Slamdance ’13: Ghost Team One

When two slackers discover the house they share is haunted, they try to use this novelty to score with a ghost-crazy chick.  If this seems like an inappropriate response, than you are probably not a dude in his 20’s.  Or 30’s.  Or maybe even 40’s.  Intellectually and emotionally, Brad and Sergio are barely adolescents, decidedly out of their depth in Scott Rutherford & Ben Peyser’s found footage horror spoof Ghost Team One (trailer with all kinds of profanity here), which screened during the 2013 SlamdanceFilm Festival in Park City.

When Sergio has a strange, unexplained experience during a kegger, Brad assumes he was just drunk—because he was.  However, the two decide to become amateur ghost chasers when they learn Fernanda, their very attractive party guest, is obsessed with the paranormal.  It turns out their house was once a notorious brothel, whose madam disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As recorded by Billy Chen, their unseen Craigslist videographer, the lads go about documenting their ghost, a la Paranormal Activity.  However, they are far more interested in putting the moves on Fernanda.  It is not exactly Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, but there are plenty of laughs to be mined from this basic premise, with Brad and Sergio essentially serving as the horndog versions of Scooby and Shaggy.

As Brad and Sergio, Carlos Santos and J.R. Villarreal play off each other quite nicely and have a real flair for raunchy stoner humor.  Fernanda Romero is a charismatic screen presence, who credibly portrays her namesake’s willing obliviousness the all the lust focused at her.  However, Tony Cavalero frequently upstages everyone as Chuck, the aggressively uptight third housemate.

It probably cost Rutherford and Peyser more to travel to Park City than to make Ghost Team One.  Nonetheless, there are moments of genuinely inspired gross-out humor, including a climax so demented viewers have to see it for themselves because words fail.  Those who enjoy taste-defying humor with supernatural trappings should keep an eye out for Ghost Team One.  It is bound to find an appreciative audience after its world premiere at this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’13: Hank and Asha

Is technology stronger than social tradition and family expectations?  That question will be put to the test when two aspiring filmmakers fall head-over-heels in “like” via online video messages in James E. Duff’s Hank and Asha (trailer here), an Audience Award winner at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival.

Hank had a short film accepted at a Czech film festival.  Asha saw it there.  She is studying at a Prague film school for a year, before returning to her regular life in India.  Something about Hank’s film prompted her to send him a video message.  Something about her question convinces Hank to respond in kind—and so on and so on.  Soon their long distance flirtation becomes surprisingly serious.  However, the inconvenient realities back in India drastically complicate any future they might have together.

The scenes filmed in Prague nicely capture its beauty and vibe, making viewers want to visit the city again.  The New York scenes did not seem to have the same effect (but to be fair, I was only in Park City for a week, hardly enough time to get homesick).  Regardless, the sense of place and displacement are a big part of what distinguishes H & A.

H & A is sort of like a hipster updating of sentimental favorites like A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters.  Dramatically, it works relatively well because of its realistically appealing leads.  Andrew Pastides is not afraid to look silly as the somewhat nebbish Hank.  He also forcefully depicts the heartsick desperation of a smitten party with no leverage to make their sort of relationship work.  Mahira Kakkar has a pixie-like charm as Asha.  However, Duff and co-screenwriter Julia Morrison have her doing things that do not really make sense in light of her full situation.  Still, both co-leads definitely convince viewers each has a deep emotional attraction to the other, despite never appearing in the same scene together.

It is easy to see why Slamdance audiences responded to H & A.  It offers some unabashed sentiment for the Facebook generation without feeling out of synch with the times.  Small but nice, Hank and Asha is recommended for Williamsburg scenesters as a counter-intuitive date movie.  Following its success at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, it should have a long, fruitful festival life ahead of it.

Slamdance ’13: Jug Face

Moonshine and pottery are a wicked combination.  One young woman living in a hillbilly cult understands that only too well.  She knows the kiln tolls for her in Chad Crawford Kinkle’s Jug Face (trailer here), a Modernciné production which premiered last night at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival.

“The pit wants what it wants.”  In return, it cures members of the hardscrabble hill country community.  That was how their grandpappies survived the great cholera outbreak.  All that is required is a periodic sacrifice.  They will know who has been chosen from the special jugs the designated potter casts in a state of paranormal ecstasy.  Ada was supposed to be next, but she chanced upon her jug face before Dawai came out of his pit-induced stupor.  Stashing it in the woods, Ada is determined live—not just for herself, but also for her unborn child.

