It’s kind of intimidating to talk to the stars of a martial arts film. You’re always sure that if you ask the wrong questions they will get very angry and look like they’re about half a step away from snapping your neck in half. Granted, I’ve never actually interviewed anyone from a martial arts heavy film like The Raid: Redemption, but the stars of this Indonesian action epic Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim are easily some of the sweetest and humblest people on the planet.

Both extremely polite, they come to director Gareth Evans action epic from different fighting backgrounds. Iko, who previously worked with Evans on both a documentary and his first feature Merantau, is a master of the film’s primary mode of ass kicking, Silat. Joe, on the other hand, is a professional actor who just also happens to be an accomplished Judo master. In this film, they play two of the primary officers in a group of SWAT members trapped inside a building full of criminal scum that want them dead at any cost. Both get ample chance to show off their considerable talents… or simply pick up a gun or knife and just waste someone that way instead. Because, you know, that’s how it would really go down.

Dork Shelf talked to Iko and Joe back during the Toronto International Film Festival about their fighting styles and what sets The Raid: Redemption apart from other films in its genre.

Dork Shelf: How long have you been practicing martial arts?

Joe Taslim: Before becoming an actor I was an athlete. I started Judo in Jr. High, it’s been around 16 years now. I’m still doing the local competitions but I quit the national team in 2009. In 2010 I met Gareth, so I applied myself to that project because I’m a big fan of what he and Iko accomplished with Merantau, so I thought that I really wanted to get into films, really wanted to become an actor. I approached Gareth, introduced myself.

Iko Uwais: In 1993, I started learning Pencak Silat and still learning till now. There was about three months before production of The Raid where I made sure to learn some more fighting techniques.

DS: Did you ever think that your skills in martial arts would be applied to the context of a film? Were you fans of martial arts films?

JT: When I began learning martial arts, I had never thought of being an actor. It was just a passion. And it wasn’t just something for me to be tough with or ‘kick somebody’s ass’; not like that. My dad was also my coach, and he told me that if you want to be an athlete just, “do something for your country.” Asian games, Olympic Games, something like that. That was the priority, the main purpose to begin martial arts. Years go by, I begin watching these films and I really like them. I like Jet Li, I even like Tony Jaa. I watched our local hero here, Iko in Merantau. We in Indonesia, we have the talent and with this we have the chance to show off to the world. I joined The Raid and I started brushing up on Silat with Iko and his partner. I was not a Silat guy, I was a Judo player. Even with this choreography, made by Silat player, I still had the chance to show off my capability as a Judo player. We planned together, discussed, planted things into the choreography, things that I could show myself. So if you see The Raid, it’s going to be different than Merantau. It’s going to be more universal.

IU: I never thought about being an actor. I had been playing football for most of my life instead, and I’m still more interested in playing football, actually. I was playing until 2003, I changed direction, concentrated more in Silat and have been winning championships ever since. I’ve worked to introduce the sport to different countries. That was how I eventually met Gareth. Gareth went to make a documentary about Silat and eventually made it to my club.

DS: This is your second film with Gareth, so how important is trust in these kinds of projects? Was there anything noticeably different this time around?

IU:  For Merantau, it was the first time we worked together. It felt like gambling, creating that movie. For this film, we were a lot more focused. We concentrated on making a Silat movie that we could export to other countries. The working relationship remained the same, however, between the two movies.

DS: Were you excited about joining the cast?

JT: Yeah, of course. It wasn’t easy to blend. In Judo, you don’t punch, you don’t kick. It’s grappling, wrestling, arm blocks, moves like that. But doing the workshops, with Iko and his partner Yayan Ruhian, I could learn how to evade, how to respond when I get kicked, a lot of new things for me.

DS: Were either of you surprised with how these skills converted when using them in film?

JT: Yes. In the competitions we focus on ourselves, we focus on winning. We defend the club. We defend the country. Win no matter what. But in the movie, you have to sync with the camera, sync with the story and most of all sync with the other actors. It’s not about ‘me’ anymore. It’s about the film, it’s about the fight. Even with just the fight, there’s drama inside. The purpose of each fight must be shown through expression. In a movie there’s so many things to consider.

IU It’s different. So in real life you can move however you want, but in movies it needs to be controlled by a choreography, a very specific choreography.

DS: This film is very brutal (Iko and Joe laugh) and violent, were either of you surprised by any of that?

JT: Oh yeah.

IU: Gareth had the ideas, and he says just start stabbing somebody. But how to do it? I was doing choreography, I was given the opportunity to ‘create’ that.

DS: Were any fights or stunts more demanding than others?

IU: The fight on top of the table in the drug lab, and the last scene where it was the three of us, two against one.

JT: Yeah, that final fight. Though, otherwise, the drama more than just the fighting. The drama and the fight, they both flow into each other. There’s drama first, then intense drama in the fight. I have to get into the drama, 100%, because the reason why a fight goes on in the movie is that there is drama. When I fight, when we do that on camera, I have to focus on choreography, but if I got the drama, the reason why we’re fighting, then it will be all there. The chemistry, the expression, it will all be there. If I get the drama, I get the fight scene.

DS: Was having this more brutal tone liberating to the fight choreography?

IU: In Merantau, there was a specific tradition on how to do the choreography. That all came from Western Sumatra. In this movie, it’s more universal movement. Some Silat style, but it didn’t need to bring the tradition into it. I could generally move however I wanted. Gareth gave me all the freedom that I wanted to plan the fights.

DS: What is film culture like in Indonesia?

JT: In our country, actually, doing action is against the flow. In our country, action movies are very risky to make. They are more likely to consider making a drama or a comedy. Even horror. With action, the budget doubles. It needs more of everything. There is very little action. This year, The Raid is really the only martial arts movie. The others might just have, say, one to three fights.

DS: Do you think this will make The Raid stand out?

JT: We hope so. We hope so. In Toronto for Midnight Madness, the reaction has been really great. Hopefully they’ll be just as in to it when we open in Jakarta.

Fans of action cinema should take note of the name Gareth Evans because they will be remembering it for quite a long time. The Welsh born Indonesian transplant has come to town for the Toronto International Film Festival to promote his third feature as a director The Raid – now saddled with the subtitle Redemption due to copyright issues surrounding the use of the film’s original title in North America. Seated in his hotel room, he has no idea how much buzz his film is about to receive on the world stage.

The film re-teams Evans with a two time previous collaborator in martial arts expert Iko Uwais. Both well versed in the art of Pencak Silat, they come together for their most ambitious project yet, a seige film about twenty police officers trapped in a run down tenament building on a suicide mission to depose a ruthless crime lord. Filled with brutal, but beautifully coreographed fight seqences and action set pieces, The Raid would go on to win the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award at the festival before moving on to receiving raves at Sundance, SXSW, and around the world. But again, he doesn’t know any of this just yet. Right now, he’s still a bundle of nervous energy who’s just eternally grateful he even gets to make movies in the first place.

