Dir - Sébastien Vaniček
Overall: GOOD
While most spider movies are comedic in nature, (think Arachnophobia and Eight Legged Freaks), we occasionally get some that take their creepy-crawly premise more seriously, and the full-length debut Infested, (Vermines), from French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček is just such a movie. That said, the hip-hop heavy soundtrack and playful bickering amongst the young cast cast at least initially gives it a lighter tone, but this is done away with quick once everyone is quarantined to a lower income apartment building and the downtrodden are forced to fend for themselves with mostly tragic results. Vaniček proves to be a natural at delivering intense set pieces that are more white-knuckled than merely skin-crawling. This is a scenario where things cannot get any worse yet they keep getting worse, forcing some well-rounded characters to face their own hang-ups and internal issues to the point where it becomes a harrowing ordeal for the audience as well. It may get too overbearing for some tastes and a few select CGI creature scenes are poorly done, but this is mostly a success that takes an age old and universally unsettling premise of killer arachnids and does something more grown-up with it.
Dir - Ricky Umberger
Overall: MEH
Thankfully stepping away from his consistently flawed and silly The Fear Footage series, indie filmmaker Ricky Umberger starts what may be a new crop of found footage movies with Project Eerie. It follows the same formula as the aforementioned Fear Footage debut, (as well as every V/H/S installment for that matter), namely introducing a wrap-around narrative that presents an excuse for people to watch a couple of vignettes that all tie into unexplained terrain. The usual found footage motifs are present, (namely flimsy excuses for characters to be filming everything and pointing the camera at things to create a cinematic aesthetic), plus predictable scare tactics run throughout. Umberger makes no attempt to reinvent the wheel here; instead, he seems to be honing in his craft at strictly adhering to the ever-growing number of shaky-cam horror films that are of such an ilk. Everything here has been done before, (sometimes better and sometimes worse), but there is still an agreeable amount of enthusiasm that cuts through on screen. Even if the scary, screechy monster faces still lurch at the camera and look like store-bought masks, some of the production values are improved upon, so at least Umberger is making a noble attempt to up his game while staying in his stylistic and micro-budgeted comfort zone.
Dir - Christian Sparkes
Overall: MEH
Boasting a unique premise, Canadian filmmaker Christian Sparkes' The King Tide unfortunately never engrosses the way that it should. Set at an isolated island community that has adopted a Neo-Luddite lifestyle, it throws a monkey wrench into such an "off the grid" existence where a mysterious infant washes ashore and becomes the focal point of their society. The child does this by having all manner of healing powers, as well as the ability to draw loads of fish in so that the handful of townsfolk can remain unreliant on outside assistance. Things go smoothly until they do not, when little Alix West Lefler's otherworldly abilities fail to work as planned, causing an immediate sense of panic where the entire structure of the commune has to struggle to cope with the downfall of an existence that they have carved out for themselves. A case of putting all of one's eggs in a single basket, it explores what happens to people when that basket is taken away and the results take a consistently dour trajectory. Well acted and well shot, the plot specifics seem arbitrarily placed in order to extenuate the story's themes, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the hooks are not hooky enough and the melancholic tone becomes too overbearing after awhile.
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