Whose child would that be?  Take a lurid guess.  It is not Dawai’s, unfortunately, since he’s not a bad chap, really.  Nor is the boy to whom she is to be “joined” the father (a term that sounds uncomfortably Human Centipede like).  The answer will be pretty easy to guess, given general filmmaker attitudes towards rural border state residents.  Ada is definitely in for a hard go of things and the deadly visions she gets from the pit will not help.

Basically, Jug Face is southern gothic exploitation fare, which co-star and Glass Eye Pix producer Larry Fessenden certainly understands.  As Ada’s cult leader father Sustin, he is not nearly as loathsome or malevolent as one might expect.  He might even be half-human.  In the lead, Lauren Ashley Carter’s eyes are almost supernaturally wide.  Her Ada is also reasonably down to earth for a sheltered cult-child.  Looking not unlike Will Ferrell on a below average morning, Sean Bridgers finds surprising pathos in Dawai.  In fact, if it really were Will Ferrell, it would probably be his best performance ever.  It is hard to recognize Sean Young as mother dearest, but at least her off-screen persona does not distract from the on-screen action.

Evoking the spirit of outsider art, Jug Face’s opening credits effectively set an unsettling tone right from the start.  However, the pit is a little underwhelming.  It just gurgles a little and turns red from time to time.  Regardless, Kinkle really knows how to tap into coastal dwellers’ hillbilly phobias, without going the full Deliverance route.  Unfortunately, the climax is more of a deflation than a conflagration.  Still, those looking to shudder at ritual murder and Appalachian inequities will find plenty of fodder in Jug Face.  Recommended for Fessenden fans with a taste for hicksploitation, Jug Face should have many midnight screenings ahead of it after its Slamdance premiere last night in Park City.

Slamdance ’13: What Isn’t There

Alt-pop music used to be great at expressing young amour and heartsick yearning.  Evidently, it still does in the Philippines.  Some remarkably catchy tunes perfectly accompany a damaged teen’s first significant love in Marie Jamora’s What Isn’t There (trailer here), which screens again today as part of the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Gibson Bonifacio stopped speaking.  He could if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.  He blames himself for his twin brother’s death and assumes everyone else does too.  His mother’s overbearing behavior does not exactly help bring him out of his shell either.  Unfortunately, his beloved little sister Promise bears the brunt of her control freak parenting.  Bonifacio’s only solace comes from his brother’s ghost conjured from his imagination and his vintage music, until he happens to meet Enid del Mundo.

Much to his surprise, del Mundo does not seem to mind his silent ways.  She is also a vinyl collector, whose tastes include British New Wave and traditional Harana ballads.  She is cute too.  Viewers can hardly blame Bonifacio for getting hung up on her, even though we know by now young love almost never runs smoothly.

You can dog WIT for being sentimental, but it takes its characters and situations refreshingly seriously.  Jamora and co-writer Ramon De Veyra clearly think getting dumped is a pretty rotten thing to happen to a sensitive teenager, which indeed it is.  She also has an ear for hummable and thematically appropriate pop songs and Haranas.

Dominic Roco’s Bonifacio is supposed to be introverted, but there are times he seems to literally shrink on camera.  In contrast, Annicka Dolonius lights up the screen as del Mundo.  While the large supporting ensemble all looks right, Boboy Garovillo and Sabrina Man both add a memorable sense of earnest down-to-earth-ness as Bonifacio’s father and younger sister, respectively.

WIT is a lot like a Filipino John Hughes movie, but with less comedy.  Those who like bittersweet teen dramas will really dig this one.  Recommended accordingly, What Isn’t There screens again this afternoon (1/22) at Treasure Mountain Inn, as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’13: The Institute

What’s more fun than global conspiracy?  If you ask former “inductees” of the Jejune Institute, you will likely get radically different responses.  It seems it was all just a game, or was it?  Indeed, truth is deliberately difficult to separate from fiction in Spencer McCall’s ostensive documentary The Institute (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Once upon a time, 2008 to be exact, some strange leaflets began appearing around San Francisco—strange even by that city’s standards.  The Jejune Institute was trumpeting its revolutionary scientific breakthroughs, like the personal force field, and inviting interested parties to inquire at their local offices.  It turns out the Jejune Institute was headquartered in the heart of San Francisco’s glass-and-steel financial district.  However, the office was nothing like Bank of America’s.  Visitors were directed to a trippily appointed room, where they watched a video greeting from Jejune founder Octavio Coleman, Esq.

