Going into Magnetic, I had no idea that the husband and wife duo Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola had experience directing music videos, but within the first 10 minutes of this indie sci-fi it’s easy to recognize their background. That’s because Magnetic is essentially a series of music videos that are interrupted by brief scenes of robotic-like dialogue in an attempt to establish its futuristic atmosphere. For instance, our heroine Alice (Allix Mortis) gets into a car, inserts a cassette tape (yes, this is supposed to be the future, but it’s…magnetic) and pulsating ’80s inspired synth music plays as she drives. And drives. And drives. In an effort to fill time while the entire song plays, we see every side of Alice from every angle as she drives to a remote pay phone (yeap, still supposedly in the future). The music is temporarily suspended when the phone rings and a monotoned voice on the other end gives a cryptic message only the character understands. This lasts for less than a minute before she drives off and the music starts back up again.

It’s difficult to make sense of what the film is actually about, but that’s mostly by design. Obscure lines like “initiating electromagnetic brain link” and “solar flare activity within normal parameters” mean very little without explanation. But unfortunately, the directors’ hold useful exposition until the very last scene. This doesn’t result in a rewarding final reveal, it just makes watching everything before it frustrating and incohesive. There’s no question the filmmakers recognize catchy beats, or that they can create a stylish, moody atmosphere. But constructing complex sci-fi ideas into an engaging low-budget thriller may have been a little too ambitious.

Reveries of a Solitary Walker begins with an appropriate title card quoting gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turns professional,” before diving into its own weird fantasy world built from various types of mixed-media. In this first full-length film from Italian director Paolo Gaudio, elements of live-action and claymation are mixed together to form a unique illustration. The story follows three different characters, each in different time periods and media type, as they encounter the unfinished work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Gaudio begins mixing visual styles early on, when an absinthe drinking poet (presumably hallucinating) flips out when the paper he’s writing on comes to life and slithers into the desk drawer in stop-motion fashion. Capping off this reverie scene, the poet dives headfirst into the bottomless drawer and gets swallowed up by it, which highlights Gaudio’s nifty visual techniques and reveals the surrealism style found in these stories.

While Reveries of a Solitary Walker is without a doubt an impressive visual feat, the film lacks steady pacing and tone. This is most noticeable in the storyline involving two modern-day students working a thesis on Rousseau unfinished work. When compared to the other two tales, this section contains nearly all of the dialogue and very little of the whimsical creativity found in the other areas. Gaudio demonstrates his gift for creating magical set pieces, but it’s difficult to admire anything beyond the visuals and good intentions of this uneven film.

Phil Stevens is the kind of underground, extreme horror filmmaker that we need more of—the kind of filmmaker who places great emphasis on establishing a haunting and memorable atmosphere, and not relying on an overabundance of jump scares. His debut feature film, Flowers isn’t something that I’d classify as being for the faint of heart. Not even remotely. However, there’s a surreal beauty to its grotesqueness that, along with the absence of dialogue, almost forces it into the sub-genre of meditative cinema (which is something scarcely stated about extreme horror films). Though it’s loose in narrative, the general plot of the film focuses on six female spirits (played by Colette Kenny McKenna, Krystle Fitch, Anastasia Blue, Tanya Paoli, Kara A. Christiansen and Makaria Tsapatoris), all recently murdered by the same serial killer (Bryant W. Lohr Sr.), seemingly stuck on the threshold of reality and the afterlife, confined to the labyrinth passageways of a sort of purgatory-esque edifice.

One thing about Flowers on an aesthetic level, is that the location itself is just as much of a character as the six trapped spirits. Stevens seemed intent on building an entire world within one singular structure, and succeeded in doing so by placing great detail in the crafting of a maze-like setting, in which horrifying images are built upon horrifying images, revealing layer after layer of an impenetrable darkness and culminating in a harrowing, cathartic and deeply inspired final sequence. The aforementioned darkness is perpetual, not just in subject matter but in the lighting (or lack thereof) of the intricate production design; even the few scenes that contain ample light are glimpsed only briefly through holes in shadowed walls so that the illuminated visuals are surrounded by black. The claustrophobia felt by the spirits is felt just as powerfully by the viewer.

