The Boston Underground Film Festival returned for its 26th edition March 18-22 at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge and the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline.
Here’s what I saw at this year’s event…
Normal
Normal feels like the culmination of Bob Odenkirk’s fascinating career trajectory, from cult comedy icon to lauded dramatic actor to unlikely action hero. It’s essentially “Fargo” meets Nobody, which may seem like a lazy comparison given the Odenkirk of it all, but Normal successfully juggles high-octane action, neo-noir crime, well-placed humor, and small-town dynamics.
Odenkirk stars as Ulysses, acclimating to his new position as interim sheriff of the sleepy, snowy town of Normal, Minnesota, following the death of his predecessor. After a character-driven first act, all hell breaks loose when a bank robbery goes wrong, leaving it up to Ulysses to save the corrupt town from the deadly grasp of the Yakuza.
Odenkirk is in top form, but Henry Winkler (Scream) steals his scenes as the mayor. The cast also features Lena Headey (“Game of Thrones”) as the local bartender, Brendan Fletcher (Freddy vs. Jason) as a would-be criminal, Ryan Allen (In the Shadow of the Moon) and Billy MacLellan (Nobody) as police officers, and Jess McLeod (It’s a Wonderful Knife) as an ostracized nonbinary kid.
Writer Derek Kolstad (John Wick, Nobody) has a seemingly endless supply of creative action set pieces in his arsenal, even channeling Final Destination in some of Normal‘s violent fatalities. Director Ben Wheatley (Meg 2: The Trench, Kill List) dips back into Free Fire territory to deliver another explosively chaotic genre-bender.
Normal will be released in theaters on April 17 via Magnolia Pictures.
Buffet Infinity
Told through a series of escalating faux-TV commercials, Canadian horror-comedy Buffet Infinity coalesces into a mostly cohesive and surprisingly engaging narrative involving rival local restaurants, an ominous religious organization, and a mysterious sinkhole.
The retro-screenlife approach proves effective, although the unique storytelling device is needlessly abandoned during several key moments in the final act. Not every gag lands, and the film’s conclusion fails to reach the potential of the buildup, but there are plenty of laughs to be had along the way.
Writer-director Simon Glassman cleverly pokes fun at cheesy small business ads while embracing their lo-fi aesthetic and satirizing consumerism and capitalism. Fans of WNUF Halloween Special and Too Many Cooks will certainly get their fill with Buffet Infinity, although it lacks the discipline of the former and the operatic absurdity of the latter.
Buffet Infinity is currently on the festival circuit.
Camp
The majority of Camp‘s 111-minute runtime plays like a Richard Linklater-esque coming-of-age hangout movie, but something sinister simmers beneath the surface as writer-director Avalon Fast methodically bewitches the viewer.
Racked with guilt following two tragedies in her young life, Emily (Zola Grimmer) takes a job as a counselor at a religious summer camp for troubled youth, where she finally finds belonging among her peers. When the full moon rises, Emily is drawn into the darkness. The darkness welcomes her with open arms, and her reality begins to slip away.
Like its main character, Camp requires the viewer to give itself over to the experience. If you’re on its wavelength, it will suck you into a hypnagogic limbo that exists in the space between dream and reality; adolescence and adulthood; grief and acceptance.
Camp will be released later this year via Dark Sky Films.
The Cramps: A Period Piece
Informed by writer-director Brooke H. Cellars’ experience with endometriosis, The Cramps: A Period Piece lives up to its cheeky title with a genre-bending combination of irreverent humor, coming-of-age melodrama, body horror, and feminist social commentary, all wrapped in a dreamy, 1960s aesthetic.
It centers on Agnes Applewhite (Lauren Kitchen), a blossoming young woman who takes a job as a shampoo girl at a colorful beauty salon, much to her sanctimonious family’s dismay. But no amount of shampoo can wash away the monster that lurks inside Agnes, whose period emerges as a deadly, Blob-like monster.
