Editorials
Chattanooga Film Festival Recap: 5 Genre Films to Put on Your Radar
In its first virtual edition, the Chattanooga Film Festival brought nearly thirty features, dozens of genre shorts, and four full days of packed live events straight to attendees’ home screens. Emphasis on packed. The landing page of the virtual festival allowed viewers to select films to watch at their leisure. A curated schedule of events allowed attendees to watch along live to special sessions, panels, and live film commentaries—all for an insanely low price that made attending a film festival more accessible than ever before.
Highlights included filmmakers Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, and Dave Lawson providing live-commentaries on Resolution, Spring, and The Endless. Scripts Gone Wild hosted a live reading of the screenplay for The Thing, complete with drinking game rules and a roster of notable talent led by Barbara Crampton playing R.J. MacReady. The more the group flubbed their lines, the higher the alcohol consumption. Let’s say things got rowdy. Mick Garris shared insight into his career as well as the making of The Stand in a delightful discussion. Podcast sessions, writing workshops, and Q&As with filmmakers featured in the lineup also rounded out the events.
The first virtual edition did have some kinks and occasional technical issues, but the enthusiastic staff worked through those with seemingly effortless ease. For example, Ernest Dickerson couldn’t be reached for his scheduled conversation with Ice-T over the making of their cult classic Surviving the Game. Instead, Artistic Director Josh Goldbloom stepped in to host the convo, which proved a major highlight with Ice-T’s frank anecdotes- when asked if Ice-T struggled with the emotional scenes in the film, he retorted that he learned acting standing in front of a judge.
For VIP badge holders, executive director and lead programmer Chris Dortch II led a discussion with Chad and Carey W. Hayes over their screenwriting career. They recounted their brushes with the supernatural while staying at the infamous LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans to write the first draft of their upcoming horror film about the place. They also revealed that Sony commissioned them to write a remake of William Castle’s The Tingler, though its status is up in the air thanks to the pandemic.
Attendees fell hard for mascot Beelzebub, Bubs for short, and Professor Morte and Guna delivered horror host sketches, adding visual interest to the online format. All of which to say, the groundbreaking virtual edition exceeded expectations. The only downside to this format is that the social element of film festivals shifted to social media, prompting an influx of attendees to live-tweet their way through movies not yet available to the public. Perhaps future virtual fests could create secure online chats to avoid this.
As for the film lineup, it contained a mix of festival darlings, retrospectives from Vinegar Syndrome, and new premieres. Check out our reviews for Skull: The Mask, The Pandemic Anthology, Fulci for Fake, and Attack of the Demons.
In addition, here are five more films to put on your radar…
Scare Package – coming to Shudder June 18
This horror anthology goes for broke both in silliness and gory practical effects. It showcases seven directors, seven tales of terror, and one overarching love letter to the genre. The wraparound features a Joe Bob Briggs-obsessed video store owner who recounts blood-splattered stories of horror to his new employee, relaying the rules of the genre. The segments are directed by Hillary & Courtney Andujar, Anthony Cousins, Emily Hagins, Aaron B. Koontz, Chris McInroy, Noah Segan, and Baron Vaughn. Luckily, you don’t have long to wait to check this anthology out; it’s coming to Shudder on June 18.
The VICE Guide to Bigfoot
This one offers a hilarious paranormal comedy by Adult Swim’s Zach Lamplugh. This debut feature plays like a mockumentary, in which Brian Edmond (as himself) aspires to be a hard-hitting reporter. Much to his chagrin, he’s instead assigned yet another clickbait project. That entails hunting for Bigfoot in the Appalachian Mountains with a popular YouTube cryptozoologist as his guide. Things get wacky, then violent as Edmond is forced to question whether his job is worth dying for. More straightforward comedy than genre feature, this entertaining mockumentary is still worth checking out.
The Wanting Mare
Nicholas Ashe Bateman’s feature debut is pure artistry. A sci-fi fantasy feature that spans generations, it revolves around the city of Withren, a sweltering place prone to violence. Wild horses are captured and sold for a pretty penny, shipped across the sea via gigantic industrial ship Levithen. For the line of women in the film, who share a recurring dream of escape, they yearn to procure the coveted ticket that would allow them passage on Levithen. Nearly everything in this film is a digital effect. The Wanting Mare is impressive visually and narratively; it plays out more like a lucid dream. It’s not the type of film to give its answers easily.
Homewrecker
This festival favorite from the Fantasia Film Festival proved to be a favorite among Chattanooga attendees as well. Alex Essoe stars as Michelle, a woman who reluctantly gives in to pushy requests to hang out by the overbearing Linda (Precious Chong). Michelle quickly realizes that Linda is obsessive and jealous, sparking a brutal game of cat-and-mouse. This one gets vicious and twisty, and you may never think of Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)” the same way.
Read our review out of Fantasia here.
The Beach House
If there’s any film from Chattanooga Film Festival’s lineup that should be prioritized, it’s this one. Written/Directed by Jeffrey A. Brown, The Beach House sees two college sweethearts arrive at a family beach house for a romantic weekend getaway. When they find it’s currently occupied, their vacation becomes a fight for survival thanks to a mysterious infection. While the romantic drama between the two leads ultimately goes nowhere, The Beach House becomes more than worthwhile thanks to an excellent lead performance by Liana Liberato, gnarly practical effects, and a breathless final act that draws from The Mist and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Also, one unforgettable moment of cringe-worthy foot trauma. Even better? Shudder acquired this title as well. Look for it sometime this year.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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