Dork Shelf talked to Evans about his knowledge of Silat, his close working relationship with Iko, and what it’s like trying to get an action film made in Indonesia.

DS: How did the idea for The Raid first come about?

GE: We were trying to get a different film up and running first of all, a follow up to Merantau, called Berandal.  That proved kind of difficult because the scope of that film was a lot bigger, and that meant that the budget was a lot bigger as well. Finding the budget for big films in Indonesia is incredibly difficult. We tried and pushed to get the budget for Berandal for about a year, which fell to the wayside. I just needed to get another film with Iko (Uwais), do something else with him before his name just fades. I started looking at different types of films that I wanted to make and, taking into consideration that we wanted a low budget movie, something that only needed one location. I started looking at films like Assault On Precinct 13 or Die Hard, and thought about fusing the two together with more martial arts.

DS: I did get a real Die Hard vibe from it, and I was fine with that because I’m a real softie for “longest day” predicaments.

GE: I’m a big fan of Die Hard. It’s just a classic film. So even just to do something in a similar vain to that was something I simply embraced.

DS: What brought you to Indonesia in the first place?

GE: Well, that would be my wife. She’s half-Indonesian, half-Japanese. What happened was we were based in the UK at the time and I was offered work as a freelance director for a documentary. The documentary was about Indonesian culture and specifically Pencak Silat, the martial art we use in this film. Back then, I had never heard or seen that before. I watched a hell of a lot of kung-fu movies and Muay Thai movies but never heard much about Silat. So going to Indonesia and learning about this martial art, and the culture, it started setting off alarm bells in my head. During the documentary, it was like being paid to do six-months of research for another film. Coming out of it I drafted the story for Merantau, plus I had an insight so it wouldn’t be like some foreigner making a film, some horrible postcard vision of their culture. Also a little bit of Silat. And finally I met Iko during the documentary. I had my style, my culture, my story, my martial arts and my main actor.

DS: What stood out about Iko?

GE: He wasn’t the main subject of the documentary, we were actually following his master. One of the days when we followed them around, they did a, like, practice session, which had about 15-to-20 students. We were just filming for research. Getting an idea of their look and the movements so that when my director of photography got out here he would know what he would be filming. When we were filming we just kept focusing on Iko in a strange kind of way. He had a weird presence about him, the way he moved and the way he transformed was interesting. I said hello to him previously, he was very quiet, shy, humble, smiling, polite. And then all of a sudden he put his uniform on and his face transformed. He just looked focused and looked like he could really hurt someone. That kind of kickstarted everything and I told my wife that we needed to keep in touch with this guy. Maybe a TV show, we weren’t really sure what to do at that point. We finished the documentary and made sure to talk to him. I said to him that I intended to return to Indonesia and that I wanted to film something with him. And he just agreed, saying, “yeah yeah yeah,” but probably in his head he was thinking, “bullshit.” We came back to Indonesia five months later, I met up with him and we were already in the process of making a film. We had written a script. He was actually a driver for a film company at the time, just delivering messages between offices. He never really thought about doing TV or film. I asked him how much longer until his contract expired. Luckily it was within two-or-three weeks. I told him not to go back to his company, to come with us and make a film.

DS: What was it like to shift gears from a documentary to an action film?

GE: It was strange because, for me, it was more difficult to do a documentary. My  background had more to do with narrative. I always wanted to do narrative feature films, but when the documentary came up it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I decided to try it, just see how it is. And I enjoyed doing a documentary but I think if you watch the documentary you’ll see there are certain elements where I’m manipulating the camera to create a narrative too. So for me it wasn’t difficult to make the transition back.

DS: This is probably one of the most violent films I’ve seen in a while. To just set the tone like that, does that feel liberating?

GE: Yeah, you can tell in some of the scenes by the design of the choreography if I was in a good mood or a bad mood. (laughs) There’d be little extra twists of knives. When we made Merantau, the psychology of the choreography was different. In that first movie Iko’s character is always trying to evade and escape a fight. He’s a good boy in Merantau. Two or three punches and a push then run away. This time it’s all completely different. They’re trapped inside of a building. They’re a trained SWAT team, their mentality is different. In this position, they have to kill or be killed. Every time Iko’s facing off with anyone, he has to leave them off so that if they aren’t dead they’re not going to get up to fight again. Once we knew we were going in that direction, we knew we couldn’t hold back too much.  We haven’t screened it for the censorship board back home in Indonesia. We got a feeling that’ll be an interesting discussion. It’ll probably get cut pretty badly, but we made it with an international audience in mind. We knew that, even though it’s violence and aggressive, I didn’t want it to feel like we dwelled on anything too long. I tried to make it so that each moment’s more like a sucker punch, something that makes you wince but then it’s gone. You know what I mean?

DS: Yeah, it’s not gory, just brutal.

GE: We didn’t want to dwell on it. So when you see it, when someone gets shot in the face three times, it happens but then it’s over. We cut somewhere else.

DS: What is the film culture in Indonesia like?

GE: Admittedly, back home with action films, they’re still in their infancy. We’re really playing catch up with, say… in Thailand they’re way more developed with this type of movie. They’re blazing a trial for us to keep up with. There’s not that many action films being made. There are some coming out now, but we were all kind of learning from each other, trying to get more experience for the stunt teams and the fighters. The usual movies there, sadly, the studio systems there are stuck in a routine where they make films on a very low budget, minimal margin profit on it, just enough to pay for the next one. The result is a lot of cheap sex comedies and horror films. They’re really even stretching the boundaries of what you can call a film. But it’s very damaging because there are some really talented filmmakers in Indonesia who are struggling to get the budgets to get their films out. These guys are really important voices and their films should really be seen and heard. So I’m kind of hoping that, maybe, if our film has a little bit of a higher budget they could be a success, give the studios a bit more confidence and start to, at least, if they’re going to do ten shitty movies then maybe just make seven and keep the budget for the last three to give to someone else to make something bigger and more important.

DS: With the second film, do you find there’s a certain kind of trust now between you and Iko? How do you feel about your relationship with Iko?

GE: Iko’s kind of like a little brother to me. We’ve had this relationship develop since we made the documentary. He trusts me fully and I trust him fully as well. When it comes to the action, he always understood why I would be pushing him, and trust that I’m not just going for an extra take; I don’t know if I got it or not. It works both ways, whenever I’m editing the fight scenes I call him in, make sure he watches everything. Iko and Yayan (Ruhian, who plays Mad Dog). It’s really important to me that their work is equally represented. If they have any problem with anything, we change it, once they’re locked on it, then we’re done.

DS: Were there any fights that stood out for you or any that you were excited to do?

