When I write my reviews I tend to ‘live-blog’ them, giving my honest impression as I go. I review a lot of indie games, usually coming in cold – with very little context – and it is usually not hard to tell what level of polish we will face by the time the intro screen is done. Writer-director Nicole Groton’s debut feature-length film Darkness In Tenement 45 is no exception – a series of yellow archival footage over an of score prepares us for a home movie, a passion project. The film, which was primarily funded through a Kickstarter campaign features over 20 associate producers in the end credits and ten pages of 2 columns of backers – roughly 460 backers! That is a lot of faith in this project.

But as we get to picture – we see a highly stylized world that feels like some out of early Jeunet – Delicatessen, or City of Lost Children: green patina walls, lit candles, brass candelabras, jade and ochre color palette.

A broad spectrum of ethnic and age-diverse characters are introduced early on (which always is refreshing) – using a performing style that feels almost whimsical; they all speak in a sort of mid-Atlantic pentameter: are they a commune? Does living in a bunker cause you speak like a Mennonite? Was this a creative decision? It is like watching a school play that still somehow keeps you from leaving for the restroom.

We begin with the group gathering around a table with all the characters discussing their inventory list – standard post-apocalyptic fetishism. Here the score turns into subdued woodwinds and strings-driven melodrama, distant horns that might be the horns of Gabriel from Thomas Newman’s score for Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture. The score eventually turns to Jackie Gleason-style mid-century big orchestra mood-music – a terrific stylistic twist. Composer Logan Rees, who works from LA but developed his musical career in New Orleans, brings a wonderfully unexpected, swooning and thematic musical context throughout the film.

Turn On Some Lights

The cinematography and lighting are quite good. Though it appears a lot was done with color timing and vignetting in post – the soft light wraps beautifully around the actors’ faces, handling the breadth of skin tones marvellously. Frequently the frame looks like a Norman Rockwell painting hanging on the wall of a Fallout game.

So cumulatively there are some nice creative decisions. On the other hand, the film is painfully slow. It is essentially a soporific Eugene O’Neill play that happens on a bisected two-storey set, that we are watching from the auditorium. I want to make sure to set expectations for anyone coming at this thinking they are signing up for a radioactive apartment horror.

There’s Something Happening Here…

There are some creepy dream sequences and, without giving too much away, a character arc that reminds me of John Wyndham’s novels or the first season of Umbrella Academy – that is to say a little magic realism. The anachronistic visuals – of a 19th-century New England (apparently New York) Architecture blended with Harry S. Truman era trappings (gas masks, etc) lend some mystery and intrigue, but ultimately only allude to a world that may never extend beyond the imagination.

Waiting to Exhale

After I am done watching the film, I pore over the press materials – apparently, someone at Dread Central breathlessly proclaimed this to be a ‘candidate movie of the year’ and an ‘absolute triumph.’ I would point that reviewer to some of the aforementioned materials I have cited in my impressions here, to anchor their astonishment.

That said, the Darkness in Tenement 45 take some chances, for all its references, and pulls off some nice beats. Could be a sign of good things to come from the director. The door has definitely been cracked open.

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For those who find the macabre irresistible, who side with Oogie Boogie rather than Santa Clause, who used to have a flashlight beside the bed to read after the lights were turned out and who make sure their toes aren’t sticking out of the covers in case a shark comes and bites them off, you may align with the ideas in the documentary Scary Stories.

This is a chronicle of the mania, the paranoia, the alarmism and the glee around the books by Alvin Schwartz’ unapologetic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (as illustrated by Stephen Gammell) that were banned, reviled, blacklisted.

A series of interviews with over 40 subjects, interspersed with provisionally animated interstitials in the style of illustrator Stephen Gammell, the film feels low budget, yet deftly crafted and approachable. In fact, the multi-media format maintains interest – using audio filters, different color effects, even dramatization, in addition to other atmospheric variations to keep the film visually and tonally intriguing.

Does this amalgam succeed? While it at times feels rather bespoke, it is also the film’s charm. This feels like a film made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts and is technically sufficiently competent to not prove distracting.

