The biggest surprise out of Music Box Chicago’s inaugural Cinepocalypse Film Festival (sponsored by Bloody Disgusting) was completely under the radar. It was a film not listed in the program. In fact, it wasn’t even a secret screening, but a challenge, a first-of-its-kind bet between a programmer and two producers.
The festival issued Boulderlight producers JD Lifshitz and Raphael Margules a challenge: produce a genre feature exclusively for Cinepocalypse 2017. There were no parameters other than it must be a feature-length midnight movie, and that they must begin production immediately upon release of our first announcement. They had a month to make a film from conception to world premiere.
The film turned out to be a tongue-in-cheek sequel to BoulderLight’s Mike Testin-directed Dementia (2015), their deadpan serious thriller about an elderly war veteran who is forced by his estranged family to hire a live-in nurse, only to find she harbors a sinister secret.
As I previously explained, Dementia: Part II, however, is all midnight movie, a complete juxtapose of its predecessor that’s not only funny but disgusting. Where the first film was a slow-burn riddled with exposition, this “sequel” was an exercise in chaos, madness, and insanity. Co-directed by Testin and star Matt Mercer, the plot follows Mercer as an ex-convict who has become a small-jobs repairman, who ends up in a house with a frightening old woman (Suzanne Voss) with dementia. Shot in black and white, the nightmare escalates as the woman shoves $100 bills in Mercer’s pocket, stringing him along for the revolting ride. Testin and Mercer take from the pages of Sam Raimi with their blocking and gross-out humor, hammering home revolting sequences similar to those in Drag Me to Hell.
The film has been spending a good part of 2018 on the festival circuit and now, ahead of its Screamfest premiere. Bloody Disgusting has a look at the film’s trailer and official one-sheet that teases the resurrection of Suzanne. The below EC Comics-styled art was hand-drawn by Graham Hart (Scorpion Sandbox).
The full cast also includes Najarra Townsend, Graham Skipper, and Stacy Snyder. Matt Mercer and Mike Testin directed, edited, wrote, and produced the film in a month. JD Lifshitz and Raphael Margules are executive producers. Cathy Tuttle co-produced with Eric Slee and Rob Yoo serving as associate producers. SFX materials provided by Josh and Sierra Russell.