GE: That’s a hard one. There are scenes that really excite you in preproduction, when you come to production you dread them. Those big cool scenes, the really big fight scenes, when they’re going well, it’s a beautiful thing, when they’re turning out exactly as you wanted to be. But then there are the pressures to get every shot right. For martial arts, especially with gun play violence, you can really get lost in the coverage but edit it in a way that’ll flow better. With martial arts, every shot is a jigsaw piece. If something’s wrong you do it again until it’s not wrong. Especially that big final fight scene in the small room. That was a six-minute fight scene, with two-minutes drama to set it, and we had about eight days to shoot it. That’s really, really short for a big martial arts scene. Usually you want four days for a two minute scene. That was right until the final day of the shoot.

DS: You had a really good sense of balancing the narrative with the action. The story is there but it overlaps with the fighting instead of interrupting it. Was that a conscious decision that you made?

GE: I hate watching martial arts films where I have my finger on the fast-forward button. You’ll watch them once all the way through, maybe a second time. Then you start skipping chapters, to the fight scenes. I didn’t want the drama to intrude too much, leave people waiting for the next fight. It needs to feel like there’s breathing space, and reason for those breathing spaces for a good pace.

DS: What is it like to film in such a confined space?

GE: Funny you should ask, my DOP, Matt Flannery, is claustrophobic. He had a great time on this shoot. (laughs) For most of it he was fine, but certain scenes he simply couldn’t operate. Sometimes we couldn’t get him AND the camera into the space. There’s a shot where a machete goes into a wall with someone on the other side of it, and we had to set up and rig to have the camera hang down from the ceiling. He was very happy to not be in that wall. I’ll be honest though, the shoot was really punishing. Even though a lot of it was a studio set that we built, sometimes we were on real location. The one thing I can’t shake is how dirty and dusty that location was. That real location, it was terrible. Our production room kept flooding, on a daily basis. Not ideal conditions. In Indonesia it’s always hot. It never gets cold. You really look forward to those little breaks, those little bits of comfort, somewhere you can sit down. We didn’t have any of those on this shoot.

DS: What are your ideal action films?

GE: When I was a kid my dad would always pick up VHS films, stuff with Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. My first major action film was probably Enter the Dragon. It was one of those things that makes you feel like you’re watching a real life Superman. Bruce Lee was one of the most incredible beings to walk the earth, he was like a god. Following that I got in to Jackie Chan, things like Armour of God, Police Story, those early films are the ones that stay with me a lot longer. Into the 90’s onwards I drifted away from action films, martial arts anyways. I got more into heroic bloodshed like John Woo stuff, and then more into Kitano gangster films in Japan. And then, all of a sudden Ong Bak came out. That left me with my jaw on the floor. It breathed such a new life into martial arts, it made it cool again. We hadn’t seen that type of performance in a long time. We owe Ong Bak a huge amount.

The Raid: Redemption opens in Toronto this Friday, March 23rd and in other Canadian cities on April 6th.

Me and my brother like to smoke weed and sound smart about Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim and the wave of comedy they’ve come to represent. We use really dry terms to sound smart. “Post-humour: jokes in the absence of a punch-line.” We feel like fucking geniuses, trying to explain the genius of Tim & Eric all the while probably becoming the butt of some larger, cosmic joke. Tim & Eric are smart, that’s for sure, even if I lift my arms in preparative shelter before waxing in any depth about the beauty of their act. But to keep it short, sweet, and pretentious, Tim & Eric use relentless Dada-flavoured antics and have subliminally made you and your memes more avant-garde, ya dummy. Unless I’m wrong, then I guess I’m the dummy. Anyways.

Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! is funny, you asshole. And if you didn’t need to be convinced of that then you aren’t going to be offended by their Billion Dollar Movie. To everyone else, it’s not a very strong argument. Now I’ll be-ar-bhe I have to take a pee-pee cuz’ I drank too much tea-tea.

Schlaaang Pictures (a stand-in for Cinco) gave Tim and Eric one-billion dollars to make a great movie and oops they goofed it up, spending the entire budget on personal makeovers, a Johnny Depp impersonator and a suit made out of diamonds. Running away from a pissed off Tommy Schlaaang (Robert Loggia) and saddened spiritual guru/poet Jim Joe Kelly (Zach Galifanakis) those two goofy-oofy-doofy-doos head off to inherit a shitty mall and seek their fortune.

Billion Dollar Movie doesn’t siphon or benefit from the momentum of Awesome Show in a myriad of ways. For one, none of the beloved rogues like Steve Brule or Quiltin’ Will of the T&E microcosm make appearances, even if their actors do. Even at a just barely feature-length amount of time, the film seems to struggle pacing their brand of ha-has around evenly, with flat, dry wastelands of montages and gags that just don’t “seem like them.” It’s a tough truth, but when James Quall appears as a bread-themed stand-up comedian and David Liebe Hart appears as legitimately disoriented on set you’ll let out a harmonious, high pitch idiot squeal.

That’s the bad truth and I’m only telling you because I like the way you are. I like you. Here’s the good truth too, ‘cause I like you more. There are moments, scattered throughout, where the film rises to the occasion, slams you back by the shoulders, touching your body, and says, “this is the Tim & Eric cinematic, film-in-a-theater experience and you are here.” These may come in the form of fake commercials where Will Ferrell’s uglied up face sloppily crops over itself. These may come in the form of inane body humour, not scat humour as it all seems to be jumbled together by some others. These may come in what appear to be pure, uncut spite for the filmmaking experience, where Tim &/or Eric deadpan deconstruct the purpose of a shitty joke or illustrate the morals you’re supposed to be learning from this film-outing. I don’t want to deflate, detract, dismiss anything else about the film. It’s yours now.

I couldn’t help but look over what some of the other critics are saying, and it’s clear there’s a whole ensemble of folks who don’t get it, refuse to get it, or are just giving up. A lot of the parts of me can’t blame them, but fuck them anyways. To a certain extent they’ve just become part of the bigger gag. Even leading up to the movie, getting “Rango’d” and having a shirtless, panting Weird Al sign the pledge in blood has made the road to the film enriched. Much like the show itself, the film had already proven its merits by making the world a funnier place. Billion Dollar Movie isn’t a train wreck, but it isn’t a stroke of genius either. It’s reassurance that Tim & Eric should keep at what they do, and perhaps even try making a feature film again sometime in the future.

