head off and rent a boat to cruise through what is essentially a swamp and try to sail over to some pub for dinner.

Long story short, they get lost—even more uncommon for a horror movie—don’t find the pub and start seeing ghostly images of themselves while punky looking teens run through the reeds and cause general mischief. Eventually, the boat runs aground on a giant spike and one of the twenty-somethings fall ass-backward onto it. With one of their members mortally injured, the group has to split up and send somebody on foot through the reeds to get help.

The movie does pick up some steam here, and the atmosphere of isolation is done to a T. Surrounding them, the reeds become an endless desert of water and grass with an eerie air of mysterious happenings around them. Skeletons in cages rot below the boat. Members of the group start having prophetic visions. The strange teenagers hold some sort of Pagan ritual with mutilated animal parts. Good times.

Once this creepy stage is set, the black curtain falls and cast members start biting it in some of the most brutal deaths I’ve seen in a while. Every kill is raw, grainy, and wince invoking. I couldn’t wait for the conclusion; why are these people dying and what is going on?

Then the climax came, and “Ku-wait a minute,” what happened?! It goes from intriguing and eerie to nearly as Loony Tunes as The Gravedancers’ ending. Every creepy image from the first hour becomes over-exposed in a long drawn out finale that had me laughing out loud in the theater. Matrix style fast motion effects and overly dramatic music were just the tip of the iceberg as the director flushes the creepy tone he brilliantly developed down the toilet and replaced it with HorrorFest’s greatest hits collection, borrowing from both Wicked Little Things and The Abandoned for plot points.

Despite the terrible ending, The Reeds is not a bad watch at all. The creepiness spikes with some decent effect and the misery these people suffer through is done well. Again, as HorrorFest goes, this is still in my top ten.

While we didn’t discover any budding Sam Raimis or John Carpenters at HorrorFest this year, and I’m not sure if Janette Armand will replace Jamie Lee as the next great Scream Queen, I was not disappointed. I went with very low expectations and got pleasantly surprised. Both films were watchable and fun, which is more than I can say for most of the past two year’s slop. If HorrorFest keeps taking steady zombie steps to improve their film choices, maybe by HorrorFest 23 they’ll have a great thing going.