The Cramps could have made for a delightfully campy short in the vein of John Waters, but the material is stretched thin into a meandering 89-minute feature. Despite being shot on 35mm with a Technicolor-inspired palette and stylized production design, most scenes play out in a static wide shot, which further hinders the unfocused pacing.
The Cramps: A Period Piece is currently on the festival circuit.
Boorman and the Devil
Following the success of Deliverance, John Boorman was given the opportunity to direct The Exorcist, but he passed on it and instead made Zardoz. That film’s failure led him to helm what he proclaims to be “one of the most famous failures of all time:” Exorcist II: The Heretic.
Boorman and the Devil explores the filmmaker’s complicated relationship with the maligned 1977 sequel through his own words. Although the resoundingly negative response to the film still affects him, Boorman maintains a sense of humor about the production that quite literally almost killed him.
Actors Linda Blair and Louise Fletcher, along with several crew members, supplement Boorman with wonderfully candid stories from the trenches, while genre filmmakers Mike Flanagan (currently in production on his own take on The Exorcist), Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body), and Joe Dante (Gremlins) provide an appreciative perspective on the movie.
Far more than a glorified special feature, director David Kittredge delivers a full meal of a documentary. Boorman and the Devil may not change your opinion on Exorcist II, but it will allow you to appreciate the sequel’s unconventional approach and visionary technical achievements.
Boorman and the Devil is currently on the festival circuit.
Exorcist II: The Heretic
Revisiting Exorcist II: The Heretic after seeing Boorman and the Devil is like experiencing the film for the first time. Its perceived flaws suddenly play more like big swings; misguided though they may be, the bold choices are fascinating and the ambition is constant.
Set four years after the events of The Exorcist, 16-year-old Regan MacNeil (Blair) has ostensibly recovered from her demonic possession. Science and religion collide as psychologist Dr. Gene Tuskin (Fletcher) and Father Philip Lamont (Richard Burton, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) utilize an experimental hypnotherapy treatment in an attempt to mine Regan’s repressed trauma.
Since no film could live up to the impossibly high standards set by The Exorcist, why not go in a wildly different direction? That’s exactly what Boorman did, eschewing the legendary horrors of its predecessor in favor of a more metaphysical take on the material. Plus, the misunderstood sequel boasts an ethereal score by Ennio Morricone (The Thing, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).
Sugar Rot
Punk-rock in both ethos and aesthetic, Sugar Rot is something like Promising Young Woman meets Titane by way of Troma. But the transgressive indie struggles to find a balance between tone and messaging, as its exploitative mayhem undercuts the impact.
In the first of far too many sexual assault scenes, stripper/ice cream shop worker Candy (Chloë MacLeod) is raped by a deranged ice cream man. The sticky situation causes Candy’s body to begin turning into colorful ice cream from the inside out, rendering her an irresistible treat to men and women alike.
Relatively light on body horror despite a premise that begs for more, writer-director Becca Kozak uses genre trappings as a conduit for blunt commentary on such feminist issues as abortion, beauty standards, and sexual objectification.
Sugar Rot is currently on the festival circuit.
The Furious
The Furious is 112 minutes of wall-to-wall, hard-hitting, martial arts action. It may not be quite as expertly crafted as The Raid or as hyper-violent as The Night Comes For Us, but in a post-Epstein world, it’s incredibly satisfying to watch child traffickers get their comeuppance.
When his daughter is kidnapped, mute handyman Wang Wei (Xie Miao, The New Legend of Shaolin) teams up with Navin (Joe Taslim, Mortal Kombat), a pseudo-journalist with a personal vendetta of his own, to take down a human trafficking ring — which includes a mini The Raid reunion between Taslim and Yayan Ruhian, who plays a deadly archer that makes Hawkeye look like Cupid.
The duo battle their way through the ruthless criminal syndicate in spectacular fashion, as director Kenji Tanigaki utilizes his decades of experience in stunts (including Blade II and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) to choreograph innovative martial arts sequences. They sometimes veer into camp territory, but each show-stopping fight advances the plot.
The Furious will be released in theaters on June 12 via Lionsgate.
