Dir - Andy Mitten
Overall: MEH
After a handful of collaborative efforts, writer/director Andy Mitten goes solo with The Witch in the Window; a partially effective haunted house movie that deliberately plays with some standard cliches, yet its dysfunctional family dynamic never gels with any concrete purpose. This is not to say that Mitten and his small cast do not give the material a solid go. Well-acted and minimal on jump scares and lazy musical manipulation, it grounds everything to a palpable plane where most of the running time is spent establishing the strained father/son relationship between Alex Draper and youngster Charlie Tacker. These characters act in a combination of plausible and movie script fashion which is better than most hackneyed screenwriting that we usually see in the genre, but Tacker's twelve-year old is often too bratty for us to buy into he and his dad all of a sudden deciding to talk to each other like contemporaries. It gets by to a point, but their heart-to-heart banter and painful honesty bonding seems rushed instead of well-earned. Likewise, the introduction of a supernatural presence and its manipulative entrapment scheme becomes needlessly miserable, but maybe that is because Mitten's story has tugged at our emotional core and we simply do not wish for such a tragic fate to befall these characters. In that case, the movie achieves its goal and in any event, it comes close to elevating the ole "lets fix up an old creepy house in the country and justify not running away when malevolent spirits fuck with us" premise.
Dir - Ricky Umberger
Overall: WOOF
In a perfect world, films could get by on their intentions alone. The debut and first in an indie franchise from writer/director Ricky Umberger, The Fear Footage has an admirable and simple agenda; to be an anthology horror movie, (as the title would suggest), in the found footage mode. It does not reveal itself to have an anthology framework until a ways into establishing what should have been an idiot-proof premise, where a recently burned down house inexplicably appears again one night, prompting several freaked-out phone calls from the locals and a lone police officer dispatched to investigate. This rock solid jumping off point is handled ideally until said cop ventures into the spacious, cluttered, yet unassuming home and presses play on a VHS tape marked "The Fear Footage", at which point everything goes to shit. The three tales that follow are easily some of the most embarrassing vignettes that the sub-genre has ever produced, full of cringe-worthy acting, costumes taken from a Spirit Halloween store, some fake CGI rain, monster faces screaming towards the camera, insulting character behavior for the books, jump scares left and right, scary soundtrack enhancements that no camcorder could possibly capture, and hackneyed details that would suggest that this was a parody if not for the humorless presentation. By falling down the stairs so recklessly, it can only and fairly be described as an amateur-hour disaster, which is a damn shame since it gets off on the proper foot and seems to have its heart in the right place.
Dir - Gwaai Edenshaw/Helen Haig-Brown
Overall: GOOD
A historically accurate and important full-length debut from filmmakers Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, Edge of the Knife, (SG̲aawaay Ḵ'uuna), is the first movie spoken entirely in the endangered Haida language. Set in the Haida Gwaii region of the Pacific coast of Canada during an 19th century summer, its entire production was painstakingly collaborated upon by scholars, community organizers, and artists with the intent to both prop up the Haida language and present an authentic depiction of its people during a pre-Anglo settlement period. An origin story of the mythical wildman, (referred to as a Gaagiixiid here), its narrative is simple, yet the details are well-realized. The care that went into the movie's validity is unmistakable, but thankfully it bypasses being merely an educational drama and in addition to that, it evokes a dynamic tone that is both humorous and harrowing as it touches upon universal themes of overcoming trauma and grief. Tyler York's transformation into the feral wildman is brought on by his mental inability to cope with the death of a child, a death that he accidentally caused, (and is something that the rest of his village must come to terms with as well), and he must do it without becoming a primitive beast. The inexperienced cast and crew deliver exemplary results, crafting a haunting and largely still look into bygone customs and a spiraling loss of humanity.
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