By Adam Ruhl
Fantasia International Film Festival is really heating up. I've got reviews for two great films that are playing today. Check them out!
The House at the End of Time
dir: Alejandro Hidalgo
Venezuela
runtime: 100min
I loved this haunted house movie from Venezuela. It’s scary
as hell at times but also has a family centered heart that reminds me of films
like Poltergeist. It’s rare to see a director so perfectly balance warmth and
creeping dread (and on his first feature if IMDB is correct) as Alejandro
Hidalgo does with this film. He also wrote the amazing screenplay that I will
not go too deeply in to for fear of spilling the film’s wonderful secrets.
Thirty years ago Dulce was a mother of two boys who was
trapped in an unhappy marriage and a giant but rotting home. One night someone
or something killed her husband and took her son Leopoldo. Dulce was blamed and
put in prison for thirty years. Finally she is given a senior citizens release
and returned to serve house arrest in the place where her husband was killed.
Now she is back to revisit what happened and try to find her son, but she is
not alone.
This is one of the best parts of genre film festivals,
finding a gem like this that was nowhere on my radar. There is so much more
than meets the eye, both hopeful and heartbreaking. We see young boys at play
and a mother’s grief and it comes together seamlessly. I was completely
entranced with the mystery of what happened to Leopoldo, but did not dare jump
ahead and miss a single beat of the film. With shades of The Shining, Poltergeist,
and Amityville Horror, I strongly recommend this movie to anyone who loves a
great haunting tale. Do not see it alone!
The Infinite Man
dir: Hugh Sullivan
Australia
runtime: 81min
Dean’s anniversary plans aren’t going very well. A
meticulous planner, dean has laid out an exact recreation of his last
anniversary with Lana; from the meals and music, all the way down to what type
of sex they’ll have and when. However, he failed to discover that their
anniversary motel has gone out of business, and to make matters worse Lana’s ex-boyfriend
Terry shows up to steal her away. Dean is undefeated though; he is a scientist
who has managed to preserve a moment in time before the anniversary went to
hell. One year later he plans to return to that moment in time and set things
right. Sounds simple enough, but really it’s just the beginning of his
complications.
The Infinite Man is a time traveling masterpiece from first time
Australian writer-director Hugh Sullivan. The film itself is simple enough;
more or less a single setting and just three actors, but the story is
wonderfully complex. The director masterfully weaves the characters in and out
of a single moment; laying their actions so you quickly learn not to take what
you’re seeing at face value. The three stars, Josh McConville, Hannah Marshall,
and Alex Dimitriades do a fantastic job of portraying the bizarre love story.
At its core the film really is a romance; it’s boy meets
girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, over and over. There are shades of
many other time travel films and romantic comedies, but The Infinite Man is
really something special. I really enjoyed its thoughtfulness and the
intelligence of its story. I need a couple more viewings just to trace all the
paths the film takes. It’s a truly beautiful movie that I predict will be
massively successful and a stunning debut for its director. Do not miss The Infinite
Man if you have the opportunity to see it.
RAWR(for more)