The complex soundscape is what carries the film, and is restrained not in the sense that it’s seldom utilized but in the sense that it’s composed of fluid, quiet and melancholic waves of subtly disturbing audio (juxtaposing the tragic world that has been created), rather than loud and abrasive noises designed simply to shock the ears. Sometimes certain sounds can produce subjective images in the mind’s visuospatial sketchpad. It’s almost as if Stevens and his crew purposefully fused some of the more dimly lit sequences—in which only outlines of strange and broken shapes can be discerned—with some of the more abstract sounds so that the viewer is free to fill in the blanks of these ambiguous visuals with whatever materializes in their psyche.

There’s no doubt that Flowers exists within its own universe, one in which time is not the same and spirits are able to coexist with their previous physical form during the final moments of their earthly existence. But this is only the case due to the fact that nostalgia and memories are represented as material, whether the women are reflecting back on their past (by conjuring up toy trains and exploring polaroid photographs), their demons (by looking back at sorrowful lives of chemical dependence and issues with body image), or the very moment of their murders. In effect, they become the voyeurs to their own demise.

Ultimately, Flowers is both gorgeous and repulsive, beautiful yet sickening; it’s aptly titled, as flowers can be both lovely, or they can be the pattern of the mattress on which a woman is being disemboweled by a psychotic necrophiliac (as seen in the film). The viewer is dropped into a world that they know they shouldn’t be in, seeing things that they know they shouldn’t be seeing. It’s made all the more painful by the fact that the viewer is aware of what the women in the film aren’t: that they’re desperately attempting to escape a fate that has already befallen them. At one point in the film, the word “defect” can be seen in the background, as in the defect in the machine, the fault in the plan, the fact that no matter how hard they try, there’s no escaping what’s been done.

Very few films out there, both inside and outside the genre of horror, are more effective in making the viewer so hyper-aware of the delicate, organic nature and fragility of the human body.

San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head genre film festival comes to a close tonight at New People Cinema, with the world premieres of The G-String Horror Demon Cut, a horror film by Charles Webb set in the streets of San Francisco, “re-cut by demons”, and Senn, a sci-fi otherworldly fantasy by Josh Feldman. Celebrating its tenth year, the festival welcomed dedicated genre film-lovers with open arms, screening the bloodiest, strangest, most excessive fims in the horror, fantasy, and sci-fi genres out there.

Below are my thoughts on a trio movies we saw at the festival. One, Thanatomorphose, was so mesmerizing in its yak-inducing body horror that I’m still thinking about it, and while the other two weren’t quite as enrapturing, all three were welcome, bloody distractions from the super-serious films I’ve been drowning in during this festival season.

For more reviews from the festival, click here.

Thanatomorphose

A body horror opus that would make David Cronenberg blush, Thanatomorphose is the sludgiest, blackest, stinkiest piece of cinema I’ve seen smudged across a movie screen maybe ever. And you know what? I dug it (not at first, but ultimately, yeah. I dug it). Following a lonely young woman and taking place exclusively in her Montreal apartment, we watch as she falls into an increasingly disgusting state of bodily decay that’s so visually vile and unwatchable to the weak-of-stomach, thanks to the intimate and patient style of director Éric Falardeau and cinematographer Benoit Lemîre.

The film opens with our lonely protagonist (Kayden Rose) screwing her douchebag boyfriend (with a perfectly douchey French-Canadian Montreal accent).  Our girl somehow contracts the titular disease that at first manifests itself as small bruises. Then, as the days wear on, the symptoms get worse and more gruesome: her skin begins to rot, her nails fall off, her bones become more brittle. Every step of her degradation is filmed as up-close and personal as possible, testing even my stomach (it’s usually pretty hard to gross me out). Falardeau’s camera is always uneasy, swaying from side to side, framing everything way off-center, creating a sense of constant unbalance. As our girl’s body grows more grotesque (maggots eventually begin to feast on her blackened, dead flesh), Falardeau shoves our face in it and makes us watch every detail, with shots that linger much longer than most could stand.

