FAFF 2020 Review: Anonymous Animals will make your skin crawl.

FAFF 2020 Review: Anonymous Animals will make your skin crawl.

By: The Rev. Dan Wilson

French filmmakers aren’t afraid to make some fucked up movies and hot damn do I love that about them. I recall our coverage of the Chattanooga Film Festival back in the spring for the movie Jumbo. It was sold to me as “a movie about a girl who does the nasty with a Tilt-A-Whirl”. While that was a bit of a gross oversimplification, it was equal parts completely bizarre and surprisingly sweet. By the end I was actually rooting for the forbidden lovers to succeed. 

Well, 2020’s Anonymous Animals by Director/Writer Baptiste Rouveure is a French film that checks any sort of that optimism at the door and gives you an all out sensory assault and sense of impending doom throughout instead, but it sure does deliver on the fucked up part. 

The premise is pretty simple. The world of humans and animals has been flipped on its head and the rolls are now reversed. They treat us exactly as we treat them, and the results aren’t pretty. We see a literal “Deer Hunter” chasing after pitiful human prey as he brandishes a shotgun. We see cattle herding people and sending them through the old slaughterhouse to be made into meat, we see a pack of dogs making humans fight each other to the death, and a number of other disturbing reversal of fortune scenarios. 

This is some weird, trippy, experimental filmmaking at its best. I recommend watching it half in the bag, though I’d avoid any sort of hallucinogens as it could lead to a bad time. There really isn’t much of a coherent plot per se, just a collection of examples of these supremely disturbing humanoid creatures with animal heads inflicting some variety of torture on a hapless human. 

There is also absolutely no dialogue in the entire movie. Just humans screaming in terror and animals grunting and making disturbing animal noises. 

I suppose there is some sort of Peta inspired or Vegan message here, since we ultimately find out that we really wouldn’t like it at all if animals treated us the way that we treat them, but it didn’t change my diet or anything. I don’t feel like they’re going for that in any sort of heavy handed manner here, the main goal is clearly to make a disturbing film. Most of the gore or violence is implied or cut away from, yet there are snapshots from this thing that will haunt me for weeks to come and there is a real artistic flair about the imagery, the mood the film sets, and overall disturbing tone. This is the type of movie that gets under your skin, sits there a while and causes you to think. If that sounds like your kind of film, then you should seek out Anonymous Animals. 

[Frightening Ass Film Fest Review] “Spare Parts” by The Great Muji.

[Frightening Ass Film Fest Review] “Spare Parts” is a punk survival tale that never reaches the heights it aspires to but is still plenty of fun.

By The Great Muji

The Frightening Ass Film Fest has provided me with an opportunity that I haven’t had in a long time, to go into a movie knowing absolutely nothing about it. This takes me back to the glory days of my childhood when I would go to the video store and choose a couple of rentals based simply off the box art. Of course, this would always lead to mixed results. Sometimes I would stumble across something great that would last as a favorite for the rest of my life, but often times it would lead to a disastrous viewing of a terrible film whose box art was a complete misrepresentation of the movie inside. Either way, the process of picking the movie and going in only knowing what the VHS cover told me was always an exhilarating feeling, even when it brought such mixed results. Watching director Andrew Thomas Hunt’s “Spare Parts” gave me a similar feeling, “Spare Parts” is a movie that is sometimes exhilarating but ended up leaving me with very mixed feelings.

“Spare Parts” starts out with a bang. We meet a punk band led by sisters Amy(Michelle Argyris) and Emma(Emily Alatalo). After a dude gets on stage and attempts to interrupt their performance at a bar, the sisters and their bandmates kick the asses of the dude and his friends. Then Amy disappears to hook up with fan as Emma is left to talk to a creep by herself. This early scene does a great job of setting up the dynamic between the sisters. The band then has some car trouble and is tricked by the local police(classic) into being abducted by a crazy cult that lives in an old junkyard. They are all put to sleep and wake up with amputated arms that have been replaced with various weapons. The band is then forced into a makeshift arena to fight for their lives Roman gladiator style against some other abducted people. It’s a really great set up.

Once we settle into the movie is where it becomes a bit uneven. Throughout the movie different cult members attempt to pit the sisters against each other. Its easy to understand that both sisters are jealous of one another for different reasons, but not enough character work happens to really make you care about either. Even in the movies final minutes I really didn’t care who (if anyone) was going to survive. Another issue was the action scenes. Some of them were great! There was a lot of good gore in this movie. There was also some gore that wasn’t so awesome and few brutal kills that were completely cut way from. 