After a mind-bending intro to some of the basic Jejune buzz-words, inductees were sent on a scavenger hunt throughout the city, finding secret signs and clues amid the urban environment.  Before long, inductees found themselves aligned with a rival faction seeking to liberate the power of “nonchalance” (the rough Jejune equivalent of The Force) from the megalomaniacal Coleman.  Or something like that.

The thing is, it was all just a game, engineered by a conceptual artist to foster a sense of play in the city.  Yet, as soon as the behind-the-scenes architects come clean, McCall introduces a former player, whose tales of misadventures in the Bay Area sewers have to be part of the mythology.  I mean, seriously.

Reportedly, McCall was brought in to document the final stages of the game and recognized a doc-worthy story when he saw one.  Yet, by the same token, it seems safe to assume he is to some extent, an accomplice to the mythmaking.  There are enough digital tracks to suggest the Jejune Instituters truly were running an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that some players took very seriously.  As for everything else in the film, maintain a healthy skepticism.

The thing of it is, the Jejune mythology is a great story.  McCall taps into our deep abiding interest in secret histories, conspiracy theories, and urban legends, as well as our fear of cults.  For scores of players, the ARG was like submerging themselves in an Illuminatus! novel.  Yes, some of them might have become obsessed to an unhealthy degree, but they might also be playing the parts.

While openly inviting comparison to Exit Through the Gift Shop, The Institute will appeal to viewers who enjoyed Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.  It might be strange and unreliable, but it is never dull.  Recommended for those who appreciate postmodern fables, The Institute screens again tomorrow morning (1/22) at Treasure Mountain Inn, as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’13: Best Friends Forever

When the apocalypse comes, books will definitely have an advantage over the internet.  An aspiring grad student would agree.  She was planning a career as a librarian.  Unfortunately, the end of the world complicates matters.  However, it takes a while for her and her hard partying BFF a while to notice Armageddon looming during their southwestern road trip in Brea Grant’s Best Friends Forever (trailer here), which premiered last night in Part City at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival.

Harriet is the sensitive one, who spent a short stint in a mental hospital following a suicide attempt.  Following the long held tradition of low budget genre movies, her best pal Reba is kind of trampy.  After graduation, Harriet packs up the AMC Pacer for grad school in Texas, convincing Reba to tag along for the ride.  While they are on the road, a mysterious terrorist attack leads to a series of nuclear explosions.  The two women are not listening to the news though, preferring music and the occasional “Oprah” moment to the outside world.  Their first inklings something might be amiss comes when three hipsters carjack their Pacer.

Eventually, the breakdown of civilization strains their relationship.  Of course, nobody claims responsibility for the cataclysmic act of terror, lest it offend anyone.  In one awfully strange exchange, several characters want to blame North Korea, to which Reba replies she is Chinese, as if the PRC were as benign as Luxemburg.  Indeed, the third act threatens to undo much of the good will established by the co-leads, depicting a rather nasty nativist martial law sweeping across Texas.

Since Grant co-wrote and co-produced with her co-star Vera Miao, viewers are pretty much stuck with them as Harriet and Reba, respectively.  Fortunately, they have some nice bickering buddy-buddy chemistry together.  Still, this is clearly a genre film with a female audience in mind, casting men in exclusively either predatory or ineffectual roles.  While Grant comes in with geek credentials from appearances in Heroes and Halloween 2, as well as her work co-writing the 1920’s zombie comic We Will Bury You with her brother Zane, neither of the two seems particularly comfortable with the odd action scene.  Frankly, everyone in BFF would rather talk than do anything else, but the dialogue does not have the sort of snap it should.

Putting a Pacer in the center of an end-of-the-world road movie is pretty ingenious.  Employing the apocalypse as a prism through which to examine personal and social relationships is also a promising strategy, yielding mixed results in this case.  There are some appealing moments of friendship under extreme circumstance in BFF.  Nonetheless, it never approaches the attitude or verve of Thom Eberhardt’s Night of the Comet, the gold standard for zeitgeisty generational Doomsday movies.  More chick flick (deliberately referencing Thelma & Louise) than midnight movie, Best Friends Forever should satisfy those looking for the former, albeit with a bit of an edge.  Flawed but interesting, it screens again at the Treasure Mountain Inn screening room this Monday (1/21) as part of this year’s Slamdance.