The crawling pace of the film moves a slowly as the bile and puss dripping down Rose’s almost always-nude body, and is at first hard to latch on to. But, I began to fall in step with the lurching rhythm of the film, I was induced into a buzzing, nightmarish state that had me riveted. There are a couple deeper themes and metaphors at play here, touching on agoraphobia, loneliness, depression, and female self and sexual worth. But really, what’s fascinating is Falardeau’s terribly disturbing imagery, an unblinking, patient depiction of a woman wasting away to nothing, physically, mentally, sexually, and spiritually.

Motivational Growth

Yet another gross-out film that takes place entirely in an apartment, Motivational Growth is a silly, irreverent, bizarre film about a guy named Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) and his relationship with a talking giant piece of mold (looks more like a piece of shit) on his bathroom floor. Ian is a complete slob, and his rotting, filthy apartment (which he never leaves) is a reflection of his mess of a life. When his ancient television set (which he’s named Kent) breaks down on him, he throws a panicked fit and tries to kill himself, but fails and ends up bumping his head, which presumedly leads to him having perceived conversations with The Mold (Jeffrey Combs).

The film goes on way too long, and while Ian’s conversations with The Mold are worth a chuckle, at least, his human interations–with a snappy grocery delivery girl (Hannah Stevenson), his hulking landlord (Pete Giovagnoli), and his pretty neighbor (Danielle Doetsch)–are poorly acted, too long, and only worth a shrug. Stylistically, director Don Thacker excels, with unique, trippy editing, wonderful set design, and enjoyable, off-kilter dialog (particularly between Ian and The Mold). Worth a look for midnight-movie heads, but for no one else.

Bath Salt Zombies

A potent strand of bath salts have been circulating the New York drug scene, turning people into devoted junkies. But these aren’t your run-of-the-mill, paranoid coke-heads; they’re violent, crazed, flesh-eating, Bath Salt Zombies! Resembling a pothead student film, director Dustin Mills’ crack at the zombie genre doesn’t excel at anything, though it seems Mills and his crew probably had a good time making it, which is definitely worth something. The various characters–some junkies, some government officials trying to contain the epidemic, some dealers–are almost all amateurishly acted, and the nothing plot is a patchy string of sloppily produced set pieces. An “action sequence” sees a DEA agent taking down a group of criminals in the hallway of a suburban household and looks like it was made by Boondock Saints-loving high school kids. Maybe I would have liked it better if I were on bath salts…

Another Hole in the Head–San Francisco’s 10-years-young independent genre film festival–finished up its run at the Balboa theater last night, with a screening of the supernatural high school thriller, All Cheerleaders Die, which got a great response (and a round of applause) from the happy festival-goers. Starting tonight, Another Hole moves to New People Cinema in Japantown for the remainder of the festival (which runs through December 19th.)

With two more weeks of bloody goodness left in the fest, there are still a lot of great movies to check out and enjoy with like-minded fans of fantasy, horror, and sci-fi films. These movies are as independent as it gets, and one of the great joys of being a member of the indie film community is seeing films like these first and spreading the word so that others can discover these hidden blood-soaked gems.

Here are a few capsule reviews from the festival so far. Stay tuned for more festival coverage!

All Cheerleaders Die

Two parts Mean Girls, one part The Craft, and a dash of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, All Cheerleaders Die takes the best elements of the aforementioned high school femme-flicks and stirs them into a delicious dish of R-rated, bitchy girl-power fun. When Maddy’s (Caitlin Stasey) friend Alexis dies in a freak cheerleading accident in junior, she transforms herself from a plain-jane nobody into a pretty-princess cheerleader type heading into her final year of high school (for devious reasons best revealed in the movie.) The cheerleader bitch club (the “b” word is a term of endearment for the troupe) accept Maddy as one of their own, which forms a rift between she and ex girlfriend Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), a novice wicca who inadvertently introduces dark magic into the angst-y teenage drama.