If you encounter a critic on the internet world and they’re complaining about the scat-humour and that it’s nothing but poo jokes, they’re a turlet fartsy bum idiot. If they claiming that Billion Dollar Movie isn’t ever funny, they’re lying to spite you. However, if they assure you that Awesome Show is better, they are unfortunately correct. ; )

In 2009, Ti West directed Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, a direct-to-DVD, unnecessary beat horse sequel which embodied the huge plague upon the horror genre where even original ideas are strung out into irrelevancy. Ti West disowned it, and even requested his name be swapped with an Alan Smithee. So, in that same year, West also released House of the Devil, a character driven, style-drenched, brooding paranoia picture, showing what amazing things can be still be done in a genre that’s seen it all. If West was looking for a way to be disassociated from Spring Fever, he found a way, and if horror fans were looking for a fresh new talent, they had certainly found him. As his first film since The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is Ti West’s opportunity to show a winning streak, or at least an uncanny corridor. It also happens to be a chance for star Sara Paxton, often cast as that pretty blonde in really forgettable roles, to earn a new start, not unlike West himself.

The Yankee Pedlar is a slow hotel in a small, even slower town. On its last weekend of business, slacker part-timers Claire (Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) have one last marathon shift before moving on to whatever’s next. Luke’s brought a generous amount of beer, but Claire’s brought an excess of curiosity about the Pedlar’s rumoured haunted reputation, something they had both taken casual interest in during their employment. Luke, a proud dropout and pessimist, is confident his rusty, amateur, GeoCities-level web design will carry his future career, while Claire has literally never thought about the next step until provoked by sitcom-actress-come-spiritualist-come-inn-patron Leanne Rease-Jones (Top Gun and Stake Land’s Kelly McGillis.)

Claire begins to seek Leanne’s guidance, despite being turned off by her drinking habits and snappy tone, which pummels her self confidence but inspires her sense of adventure. Leanne warns Claire that the Pedlar’s spirits are not only real, but very dangerous. During her shifts, Claire can’t help but push her luck, sitting alone in the humming empty spaces of the hotel, trying to record the sounds of spectres as her work-hour hobby evolves into a deadly obsession.

A far more modestly produced feature than House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is much more interesting in terms of its identity. While House was lush with homage and slow-built dread, Innkeepers is a craftier, more cautious film. It is as much a horror film, as things are horrifying, as it is a character study or a drama with comedic freckles. The quirkiness that surrounds The Yankee Pedlar and the cast within it makes our heroes more likeable, though Lucas’ web flavoured cynicism edges on the stock side. The terror that lurks above Claire is less about fearing a grotesque, shocking sight ahead as it is you fearing for her safety and well being.

West is accomplished in this cinematic chemistry. There is horror and then there is comedy and they are not things that soil each other while simultaneously overlapping. The horror is never made slapstick or farce, and the humour is either dramatic folly or dopey witticisms from our two leads. Sara Paxton truly is Claire; a spunky, raspy ragdoll girl who walks into doors more than opens them. Paxton is unrecognizable from the deer in headlights in The Last House on the Left remake. Sara Paxton makes Claire likable, someone you’ll care about and want to pluck out of the calamity before it’s too late. While, like Luke, she can veer close to being a cropped concept of youthful kookiness, Paxton tampers it down with fragility, and discomfort. She plays up her attitude to compensate for her unshakable anxieties, she’s rattled by a loss of innocence and playfulness when she confirms to herself that the ghosts are real.

The Innkeepers has unconventional priorities for a horror film, using scares as a feature instead of the purpose of the movie. You can almost talk about the film without talking about ghosts at all. There’s uncertainty in the air; there may or may not be something in the dark, making you more vulnerable to attack. There’s a general unrest as the camera floats about the musty old in inn with its humble halls and muted carpets. There are times when a jumpy scare could have been cheesy in any other film, a moment when Claire gets a bedside visitor comes to mind, but because this fear is something banked off the characters that “yeah right”-ness almost plays directly into the atmosphere. There’s also a circular motion with a lot of the frights, almost like the second half of the film is haunted by very slight foreshadowing in the first. The development of these characters dictate the fear, and in turn will be what scares you.

The Innkeepers is good, eerie and frightening, but I didn’t feel frightened afterwards. I did feel another strong emotion, one that was hard to shake and one that will remain anonymous so I don’t spoil anything. To horror addicts, The Innkeepers may not gratify in the same way The House of the Devil did, as there’s a very hard line straight down the film that lets the audience decide whether there was any paranormal activity or if it is really a horror at all. To more flexible filmgoers, The Innkeepers is a strange, interesting atmosphere-driven blend that pushes through styles, tones and genres. It doesn’t astonish elegance quite as boldly as The House of the Devil, but it does strut West’s versatility within and outside of horror. Most importantly, it shows Ti West has absolutely no desire to create stale, routine horror films, the like you’ve seen in the last decade. So he can stay as long as he likes.

It isn’t uncommon to see movies at the After Dark Film Festival where you can tell others that the plot can be excused. Where the film may have lacked in substance and story, it made up for in bulk with a strong, lavish, dominating style. Monster Brawl, which aspires to be a mirror image of a televised WWE special, replaces the scary looking beefcakes with scary looking monsters (though nothing’s scarier than The Undertaker without makeup.) The film seems to have a better idea of what it wanted to be rather than how to really accomplish that. “The story didn’t matter” is a common thing to overhear at these events, but I gotta hand it to you, Monster Brawl, “I’m not really sure that was a movie” is a new one.

In a fog drenched graveyard, where Dave Foley is pinned as “Buzz Chambers” and Art Hindle as, apparently, a Sasquatch, await to ring the bell for eight different, generic monsters as they throw down to the death. A cyclops, a vampire (Lady Vampire), a mummy, a zombie, a werewolf, a swamp monster, Frankenstein’s Monster and a witch cleverly named “Witch Bitch” all take to the ring, two-by-two to trade blows and slowly, oh so slowly, finish each other off. There isn’t really a threading of plot, even if Monster Brawl acts as if one exists. Doom soothing done by the Cyclops and a skunky gravedigger never amount to much (the Cyclops just vanishes altogether) and drama pitted between the fighters rushes in mere moments before the fight.

Monster Brawl is rigidly structured. Before each fight two introduction videos give you some backstory on, say, what a mummy is or why vampires suck blood and live in mansions. These story segments are a drag, without wit and starved of creativity, the only one with any genuine cleverness abound is Swamp Gut’s, which larks on Planet Earth with an Attenborough impersonator guiding the footage of Swamp Gut killing the same hick twice. But in general they were wasted airtime, a missed opportunity that drags though a movie that already shimmies at a mere 90-minutes.

I haven’t seen Scarce, director Jesse T. Cook’s last film, but now I have a morbid curiosity. Things seems barely directed, on a kind of awkward auto-pilot. Fights are stale and flavourless, just bumps and slams to-and-fro until some brief gory finish, and the actors sway about and let the lines drip from their mouths without much conviction. The only time there seemed to be any gusto was when Dave Foley says “I’ve always hated mummies,” in a kind of dry, facetious Kids in the Hall tone, like a little voice angel decided to stop by and fire a flare for help. None of these ill words apply to Jimmy Hart, who plays himself, a bouncing ball of shrieking energy who would actually have to be directed to stop being animated. Lance Henriksen’s voice pops in and out as a barely-there narrator, who at most blurts out awkward, left-field Unreal Tournament-like victory/bloodbath blurbs that aren’t much cleverer than anything else in the movie. The makeup is sound, but the costuming rarely goes beyond a shirt with pants.

