Movies
[TIFF ’13 Review] ‘The Station’ Essentially An Old-Fashioned Creature Flick
We introduced director Marvin Kren to Bloody Disgusting readers with the release of our Selects title Rammbock: Berlin Undead, and now he’s back with another genre offering that had its World Premiere at the ongoing 38th Toronto International Film Festival.
Part of the Midnight Madness program, Kren’s Austrian horror film The Station takes place in the Alps, where environmental changes create the horror. Scientists are stunned as the nearby melting glacier is leaking a red liquid that quickly turns to be very special juice — with unexpected genetic effects on the local wildlife.
Mike Pereira was on hand to catch Kren’s creature feature, which he says was decent enough horror fare, although never really finds its footing.
“The Station is a perfectly decent horror thriller,” says Mike in his review, calling it pretty text book stuff. “There’s really nothing here that we haven’t seen before.
“The contemporary message dealing with the dangers of climate change works. It’s as realistically portrayed as you’d hope for in what essentially is an old-fashioned creature flick,” he explains before talking about the films inability to take it to the next level. “I was with the film from start to finish, patiently awaiting it to take it to the next level. Unfortunately it never does. When the action breaks out, it’s all fairly generic. There is solid scare or two but that’s about it…”
The 38th Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5 to 15, 2013. Watch our continuing coverage.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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