The movie begins like any other store-brand high school movie, but once the supernatural story elements get introduced, it’s a lot of trashy (in a good way) fun. Directors Lucky Mckee and Chris Sivertson elevate the horrors of high school through the lens of the dark arts (there’s that dash of Buffy I mentioned) and don’t shy away from the fantastical, the absurd, the hyper-violent, or the melodramatic. Everything’s turned up to 11, and those with a taste for zany excess will no doubt be frothing at the mouth for more after the tantalizing cliffhanger ending. [Bernard Boo]

Evil Feed

Up there as one of the most bizarre synopsis that I have read in a while, Evil Feed is a comedy/horror (in that order) film about an underground Chinese restaurant that kidnaps martial artists to fight each other with the loser getting cooked up and served for consumption to wealthy restaurant goers. Yes, it is just as crazy as it sounds. But the film is only out to have fun with the genre and that is exactly what makes this over-the-top violent and raunchy horror film so enjoyable to watch. For every bloody cage match fight there is a hilarious campy scene to balance it out.

Everything about the film screams grindhouse throwback, the most obvious way being the picture chock-full of artificial scratches and film reel artifacts. For a film that is not supposed to be taken seriously at all (dick jokes are frequent punch lines), the production value found here is shockingly high; the cast deliver their lines with conviction (no matter how ridiculous they are) and the fight sequences look professionally choreographed. If you are easily offended by crude sexual humor, people eating human body parts, or cage fights where people’s throats are ripped out, then Evil Feed is definitely not for you. But for others Evil Feed is wholly entertaining with its exaggerated ridiculousness. [Dustin Jansick]

Face

Face opens with the disclaimer that what you are about to see is supposedly found footage from leaked police evidence of the “Halloween Fear Factory” competition between a fraternity and sorority that went horribly wrong. The rules of this annual scare competition are simple and are explained early on by a group of stereotypical frat partiers; the first side that calls for help or leaves the house loses. The penalty of losing is that you are forced do anything that the other team wants. It is a classic boys versus girls revenge story with each side confident they outsmarted the other.

The film eventually becomes tiresome when we are forced to re-watch the entire beginning of the night all over from the perspective of girls. At first this is admittedly intriguing because it exposes the fact that the girls had a plan when they seemingly did not, but the novelty soon wears out and becomes redundant. For the majority of its runtime Face is like a lovechild between The Blair Witch Project and Spring Breakers—capturing the recklessness college kids partying on a continuously moving handheld camera. That is until all hell breaks loose in the nightmarish final 10 minutes when suddenly the title of the film becomes horrifically apparent. [Dustin Jansick]

The Battery

Despite its premise–a pair of former baseball players trekking across a zombified New England–Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery is far from the silly bash-em-up you’d expect. It’s way smarter than that; this is a grounded character piece, about lost hope, clashing personalities, denial, and camaraderie, cut from the same cloth as Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. The zombies act as both backdrop and MacGuffin, propelling the characters forward on their journey whenever things start to settle. It’s really funny, too, with the leads pulling off the odd-couple chemistry so well that you’ll laugh, and laugh, and laugh with them until suddenly…they feel like your best friends. You’re screwed–stakes are high; chances of survival are low; intense drama ensues.