Ultimately the movie falls into a repetitive routine where the girls argue, and train then fight. In between different cult members, led by their leader The Emperor (Julian Richings in a very good, memorable performance), attempt to indoctrinate the sisters with the cult’s ideals. The reasons why the cult members decide to stay loyal after being abducted really don’t add up. This is the part where I believe the movie aspires to have a little more depth than it ultimately does, but that’s ok. 

Despite it’s flaws, “Spare Parts” is still a fun a pretty fun movie overall. Having women with weapons screwed onto their arms and fighting in a gladiator arena can make up for a lot of a movie’s flaws. What the movie does get right makes it worth a watch.

FAFF 2020 Review: "Hail To The Deadites!"

By: The Rev Dan Wilson

Director Steve Villenueve (Under The Scares, Stories Of A Gravedigger, The Mask Of James Henry) is a lifelong Evil Dead fan who was able to take that fandom and give it a thorough examination in the 2020 documentary “Hail To The Deadites” which premiered earlier this year at Fantasia Fest (and that I saw as part of Chattanooga Film Fest's annual Halloween party, Frightening Ass Film Fest. Frightening Ass Film Fest - Get your badge here!)

There have been several great “behind the scenes” pieces released for the various “Evil Dead” installments and subsequent TV series, generally located as part of the special features on your media format of choice. And while there are several great fan communities in the horror world, (ie: Halloween, Nightmare, Friday The 13th, Scream, etc), it is true there is a unique sense of community in the Evil Dead fandom.  This documentary is actually not about the films themselves, but the fandom and culture that surrounds them. 

Any time I wear an Evil Dead shirt or hat and go in public, it is guaranteed to be a conversation starter. Speaking from experience at my former job, pro wrestlers love Evil Dead. (Former UFC and current WWE star Matt Riddle is one of them.) Hell people love Evil Dead. Sometimes people who aren’t even otherwise horror fans. There is just something about it that draws people in. More specifically, people love Ash. He has to be the most popular “good guy” character in horror by a milestone.  He is tough, resourceful, a complete smartass, and he never gives up and can take a legendary ass kicking while talking shit the whole time. Given his importance to the community it was great to see Bruce Campbell heavily involved in this documentary and showing a real genuine appreciation for the fans of Evil Dead. 

We also heard from most of the living cast and crew of both Evil Dead and Evil Dead II in the film, (RIP Danny Hicks, who we lost earlier this year) with the Evil Dead II stars being particularly appreciative of the love the films have garnered over the years. The only noticeable absences were of course Sam Raimi (though his brother Ted certainly had plenty of facetime) and Rob Tapert. 

In this film we meet Deadites of all varieties from all over the place. We met an Ash cosplayer named Adam who really does strongly resemble a young Bruce, a couple who got married at an Evil Dead convention where they got FX maestro Tom Sullivan to help with their proposal, AC and her baby Ash, who was born with a heart defect but refuses to give up (hence the name), and a who’s who of Evil Dead collectors, obsessives and megafans. 

As a nerd for useless junk, I also appreciated the level of detail we got covering the various Evil Dead merch and toys that have been released over the years starting all the way back to the McFarlane Movie Maniacs figures from the 90s. It was a real treat to see some of these collections and I almost feel like there could be an entire documentary just dedicated to that side of Evil Dead fandom. 

Another unique piece of this presentation was that Villenueve elected not to use any footage from the films and instead collected a trove of fan film footage, art, animations and original music for the documentary cut scenes where film footage would normally be found and the results really made the whole thing come together as this ultimate love letter to the Evil Dead fan community. 

I assume this was shot a few years ago, as the only real bummer about the whole thing is that at the end of the documentary they’re all talking about Ash vs Evil Dead as if it was the finish line for the story of Ash and we know of course that it got cut short when the show was cancelled by Starz prior to the 4th and final season, and then Bruce Campbell announced his subsequent retirement from the Ash character. We have gotten a bit of good news on that front recently though as rumblings of “EVIL DEAD RISE”, a new sequel created by the original team, is on the slate soon and we’re told it will be “Evil Dead comes to the city.” Campbell has denied any sort of return of Ash, though is actively involved on the project as as a producer and it is rumored the film will have a female lead. Plenty of plot threads were certainly left open between the Evil Dead “remake/requel” from 2013 and the Ash vs Evil Dead TV series. There was Mia, there was Kelly and there was Ash’s daughter. Our new heroine could also just be a brand new character and of course we all hope that Bruce is bluffing and that Ash will return at least one final time to officially pass the torch. But...that’s just the Evil Dead fan in me rambling at this point. I could talk about my love of this franchise for hours, therefore this documentary hit all of the sweet spots for me. 

Hail to the Deadites, Baby!