It is not as if this concept film couldn’t have worked. If things were mixed in a more dramatic fashion, if the intros were weaved together into a blended prologue, if we had some sort of backstage shenanigans, events of pathos or at least more gravity than the promise of gravity. Even if it just stuck to the facade of a WWE fiasco, the glitter and glamour, all the flair and finesse Monster Brawl starves to taste. It even ends on a cliffhanger that, very suddenly, seems to indicate you have now decided to give a shit about these characters. Nice try, Monster Brawl, you ain’t no winner, you ain’t no champ. Yer a chump, punk, and I will see you in Netflix hell.

Well okay, let’s not be mean. The fonts are nice.

What makes animation so galvanizing is how, for so many of its creations, one weaker or void aspect can still be lifted to great heights by the others. Ghibili films usually have no trouble finding fascinating and inspiring tales, and Akira’s density is made up for by rich atmosphere. But animated films can be about nothing and everything, because of the message in their beauty. And, some films can be about nothing and nothing, but deliver everything. Redline isn’t about nothing, but it isn’t about much. Nothing stops Redline from hitting goals. Nothing stops Redline from victory. Redline is so ferocious and unwieldy that it’s too dangerous to be bound in your hands, it’s too fast for the qualms of plot or logic. It can’t slow down. The wonderful thing about animation is that it’s a world from scratch, created only by the pen instead of constructs of likelihood. Redline is its own universe, and it rockets through it so fast you’ll miss planets if you blink.

“Sweet” JP is a racer, and while in this fantastical, lawless future race vehicles can be made to look like mecha beetles and sexy superheroes, JP is an odd traditionalist who prefers to blast through the finish line in a monstrous Camaro. JP earned the nickname “Sweet” due to his resistance to using weaponry, though his slate’s been scarred from a history of game fixing; a mob reeking debt that haunts him and his collected partner, Frisbee, to this day. The good news is, while losing the qualifying race, a popularity vote propels JP into the main event, the Redline, the end-all be-all of intergalactic races. The bad news is the reason space became available is due to other racers getting cold feet over the controversial location: Roboworld, a totalitarian planet of cyborgs who use their self-given title of peacekeepers as an excuse to secretly develop planet-busting weaponry, and a government that despises the Redline and the media presence it would bring. Now JP has just one defining race to hold off the competition, the militia of Roboworld, his mob woes and, worst of all, an infatuation with his rival: “Cherry Boy Hunter” Sonoshee McLaren, who drives an amphibious crab.

Seven years in the making and written by Katsuhito Ishii, who made Funky Forest (though Redline is nowhere near as surreal), Redline glows with radioactive colours and alien beings who seem like cut-outs from foreign magazines and comics that define the term “culture shock.” Even with a subject so machine heavy, the cars are organic beings, that pulse and thump and flip out when provoked and stretch when pushed past logically capable speeds. Redline is seven years of detail. While the film is two races with a slower, “off time” chapter in between, the pace is kept up with visions of livid living creatures.

Then there are the races, which are both comparable to the redeeming, euphoric final bout of 2008’s Speed Racer. Antes are constantly upped to degrees that would make Dragon Ball Z feel dizzy, with new speed boosters and disastrous weaponry rabidly spewing one-upmanship. Nitro capsules, claustrophobic cockpits with switches and gears crammed in around leather seats, and mad calamity, especially during the Roboworld siege. Everything and the nuclear kitchen sink is thrown at the competitors, and the competitors throwing everything back.

The minor cast and their tropes aren’t as gimmicky as the Wacky Races posse, aside from perhaps an over-sexualized pair from fantasy land and a duo of spandex-costumed bounty hunters, but there’s no Dick Dastardly among them switching the signs to throw rivals on cruel detours. Perhaps to make these racers feel believable, even in an unbelievable world, they aren’t out for each other’s blood, they’re a communal, sporting bunch. Missiles are thrown, but only in the name of sabotage. Even the grand champion, a blocky monolithic car-hybrid with an ego known as Machinehead, anticipates the idea of being bettered, and would rather out-do his foes than kill them. The same can not be said for Roboworld, their armadas, generals and freakishly grotesque top secret bio-weapon, Funky Boy, who looks like Tetsuo’s booger.

There is no great storytelling ambition for Redline, it’s guts-and-glory underdog story doesn’t quake the same heartstrings as other anime greats. Those with with a Grave of the Fireflies shrine won’t so much as shrug, but it does get the blood pumping, as jet stream missiles launch ad nausuem and screaming becomes the new dictation standard. Few gestures are done twice, and every bit of architecture and machinery will bust new valves and gaskets to function or go faster. JP’s destructive devotion tears down his car, his safety and your face. But his pompadour is invincible.

Pulp Fiction lit a fuse that blew up sometime around Grindhouse. Bouncing from the ma-cheese-mo of the 80’s flavoured Expendables, to the pure red 70’s marinated Hobo with a Shotgun and Super 8 somewhere in between, we’re getting riffs, recreations, reflections and deconstructions of film era underbellies, slowly creeping up to the present day. Now, with Manborg, we’re right up somewhere ‘round 1998, presented with what is meant to recreate that VHS tape you found misplaced in the corner concert film section of a pawn shop. In a world being rapidly flooded with these rehashed nostalgia bombs, Manborg is challenged to represent a new era/aesthetic of re-re-re-rehash, and to be more entertaining than many of the other films in the running.

Thankfully for Manborg, it is half man, half cyborg, all Manborg.

In the future, mankind is has been desolated by an army of nazi-robot-vampires. One soldier watched his brother die at the hands of Draculon, master of this evil armada. This soldier, killed to the point of death, eventually wakes up in the crazy-techno future, discovering that his body is now… look, listen, okay people, this film is called Manborg. I don’t really know why I’m explaining this plot to you. I didn’t see it for the plot. You aren’t going to see it for the plot. Me describing the plot isn’t going to change whether or not you will ever see the film. It’s a non-factor.

So here are the factor-factors that I’ll let rain.

First off, the word “shenanigrams” is used twice in the film. Specifically, it is used by “Justice”, a jean-vested, war-painted gunslinger with an incredibly fake Aussie accent and an inability not to crap-boogie dance while killing things. He lives within an entirely green-screened world where all the humans look like unlockable Mortal Kombat skins and all the monsters look like Napalm Death t-shirts. Steven Kostanski, make-up and effects artist on most Astron 6 films and director of Manborg, said his main inspiration were those corny FMV cutscenes found in old 3DO, PS1 and PC games. While Steel Harbinger may have been what he was going for, I would say the end product is more in-tune with those feature films GWAR released for their fans. Trashier than gross, cornier than grotesque, but revelling in garbage like so many smiling synchronized swimmers in a glamorous Hollywood soundstage pool.

