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[Brooklyn Horror Film Fest] 20 Cool Things Seen at the 1st Annual Brooklyn Horror Film Festival

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8 years ago

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With the first annual Brooklyn Horror Film Fest complete, we look at some of the highlights from the burgeoning festival

New York saw the emergence of a new film festival catered specifically to horror needs this past weekend, with the results being rather encouraging. The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival ran from October 14-16, showcasing over a dozen features and a wealth of shorts from filmmakers from across the globe (as well as a healthy featuring of Brooklyn’s own) . The programming and events clearly display a passion for horror with a few more eclectic selections on the docket rather than indulging in mainstream horror. On top of that, other events like scary story competitions told around a campfire, intense horror trivia, and other occasions to reward the audience were embraced in the sort of way that’s only possible at a smaller festival of this nature. With the dedication and response that BHFF saw in their inaugural year, hopefully this festival will become a tradition that only comes back stronger and more aggressive, like some killer zombie. Until then, here are 20 cool things that were seen at this year’s film fest, as well as a primer for what to get excited about next year.

  • Dani Mari and Johnny Butler’s live performance of their music videos inspired by Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers Trilogy,” “Sighs,” “Darkness,” and “Tears.” At one point during this performance someone decked out in ghoulish make-up and attired discreetly handed me a key, adding further layers to this intense performance
  • Grady Hendrix’s 100% true one-man show, Summerland Lost, which involves drunken Victorian teens teaming up with Ben Franklin’s ghost to answer the questions of the afterlife. Hendrix is a masterful storyteller that bounds around in the genre with an invigorated delight
  • The deranged mindfuckery, masterful subtle storytelling, and “monster” work in Robert Kotecki’s short, Tilly
  • Jacqueline Castel’s beautiful ode to John Carpenter (who happens to score this short, as well as make a cameo) in the ‘80s slasher throwback, The Puppet Man
  • Jackson Stewart’s Beyond the Gates’ and the film’s love for “VCR board game” horror, with this almost feeling like a “Horror Jumanji” or an adult version of Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Not to mention, the film’s copious amounts of practical gore and head explosions.
  • The “Ghosts We’ve Known Storytelling Competition,” which led to some genuinely unnerving scary stories told around a campfire in the back of an occult book store, all while being judged by a practicing witch
  • The WTF madness that is the monster/sexually explicit love story in Brian Lonano’s Gwilliam
  • The mere premise of Erlingur Thoroddsen’s Child Eater, where a killer eats its victims’ eyes with the hopes that it will repair its own vision
  • The psychological horror of Shaun Robert Smith’s Broken, the sheer gauntlet that Evie (Morjana Alaoui of Martyrs fame) goes through, and its absolute bonkers ending
  • The Ghoulies-esque monsters that populate Bobby Miller’s creative, humorous, The Master Cleanse
  • The intense head trip that is Lorcan Finnegan’s lost-in-the-woods, Without Name, and its bookending segments that are without dialogue and instead invest in tone
  • The sheer concept of Fabien Delage’s documentary, Fury of the Demon, which investigates one of the most controversial early pieces of film of all time. A deeply interesting doc topic on how a film can spontaneously incite rage
  • The twist and ending note that Kaitlin Tinker’s short, The Man Who Caught A Mermaid, goes out on, not to mention the general look they use for mermaids, transforming them into something scary
  • The strong, disturbing coda in Nathan Ambrosioni’s (who’s only seventeen!) Therapy, which presents a horde of broken women who are just shells, crawling and staring aimlessly
  • Helen ripping open her infected stitches in Cody Calahan’s Let Her Out, only to find a finger within her arm. Not to mention the ridiculous final transformation Helen goes through where she essentially turns herself inside out.
  • David Otte and Vance Tucker’s ability to turn an electric toothbrush into a terrifying, foreboding object, in their short, The Toothbrush
  • Joshua Erkman’s The Sound of the Blue, Green, and Red short that uses visuals and sensory assaults (that practically give you a seizure) to get its message across, rather than dialogue
  • The final, perfect beat of Heather Taylor’s short, Stitched, and Deborah Green’s glowing performance that sells the whole thing
  • The premiere of Mattie Do’s Dearest Sister, the 13th feature to ever come out of Laos, and Do as the country’s only voice in horror
  • Adrien Grenier having a seizure in the middle of having sex, causing his partner to reach orgasm, in Richard Bates, Jr.’s bold Trash Fire

Hopefully next year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival will have even more impressive highlights to offer!

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Daniel Kurland is a freelance writer, comedian, and critic, whose work can be read on Splitsider, Bloody Disgusting, Den of Geek, ScreenRant, and across the Internet. Daniel knows that "Psycho II" is better than the original and that the last season of "The X-Files" doesn't deserve the bile that it conjures. If you want a drink thrown in your face, talk to him about "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II," but he'll always happily talk about the "Puppet Master" franchise. The owls are not what they seem.

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Editorials

Finding Faith and Violence in ‘The Book of Eli’ 14 Years Later

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1 day ago

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April 22, 2024

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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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