Stephen Gammell’s Unforgettable Dark Visions

It is a treat to hear actual interviews with everyone from friends, family, fans of Alvin Schwartz to R.L. Stine himself. The film then veers into Gammell’s dark and morbid illustrations that burned a brand into the minds of so many youngsters that to this day they can hardly revisit these images, while others have leaned in and created photorealistic images, clay sculptures, dioramas, 3D models and beyond.

The question is why – why do we obsess over these nightmarish visions? What is it about the twisted and dark visions that we both peer through our fingers and still obsessively manifest them?

We explore the family stories of reading these books to children to fertilize their imaginative turf, the fans who get full-length tattoo sleeves, the defiance of the book bans by the schools and libraries (even by the librarians).

We discover that Schwartz was also a dedicated researcher of old folktales and popular antique ghost stories, drawing from a legacy of successful and enduring spooky tales while affording them a contemporary spin. But part of Schwartz’s success also comes from his humor that used punchlines as perfect twists in classic short story form, preying on assumption and expectation and reminding the reader of the myopia of their bias and indoctrination.

Face the Darkness

For what reason should we avoid fear and darkness? Does it turn us into killers and monsters or does it teach us to face those things from which we run? We learn that it has to do with exposing those matters of reality that may one day prove exceedingly uncomfortable – indeed this form of exposure to anxiety and terror may, in fact, prove to galvanize us later on against shock and paralysis in face of the unknown, outre, unfamiliar. It may serve as a foundation to investigate rather than react to the unknown and unfamiliar.

Whatever the reason for the particular timing of this documentary, by the time you read this you may also see that Schwartz and Hammel’s iconic Scary Stories is being turned into a major motion picture by none other than Guillermo del Toro. By that time this humble documentary may be eclipsed, and in that its value may double, for the intimate stories shared by those who remembered it when…

Watch the trailer for the documentary “Scary Stories” below:

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Sunday night was all about celebrating blood, boobs and bombs as the Midnight Madness pirates stormed the bastilles, er, whatevs, and we were introduced to Mark Hartley’s self-proclaimed “rockumentary” Not Quite Hollywood – about Ozploitation cinema – that is to say – the non-existent Australian film industry doing whatever it could, back in the late 1960’s and 70’s to get even a modicum piece of the Hollywood pie.

Thinking they were at the edge of a wave of a global revolution that was really only happening on a farm field in Woodstock, the Aussies took to disrobing like it was the job.  Then, when a little horror and post-acid-trip surrealism was the where the registers were clinking, the blood was introduced, in bucketloads.  Add some semi-retired bona fide Hollywood star power to the mix and you had to have a recipe for cinematic world domination, rendering such masterpieces as Turkey Shoot (aka Escape 2000 in the US), Dark Age (really bad alligator horror flick), The Man From Hong Kong, and ultimately Long Weekend and Mad Max.

The beauty of it all of course was that there really were no scruples.  It was – whatever it takes to get the shot, even if it meant firing live ammo at the actors (I guess squib explosives attached to rock-faces were out of the budget range?) or hoisting a guy 70 feet in the air on a cherry-picker without anything to fall back on (um, no pun intended?) since helicopters were definitely out of the question.

But as Quentin Tarantino, who claims the lion’s share of the commentary in this doc states – Aussies can shoot car chases without equal.  Their cars look nicer than American cars, their chase scenes are way more fucking crazy, and the shots are without equal.

Anyway, it was a good romp, director Brian Trenchard-Smith was in attendance and the audience applauded at the suggestion that a revival festival should be erected at Cinematheque (as opposed to grindhouses) for this pioneering ouevre.

The Rock-U’s visual effects were terrific, the pace was good, we laughed, we cried, we missed Russ Meyers.

My only question is – 8am screenings – what?

Remaining Screenings:

Friday September 12    |  06:15PM     |  VARSITY 2

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Monday night – the Ecstasy Films Inc. party at Empire in Yorkville was bloody crowded.  That’s about all I can say about it, except for the free drink ticket and Bedouin Soundclash who sounded amazing despite the fact that we ultimately had to enjoy their set from outside in the rain because literally, not a deflated blow-up doll could fit in that room.