Laser noises are relentless, and individual characters seem to carry their own ridiculous aura of tropes, like Mina’s Ninja Scroll-like action gestures or #1 Man, a Liu Kang-looking fighter overdubbed by Dragon Ball Z narrator Kyle Hebert, and The Baron, who is a Cenobite looking fellow who’s more preoccupied with a secret crush than speaking without syntax like the rest of the cast. Manborg does not give up, and its schlock is of a flavour that has yet to be exploited in the bulk (but oh, I bet it will be soon.)

All that said, Manborg isn’t a perfect recreation of the poopy pastiche. It’s more like a mixtape, highlighting elements of crap like sleazy synth, muddy action and crude TOOL-esque claymation, instead of just becoming it. It’s too tongue-in-cheek, too self-aware and even dare I say it, too smart, but unlike so many other films in this recent post-post-modern subgenre, not simple self-gratification. The only time the veil of crud really obscures enjoyment is when some lines become inaudible over the warped fuzz, which may be a joke within itself, but is one of the rare flat ones if the case.

In 2008, Kostanski directed the short Lazer Ghost 2: Return to Lazer Coast, which, with the exception of going without green screen, is exactly what should be expected from the more-than-trailer film, Manborg. If you felt Lazer Ghost made its ten minutes worthwhile, then there’s good reason to suit up in some used hockey gear and strap it down with duct tape, because Manborg is only six times longer.

In 2009, Ti West directed Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, a direct-to-DVD, unnecessary beat horse sequel which embodied the huge plague upon the horror genre where even original ideas are strung out into irrelevancy. Ti West disowned it, and even requested his name be swapped with an Alan Smithee. So, in that same year, West also released House of the Devil, a character driven, style-drenched, brooding paranoia picture, showing what amazing things can be still be done in a genre that’s seen it all. If West was looking for a way to be disassociated from Spring Fever, he found a way, and if horror fans were looking for a fresh new talent, they had certainly found him. As his first film since The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is Ti West’s opportunity to show a winning streak, or at least an uncanny corridor. It also happens to be a chance for star Sara Paxton, often cast as that pretty blonde in really forgettable roles, to earn a new start, not unlike West himself.

The Yankee Pedlar is a slow hotel in a small, even slower town. On its last weekend of business, slacker part-timers Claire (Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) have one last marathon shift before moving on to whatever’s next. Luke’s brought a generous amount of beer, but Claire’s brought an excess of curiosity about the Pedlar’s rumoured haunted reputation, something they had both taken casual interest in during their employment. Luke, a proud dropout and pessimist, is confident his rusty, amateur, GeoCities-level web design will carry his future career, while Claire has literally never thought about the next step until provoked by sitcom-actress-come-spiritualist-come-inn-patron Leanne Rease-Jones (Top Gun and Stake Land’s Kelly McGillis.)

Claire begins to seek Leanne’s guidance, despite being turned off by her drinking habits and snappy tone, which pummels her self confidence but inspires her sense of adventure. Leanne warns Claire that the Pedlar’s spirits are not only real, but very dangerous. During her shifts, Claire can’t help but push her luck, sitting alone in the humming empty spaces of the hotel, trying to record the sounds of spectres as her work-hour hobby evolves into a deadly obsession.

A far more modestly produced feature than House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is much more interesting in terms of its identity. While House was lush with homage and slow-built dread, Innkeepers is a craftier, more cautious film. It is as much a horror film, as things are horrifying, as it is a character study or a drama with comedic freckles. The quirkiness that surrounds The Yankee Pedlar and the cast within it makes our heroes more likeable, though Lucas’ web flavoured cynicism edges on the stock side. The terror that lurks above Claire is less about fearing a grotesque, shocking sight ahead as it is you fearing for her safety and well being.

West is accomplished in this cinematic chemistry. There is horror and then there is comedy and they are not things that soil each other while simultaneously overlapping. The horror is never made slapstick or farce, and the humour is either dramatic folly or dopey witticisms from our two leads. Sara Paxton truly is Claire; a spunky, raspy ragdoll girl who walks into doors more than opens them. Paxton is unrecognizable from the deer in headlights in The Last House on the Left remake. Sara Paxton makes Claire likable, someone you’ll care about and want to pluck out of the calamity before it’s too late. While, like Luke, she can veer close to being a cropped concept of youthful kookiness, Paxton tampers it down with fragility, and discomfort. She plays up her attitude to compensate for her unshakable anxieties, she’s rattled by a loss of innocence and playfulness when she confirms to herself that the ghosts are real.

The Innkeepers has unconventional priorities for a horror film, using scares as a feature instead of the purpose of the movie. You can almost talk about the film without talking about ghosts at all. There’s uncertainty in the air; there may or may not be something in the dark, making you more vulnerable to attack. There’s a general unrest as the camera floats about the musty old in inn with its humble halls and muted carpets. There are times when a jumpy scare could have been cheesy in any other film, a moment when Claire gets a bedside visitor comes to mind, but because this fear is something banked off the characters that “yeah right”-ness almost plays directly into the atmosphere. There’s also a circular motion with a lot of the frights, almost like the second half of the film is haunted by very slight foreshadowing in the first. The development of these characters dictate the fear, and in turn will be what scares you.

The Innkeepers is good, eerie and frightening, but I didn’t feel frightened afterwards. I did feel another strong emotion, one that was hard to shake and one that will remain anonymous so I don’t spoil anything. To horror addicts, The Innkeepers may not gratify in the same way The House of the Devil did, as there’s a very hard line straight down the film that lets the audience decide whether there was any paranormal activity or if it is really a horror at all. To more flexible filmgoers, The Innkeepers is a strange, interesting atmosphere-driven blend that pushes through styles, tones and genres. It doesn’t astonish elegance quite as boldly as The House of the Devil, but it does strut West’s versatility within and outside of horror. Most importantly, it shows Ti West has absolutely no desire to create stale, routine horror films, the like you’ve seen in the last decade. So he can stay as long as he likes.

There’s a moment when Curtis (Michael Shannon), chaperoning his sleeping family across the dark flooded highways, pulls over and steps out of his car. Off in the distance, crackles of lightning tear apart the sky, pounding the earth below it in fury. Looking around while cars behind him continue to drive by and his family rests undisturbed, he asks aloud, to the world, if he’s the only one seeing this apocalyptic sight. Jeff Nichols’ second feature Take Shelter has been conjuring its own storm on the festival circuit, a study of a humble man who suffers against an behemoth enemy only he can see.