The humor starts of light and quirky, but where the film ends up is startlingly grim and unsettling. Gardner, who wrote, directed, and stars in the film (alongside Adam Cronheim, who plays the second baller), is ambitiously artful (especially for this genre), using ungodly lengthy takes (the climactic single shot of the film had to be at least 8 minutes long), lots of slick nature shots of the muggy backwoods, and a twangy guitar soundtrack that makes his New England feel like the bayou. Gardner’s wise-ass, zombie-smashing, lovable dude-bro works well with Cronheim’s paranoid, jumpy killjoy, making the 100-minute runtime brisk. Like Shaun of the Dead, The Battery accomplishes the rare zombie-movie feat of making the live characters more entertaining than the dead ones. A gem of a zombie flick, especially when you consider the $6,000(!) budget. [Bernard Boo]

Tonight, after the insanity of Black Friday shopping has passed and everyone’s Turkey-itis has subsided, the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival will be kicking off its three-week-long program, introducing San Franciscans to a whole new kind of madness, full of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks that’ll delight fans of hardcore genre film (and likely make everyone else want to hurl. In a good way, of course.) The program, consisting of 54 feature films and 27 shorts, will be taking place at the Balboa Theater from today, November 29th, to December 5th. Then, the fest moves on to the New People Cinema in Japantown until December 19th.

For opening night, the festival is kicking off with Stalled, an interesting take on the zombie genre that places all the gory action in a tiny bathroom stall, The Battery, a zombie flick about two former baseball players navigating an undead-filled New England, and The Shower, about a twisted, homicidal baby shower.

Films we’re looking forward to at the festival:

All Cheerleaders Die–Lucy McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die, the festival’s opening night film, is an ode to the slasher films of the ’80s in which the rebellious new girl at Blackfoot High convinces recruits her fellow classmates into the cheer-leading squad to combat a dark supernatural enemy. (Plays Dec. 5 at Balboa)

Face–Following a string of harrowing acts committed by college students that turned into the massacre of the Delta Chi Kappa sorority on Halloween 2012, Face looks to be a treat for fans of gross-out violence and…boobs? Sounds like there will be boobs. The film will be making its world premiere at the festival. (Plays Dec. 18 at New People)

Bath Salt Zombies–“Drugs, sex, & cannibalism!” Those are the three wonderful words the makers of Bath Salt Zombies use as a tagline for their zombie outbreak epic. I’ve seen the film, and I’ll just say it delivers on just two of the three promises. It’ll be interesting to see how an audience reacts to this frantic mess of a movie. (Plays Dec. 16 at New People)

Cheap Thrills–When a man (Pat Healy) loses his job and isn’t able to provide for his family, he teams up with an old high school buddy (Ethan Embry) to do dirty work for a wealthy couple to make extra dough. How far will he go to make ends meet? Here’s hoping he goes as far as the eye can see. (Plays Dec. 18 at New People)

Thanatomorphose–My pick for catchiest title of the festival (doen’t it just roll off the tongue?), Thanatomorphose is a Canadian film that follows a pretty girl as she wakes up to find her body rotting away (the title is a hellenic word that means “the visible signs of an organisms decomposition caused by death.” Sounds lovely! (Plays Dec. 16 at New People)

Senn–Making its world premiere as the closing night film of the festival, Senn follows the titular character, a worker on a forgotten world called Pyom, as he’s chosen by an alien being called the Polychronom for reasons that could spell doom for the humble factory worker. Sci-fi zaniness is sure to be abound. (Plays Dec. 19 at New People)

One of the biggest highlights of the festival for me will be the screening of two horror classics in gorgeous 35mm: Steven Spielberg’s textbook in suspense,  Jaws, and Stanley Kubrick’s legendarily enigmatic The Shining. In addition to these screenings, there will be a presentation of The Shining: Forwards and Backwards, which will probably drive me crazy, but will most importantly offer a fascinating new perspective on Kubrick’s classic.

Another very cool event will take place tomorrow at the Balboa Theater at 1pm, where the festival will screen two hours of Saturday morning cartoons and serve cereal and milk, all for FREE! The opportunity to watch “Jem & the Holograms”, “Looney Toons”, “He-Man” and more is one no self-respecting 90’s kid can pass up.

Another Hole in the Head runs from November 29th-December 19th. For scheduling and ticket info, visit sfindie.com. Stay tuned to Way Too Indie for more news from the festival!