As I mentioned previously, Ecstasy, adapted from the book by Irvine Welsh (who wrote Trainspotting, in case you are just on a short stay to planet Earth) is a film about to go into production directed by Rob Heydon and set to star Richard E. Grant (yes he of Withnail and I), Billy Boyd (of hobbit fame) and Erica Durance (of Maxim cover fame).

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In non-TIFF film news – the very long awaited sequel to Boondock Saints that will star the original cast and be directed by Troy Duffy himself is gearing up for production.  Holy f$%in s%$^!!!

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We headed through the heavy Queen St. traffic for Film Lounge to jump in and see our friends at the pre-party for Deadgirl.  Turns out they meant the other Film Lounge on Dupont, and not the one across from the AGO.

Maneuvering past the R.I.D.E. cops (Saturday night spot-checks) towards the Scotiabank theater (wtf happened? – every goddamned building in the City of Toronto is a corporate advertisement.  No I am not old fashioned but its fucking ridiculous.  The O’Keefe Center is now the SONY center?  The Skydome is Rogers Center!  I know William Gibson predicted this, writing on his typewriter from Vancouver, but does anyone care? Is there any opposition whatsoever to this awful pattern?)  to see Steve McQueen’s (at last someone who will never change their name to McDonald’s Man or Old Milwaukee “Microsoft” McQueen) unbelievable first feature “Hunger”.  Festival vice prez of picking movies Cameron Bailey introduced the film, trying desperately to put the brakes on his gushing over its merits, but failing, before bringing Mr. McQueen himself to the stage.

Pic is amazing.  Intense, measured, perfect.  A little too much to take.  It was so quiet in the theater that the mouth-breather beside me almost stole the show.  The actors are all selfless and utterly engaged, the dialogue, the music, the framing.  See it if you have the nervous system to handle it.  On a small screen at home, I doubt it will be as challenging (in a good way) to watch.  The Dolby systems in the TIFF screenings seriously intensify these films.  Films that my never again be seen at forums this size.

And that really is a big part of TIFF isn’t it?  Large, full surround Michael Bay-ready venues playing hard-core independent films that pull no punches, prepared for today’s high-def standards that may never again be scene the way they were meant to.

Anyway, we left just before the credits, I, fighting near anxiety resulting from the combination over over-stimulation from Scotiabank cinema’s epileptic seizure inducing bing bing playground of Buy Me lightshows, the mayhem of T-dot club district, and trying to make our next screening at Ryerson in 15 minutes.

Despite this time-challenge, we did jog past the Imperial pub – enjoying a renaissance now that TIFF has triangulated the Yonge/Dundas quadrant – where Pontypool was throwing its festival bash.  Only had time to give music writer Karen Pace a hug and the producers of the film a brief congratulations before booking it up the street to the world premier of Deadgirl.  Lynh Haaga, wife of Trent, the writer of the film, and also the film’s wardrobe designer, confided that the screener’s hard drive didn’t even arrive in Toronto until earlier in the day, leaving the fest’s programmers absolutely twitching.  The film was shot entirely in Los Angeles (wait, they still shoot movies in Los Angeles?) on a Thomson Vipre – a D-Cinema – so there was never actually any film or tape – the whole movie, which looked pretty close to 35mm celluloid (except for the occasional outdoor shot or underexposed early evening shot that introduced some digi-noise when they had to bring up the levels) was shot directly to hard drive and projected at the festival via Christie digital projection.

For the most part the movie works.  Despite its insane subject matter – that is, raping a dead girl who isn’t quite dead in the basement of an insane asylum – somehow, and you’d have to see it to understand – doesn’t ever fall to exploitation or even chastisement of the “protagonists,” but rather affords the viewer an intriguing examination of character, virtue, karma, and some really cool plot twists along the way.  Some actors fare better than others, but to be fair, I won’t name names since I had just walked out of one of the most harrowing and powerful performances (Michael Fassbender in Hunger) since David Thewlis in Mike Leigh’s Naked.

Deadgirl keeps you on the edge of your seat and does alright for itself.

By the time we walked back to the Pontypool party, the bar had been cleared out.

We return to Ryerson tomorrow for our third Midnight Madness screening – Not Quite Hollywood.

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