Michael Shannon is Curtis, a modest Midwesterner who works construction, loves his wife (new fest circuit star, Jessica Chastain) and child, participates in the small community and is loved back respectably for each of those things. The year ahead seems bountiful for the family, their vacation fund is peaking and their insurance holders manage to arrange a procedure to fix their young daughter’s hearing. But there is something growing in the recesses of Curtis’ mind, a terror that begins in the fringes of his vision which quickly swells into full-blown paranoia.

Curtis suffers from dreams and visions of what appears to be his sleepy home terrorized by awesome storms, droplets of oily brown liquid from the sky, flocks of birds that took some moves from Hitchcock, torrents of deadly winds and suddenly even other people, close people, turning against Curtis. This anguish manifests itself into a storm shelter Curtis devotes himself to building in the backyard, one that will strain his relationship with everything around him.

What at first appears to be a paranoia plot cracks open a whole hidden layer when it becomes apparent that Curtis’ biggest fear is the fear itself. His mother had fallout with dementia, like the dark clouds on the horizon, this fact is yet another haunt in the jumble of Curtis’ head. He’s tormented in every way, trying to build a structure he’s certain is mandatory, while also fighting that very certainty the shelter is worth it. Excuses, defenses, even offensive, the storm shelter is the only evidence that Curtis has any control over an uncertain world, and he`s bet the car that he needs it.

Nichols paces his films like he’s holding the tension in a straining closet, family and community being as friendly about Curtis’ behaviour, only putting pressure on when he’s too far gone. From here it’s a whole other kind of tornado, Curtis’ desire to protect the one he loves instead destroys the love towards him.

Nichols’ tense look into paranoia is a hard one to shake. Until a tacked-on seeming epilogue, Take Shelter doesn’t over-extend any metaphor or inject drama to the supernatural. It’s terror, terrible transfiguring terror, and it’s the unstoppable fear that grips us all. Even the humble. Even the kindest.

There are two kinds of bad films that actually feel fun to hate. One of them is the loud, shallow, flashy blockbuster breed, which will ALWAYS have its defenders and whose gripes are usually reoccurring. That species is hard to spot at festivals. The kind that does make festival appearances, however, is the shallow, vain, pretentious thing, and these come in all kinds of micro-varieties though always self-content. This is not to be confused with bad films that meant well and make you feel bad for hating, I will get to Always Brando in the future. But for today, let us talk about Australian big-deal Julia Leigh’s directorial debut, Sleeping Beauty, a film that is almost as pretty as it is completely pointless.

Moreso based on Yasunari Kawabata’s The House of the Sleeping Beauties than the popular fairy tale, Emily Browning, whose butt you may remember from Sucker Punch, is Lucy, a university student who is very comfortable with performing tasks for money. That’s not to call her a prostitute, but she’s certainly willing to let her body be exploited for reward, be it at the student research lab fishing tubes down her throat or sleeping with her manager at the campus cafe. Her revenue choices become a little more surreal when she applies to an ad in the paper, leading her to a cold-eyed madam who introduces her to the world of nude food services for the bourgeois. Eventually Lucy’s pasty, tiny body nominates her for a new service, hinted upon by the title, which requires her to be drugged asleep while older gentlemen toy with her slumbering body, though penetration is forbidden.

And that’s about it. That’s the movie.

Rich white men do weird things with their money and this lower-middle class whiter girl likes to find creative combinations of her career and libido. There is a promise of some sort of conflict or, as some know it a “story,” dangling on a string out of reach, but any sense of a tale being told is only referred to instead of hitting dead on. Without plot, the film’s real desire is to provoke you, which it’s not very skilled at either. Making you uncomfortable, yes. But light discomfort, leaning towards plain awkwardness. Like an old man fumbling around with Browning’s tiny naked body like a gorilla figuring its dead child – that kind of thing. It’s odd that “penetration” is excused from the occasion so early. It’s certainly a memorable detail and very telling of the frivolous antics of the rich-geezer class, but also very uninteresting to watch. I don’t hope for rape depictions, but in a world where fetish-heavy antics of The Human Centipede are well-known enough in the social consciousness to get a South Park riff, a wrinkly old man stroking the nude midriff of a snoozing maiden isn’t about to shield eyes. There’s no ante.

There’s an unfortunate mix to Browning herself. While her acting is precise and focused on the cold and apathetic Lucy, proving that she’s more than a pale butt, the character is so stubborn and uninteresting that there’s no tease to be turned on by. She’s got a past, but you’ll never know it, and if she has an objective then hell if we’ll ever find out. The only emotions she does project are her efforts towards being a provocative bitch. She’s a good profile on someone impatient and bored, though with all that’s on the plate you shall soon join her.

Similarly, Leigh’s work behind the camera is, at the very least, pretty. Repetition and monotony are big themes, and the way “routines” are hammered in certainly make their point. The colour use is also kind; the stale mansion and the nude models who fill it are hard to complain about. When it isn’t of the constructed world of wealthy eroticism, it’s the bland simple surroundings of the real world, which certainly stake the divide between what money can buy and what money leaves behind. But even the good efforts are a little wasted on a shallow product.

This is not an art project lost – the ideas at work at not hard to grasp. It just seems frivolous, and there’s a sensation that Leigh felt more bold of her actions than her actions are bold. It drags its feet and the world is so sterile and uninteresting it can practically put you to…

Well.

You know.

Tsui Hark’s career has only formally dipped into Western markets once or twice, his Once Upon a Time in China franchise being his biggest namesake. But on his own turf he’s double dipped Kung Fu into a buffet of subgenres: supernatural, historical, comedy, not to mention plenty of overlap. There are very few things Hark can’t squeeze some fun out of,  but Detective Dee fits into a category that’s more frequently tied to the west: massive blockbuster. Pseudo-historical, slightly spooky, but infinitely Kung Fu (with choreography by the beloved Sammo Hung) do Dee’s massive CGI set pieces and explosively absurd fight scenarios create any competition for our biggest ‘busters back home? Namely Sherlock Holmes? Which I’m saying because I guess that’s the easiest reference point for a spectacle detective story?

The inauguration of the first Empress of China, Wu Zetian (Carina Lau), is mere days away, her grandest opportunity to show off her empire to the world. But just as the construction of a massive statue is finishing up outside her palace, two workers spontaneously combust into flames, sending paranoia throughout the people that there’s a dire curse looming over them. Desperate to find the culprit behind these bizarre crimes, Zetian turns to Detective Dee (Andy Lau), one of her biggest dissidents and harshest critics, released from prison for the purpose of solving this case. Teaming up with the Empress’ right hand woman (Li Bingbing) and a young albino official (Chao Deng), Dee embarks on a journey to find out how, why and who is causing folks to burn up from the inside, and just how inside that culprit may be.

