Dir - Roberto De Feo/Paolo Strippoli
Overall: MEH
A derivative smorgasbord by its very design, A Classic Horror Story references so many other movies that a drinking game revolving around spotting them would result in alcohol poisoning before the halfway mark. Evil Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Hostile, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Midsommar, Silent Hill and countless others are thrown into the stew. We have silent cultists in wooden masks and robes, the ole "we walked for hours and ended right back at the scary place where we started" maneuver, characters isolated in the middle of nowhere due to an automotive malfunction, a scary legend that one person in the group knows, a double-cross amongst those who we thought were all hapless victims, a control room with cameras that show all of the strings being pulled, cheerful music being played through grotesque moments, and even some stupid voyeuristic elements concerning people on their phones and a would-be horror filmmaker with the most convoluted logic imaginable. This only scratches the surface of homages, (cough, theft, cough), going on, but it is so blatant and upfront that condemning the entire thing due to its liberal cherry picking amongst played-out tropes is like shitting on candy bars for being sweet. If not for a sloppy ending and vile torture porn moments, it could have lived up entertainingly to its self-aware title, but at least the pacing is brisk and it is visually on point.
Dir - Claudia Llosa
Overall: MEH
Brooding with an enigmatic aura that is difficult if not impossible to crack, Claudia Llosa's Fever Dream, (Distancia de rescate), is equal parts frustrating and evocative. The first adaptive work from Llosa, (based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Samanta Schweblin, who co-authored the screenplay here), the story concerns the emotional turmoil brought on by a mother's "rescue distance" towards her child; a concept that the farther that she is physically away, the more likely that it will be impossible for her to protect the one that she most cherishes. It is an immediate theme that any viewer can relate to, (parent or not), and it is told with a veiled, hypnagogic agenda as two characters have a conversation in voice over in an attempt to piece together what transpired. Both Oscar Faura's cinematography and Natalie Holt's score provide an ethereal atmosphere that fuses with earthy colors and a rural summer setting where the very landscape may be holding some poisonous secret that can only be mended with the splintering of one's soul through magical means. There are neither spoon-fed answers nor conventional horror tactics utilized here, with any supernatural elements, (if there even are any), being hidden within a psychological haze. More spellbinding than rewarding, its intimate ambition is at least admirable.
Dir - Peter Winther
Overall: MEH
A B-movie thriller that plays by too many rules to keep track of, Aftermath is both redundant and overlong despite its committed performances. We have the "inspired by true events" tag, unexplained events only being witnessed by a woman that no one believes, said unexplained events happening gradually instead of logically in order to string-out the running time, said unexplained events being completely arbitrary, obvious psyche-outs, scary music manipulating mundane set pieces, an "explanation" that arrives thirty minutes too early so that the audience knows that there is more to come and so that the characters can relax into a state of vulnerability again, plus a twist which reveals superhuman insight and capabilities on the part of the aggressor. Without an original bone in its body, the nearly two hour running time is destined to unimpress, but the film works far better as a tense, marital drama than anything that belongs in the horror camp. As a couple trying to overcome past infidelity issues, both Ashley Greene and Shawn Ashmore are relatable despite their textbook movie actor attractiveness, going through many of the motions that husbands and wives have to deal with when tensions are high and triggers bring out primal, knee-jerk insecurities and projections. Throwing in all of the stale, haunted house/home intruder nonsense only murks up the more compelling aspects, but considering that horror movies get more attention than others, its genre-pandering is understandable if not forgivable.
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