SFF 2015

Sydney Film Festival 2015 hits next month and this year brings with it a motley assemblage of genre offerings. Richard Kuipers seems to have sourced the majority of this year's Freak Me Out sidebar from SXSW, which is fine by me as by all accounts the selection there was strong. Here's a brief rundown of the movies I've scored tickets to. I'll do my best to get capsule reviews up for all of these.

WE ARE STILL HERE

Fuck yes! The Cramptonaissance continues. I've already been pretty vocal about my excitement for this here and here. Fulci Lives!

SPRING

I loved Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's romantic subversion of Lovecraft's The Shadow over Innsmouth. You can read my review here. This is my first chance to see it on the big screen and I can't wait.

GERMAN ANGST

From the romantic to the Nekromantik! Only two words required: new Buttgereit. Unsurprisingly, this Berlin-set anthology is supposed to be somewhat transgressive in terms of explicit sex and gore.

DEATHGASM

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes and that New Zealand produces the best horror comedies. From the island nation that has given us Bad Taste, Braindead, Housebound and What We Do in the Shadows comes a metal splatterfest overflowing with practical gore and satanic demonology.

GOODNIGHT MOMMY

Unless I'm forgetting something, this Ulrich Seidl produced chiller marks the first Austrian horror movie I will have seen since Funny Games (I haven't seen Blood Glacier yet). The word is that this is a very stylish, beautifully shot, slow burn creeper. Prolicide or Matricide?

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY

My only pick outside of the Freak Me Out section this year. Berberian Sound Studio's Peter Strickland turns his attention from the giallo to '70s Euro-sleaze, citing Jess Franco as an influence among others. The Duke of Burgundy has been getting raves for its luscious design and gorgeous cinematography, and is apparently funny and moving in equal measure.

We Are Still Here SXSW poster

An evil new poster has surfaced for Ted Geoghegan's Barbara Crampton starring, Fulci-esque gorefest. The perfect compliment to last month's scorcher of a trailer. We Are Still Here debuts at SXSW in just a few days, and it can't gouge my eyeballs out soon enough.

The poster was designed by Erik Buckham, and as with Akiko Stehrenberger (see post below this one), Erik is responsible for some of today's coolest genre one sheets. A few more examples of his work:

WE ARE STILL HERE

This trailer for upcoming SXSW midnighter We Are Still Here is so fucking rad. 

It's directed by first-timer Ted Geoghegan, and stars the lovely Barbara Crampton (and I'm delighted to see her making such a wholehearted return to the genre).

Geoghegan (I have no idea how to pronounce that) got his start writing for German sicko Andreas Schnaas, after which he penned the screenplay for Stacy Davidson's ultra-violent Sweatshop. With a gory background like that it's not surprising to see the red stuff flowing freely in this trailer, but it's not the grue that excites me here (well, maybe just a little bit), it's the atmosphere. Pure, 100% Fulci worship in the same vein as The Beyond and House by the Cemetery. I thought I might just be projecting my own love for Fulci onto the trailer but then I found this on IMDB:

Numerous characters in this film are named after characters or people associated with the Lucio Fulci film The House by the Cemetery (1981), which this film was inspired by.

I got all anal retentive and compared the credits of both films, and I can confirm that that's indeed the case. There's also a character named "Joe the electrician" which is an obvious nod to "Joe the plumber" from The Beyond.

I know that kind of fan service is just silly and is usually the hallmark of shitty fan films, but this trailer has me stoked for something much better than that. A high quality, atmospheric, gory Fulci homage that's also a good film in its own right. And let's be honest, how often do we get those? There's been hundreds of Romero knockoffs in recent years (including the highest rating show on TV), but how many really worthwhile Fulci throwbacks have we seen? The only ones that spring to mind are Nacho Cerdà's The Abandoned and Eric Valette's Maléfique (and to a lesser extent Atsushi Muroga's Junk and the Ford brothers' Dead movies).

Really hoping this lives up to the trailer, dying to read the first reviews out of SXSW!