One thing that has always irked me about the new Sherlock Holmes film was how anti-engaging the mystery side was. Certainly Guy Ritchie lets you accompany the antics along the way to the solution, but there was nothing really to follow, as in the end all the answers lay in magical Macguffin. Dee possesses quite a large Macguffin, but it isn’t the lifeline, and it reveals that card fairly early on to shift attention to other pressing revelations. When a movie is both action and mystery, it’s only natural that the aggressive Mr. Action will often overpower, robbing the mystery of its time and lunch money. That’s what was pretty grievous about Holmes, how Holmes was much more of a goofy smooth talker/brawler externally, where mystery solving seemed a more exclusive, internal process. Dee goes a slightly different route. Action definitely takes precedence in the matter, but the way the mystery lives out is a bit more fluid and open. It’s unlikely you’ll have put everything together by the end, but the movie is ambitious in shaking you up, laying out a world where lead players may have sinister secrets that don’t necessarily make them the culprit. The mystery is never inactive, even when the screen is full of punches and ninjas.

But enough talk, how about that action? One thing about Sammo Hung’s action style that audiences love is how playful it can be. From Ip Man to Kung Fu Hustle, Hung takes pleasure out of shuffling up fight scene variables, combining unconventional set pieces with even more unusual fight conditions. Because Dee is floating foot first into the realm of CGI, the skies became fairly unlimited. You’ll see our heroes fight puppet ninjas, roll-dodge away from arrow onslaughts, Dee takes on a troupe of magical deer and you can bet your buttons there’s a dramatic throw down inside that massive statue. The action is dedicated to keeping a pulse, keeping them moving and doing something different. My favourite sequence probably being the underground, over water, black market bout with a ninja ambush, where one by one we learn just how many absurd illusions and techniques these assailants have mastered, and how Dee, in all his wisdom, plans to deal with it.

Detective Dee has dreams of fighting with the best and biggest of summer hitters, and as for how it stacks up it certainly, no question, floors a lot of the biggest Western offerings. But it isn’t perfect, not by a long shot. There’s a queasiness to the pacing. While there are twists and turns in the story, there are also weird swan dives in the tone, and Dee often dances to-and-fro from a light-hearted shit disturber to a disturbed, remorseful witness of terrible acts. The effects are also inconsistent, mostly they’re as good as massive CGI things look in this day and age, but from time to time they appear to dip closer to Doctor Who circa five years ago. However, all that doesn’t scratch the good intentions. If you saw the poster, trailer, or even just felt flirted by the title Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, it’s a safe deduction you’ll get exactly the answers you’re hunting for.

NOTE: This review is based on the screening on Sunday, September 11th. Aware that the film may be remixed and interactive at other showings my experience may not reflect your own. To be clear, the interactive features were not in play during this screening.

Let’s clear the air and say the obvious: Francis Ford Coppola made The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation in less than a decade. The ‘80s had some gems like Rumble Fish, but the ‘90s, oy, those ‘90s. His 2000s, on the other hand, can certainly be best described as weird. Choosing to do modest, “underground” films, it seems that each new gesture was unpredictable at best, which brings us to Twixt. Twixt is not a blockbuster, but it is certainly a genre piece; a dream-inspired, Dan Deacon scored, Poe-themed vampire ghost murder story genre piece. It is a weird stand out even for the Coppola portfolio. Early footage and strange high-concept ambitions have had some folks worried that this gloomy gallop would be an awkward slouch. But let me tell you now, internet, it’s definitely nowhere near Apocalypse Now, it’s not even Rumble Fish, but Twixt, for all of its uneasy flaws, is incredibly fun to watch.

Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) isn’t happy with his writing career at the moment. Once biting at the heels of Stephen King, a creative losing streak following his daughter’s death has him stuck in a schlock-witchcraft circuit that is not inspiring readers or himself. Possible inspiration comes to him in the strangest of places, a tiny Californian town that is sleepy in size but full of oddities, like a kooky sheriff (a scenery chewing Bruce Dern) who builds bat houses, a clock tower with seven faces (none with the correct time) and a clan of goth teens on a lake led by a dark-glam biker known only as Flamingo (Alden Ehrenreich). But among all the strange sights, what’s got him inspired for a new story is the grisly murder of a young girl, a steak driven through her heart indicates whoever killed her was convinced she was of vampiric intent. The fixation is finalized when Baltimore begins to dream of a darker side of the town, where the girl, Virginia (Elle Fanning), can still communicate with him and even curiouser is that Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) serves as his sullen guide.

It’s hard to recognize at first, because there are a lot of hurdles of absurdity to get over, but this tale is telling more about tale-tellers. The inclusion of Poe, his advice and warnings place this odd story as a frame on how to tell a story at all. The tribute to Poe is more than just a sudden fascination, it’s pragmatic, as Coppola’s homed in on the roots of his grim, personal storytelling method and not afraid of it digging into his own, literally alluding to the death of his son Gian-Carlo Coppola. There are constant clues to the murderer, one that basically gives it away, but by that point it no longer feels like story is about confirming who the perpetrator is. Journeying into this colour-bleached world of the dreams is a means of telling a story to entertain others.

If this meta-tale sounds a bit pretentious, any arching pretense is constantly defused by how whimsically carefree Coppola is treating the material. No matter how grisly the acts on screen are, either their dreamy depiction or the highly stylized moon-lit colour scheme, they maintain a charming wonder. All is comfortably pulpy, perhaps a respect to the career of the protagonist or just a kind excuse to be silly. The character pieces that fill this town range from the dopey deputy, the suspenders wearing young spunky twirp with glasses to the motorcycling, poetic rebel Flamingo, who looks like Diamond Rings with a skin condition. It maintains this 1995 point and click FMV PC game vibe, real sense of an adventure, opening doors, meeting strange faces and only solving the problems that keep the story alive.

Now, there may be another reason Twixt feels like a 1995 FMV PC game. Whether or not Twixt will see any distribution is debatable, if only because being “self-produced” has side-effects aside creative freedom. While some scenes, even 3D ones (which are signaled to the audience in the most delightful way) have adequate effects, others couldn’t hold a match to those from an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode.

There is a short, wonderful scene where Baltimore idea jams drunk in an empty motel room which left the audience howling. It was a great moment to be in a packed theatre and a giggling tone-setter for the entire feature. Though others would suggest a Tom Waits narrated opening soliloquy was a stronger establishment. After the “bulletproof” ending comes and goes, you’ll briefly sort the meanings in your head and just where the shears of the “story” and “reality” blended. I’m also aware there are things I haven’t seen, some footage and cards probably held for alternative paths (the demonic clock tower and Flamingo were not explored despite certain hype) but I suppose those are journeys for other audiences to relay back to me. Dan Deacon’s electro-hoppy but whispering bloops sound like girly ghosts trapped in the computer and keep a footstep pulse as you and Hall Baltimore descend further into the dreams of Coppola. Coppola described Twixt’s muse as a nightmare he had in Istanbul, but this chaotic quest is certainly as magical to those awake.