Fantastic Fest Review Roundup Part One – ‘ABC’s Of Death 2’, ‘V/H/S: Viral’, & ‘Wormwood’!

Fantastic Fest has rolled around once more and continues to be the most entertaining film festival on Earth. This year sees the festival back at its home base of the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar and the adjoining Highball bar in Austin, TX. This is my 5th time attending the festival, which is now celebrating it’s 10th year.

Fantastic Fest is unique among film festivals because, much like its host venue, it is more a festival of personality than one of quality. There are other genre festivals, sure, but Fantastic Fest is an experience where the campy, gory, and outright weird films oftentimes serve as a backdrop to the chaos as opposed to the end goal. Fantastic Fest films rarely stick with me for very long, but the festival remains my most anticipated every year.

This year got off to a bit of a rough start as bad weather and inexperience with the remodeled Drafthouse led to a case of overcrowding and confusion in the lobby and bar. That didn’t stop me from having a few drinks and seeing some weird bullshit though. Here’s a roundup of my festival experience so far.

The ABC’s of Death 2

The ABC’s of Death was such a wonderful concept when it was first revealed. The idea of assigning 26 different directors a letter of the alphabet and giving the complete creative freedom to come up with a short film of death relating to a word starting with that letter is exciting in a way anthology films rarely are. The required brevity also brings out a level of cleverness and humor not seen in other contemporary anthology series, like the often tedious V/H/S series.

The first ABC’s was a total mixed bag, however. It had more than it’s fair share of awful entries and led me to drink myself into stupor to save myself from the experience, which may be intended way to view the film in the first place. My scotch hazed memory of that first entry is not kind.

This new set of shorts fares a bit better. There are only a handful of entries that truly fall flat. Often the worst are only bad because they seem to give up just as they are getting interesting. Several entries set up genuinely exciting premises and build a great atmosphere before ending in a vague, unsatisfying sigh.

Whether by luck or design, the first and last segments (Amateur and Zygote) are probably the strongest. Beginning and ending on high notes definitely leaves you with a good impression as you leave the theater. Zygote in particular was incredibly strong; it was disturbing, funny, thematically cohesive, and featured some of the most jaw dropping gore effects I’ve ever seen.

V/H/S Viral

As far as anthology series sequels go, V/H/S: Viral did not fare as well as The ABC’s of Death 2. The found footage series has reeked of missed potential from the beginning but has never been outright bad until now. The first collection was interesting in that it was primarily from a group of ultra low budget indie directors that wouldn’t necessarily be the first names that come to mind when thinking of horror. I love seeing non-genre directors try their hand at it because even if its not entirely a success, it is generally full of new ideas.

The second entry in the series went with directors that had done some much larger budget work and had two segments that I thought were great. Safe Haven from directors Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans was particularly impressive and could probably have been fleshed out into a feature length film.

This new collection doesn’t really go in any interesting direction with its choice of directors and kind of feels like they just picked whoever was cheap and available. The first segment, Dante the Great, even abandons the found footage premise of the series which makes everything seem even lazier, it doesn’t help that the visual effects seem like After Effects presets.

The only segment that comes off mostly unscathed is from Time Crimes director and unofficial Fantastic Fest mascot Nacho Vigalondo. His “Parallel Monsters” short cleverly uses the found footage conceit to tell the story of a man meeting an alternate universe version of himself. Having both shooting each other cleverly solves the problem of having the same actor interact with himself. The short has a simple idea and finds interesting ways to explore that. It is full of Nacho’s warped and often childish humor as well and is a nice respite from the rest of the film.

If you’ve seen the other V/H/S movies you know they make half hearted attempts to tie the individual shorts together by having a wraparound story that begins and ends the film as well as acting as a buffer between shorts. These are always the worst bits of the film but the wraparound story in Viral is truly terrible. I honestly can’t tell you what it’s about as it’s mostly incoherent and lacks a single element that makes it worthwhile.

Wyrmwood

Wyrmwood is a zombie film. I couldn’t be more sick of zombies. My one time favorite movie monster has been played out to the point that I actively avoid it. However, this Australian entry from director Kiah Roache-Turner managed to grab my attention with it’s manic punk energy, mad max style, and twisted humor that reminded me strongly of early Peter Jackson.

Wyrmwood never slows down and is constantly throwing out insane new ideas that rarely make any sense but which I forgave because the audacity was fresh and exciting. This is a zombie movie where comets cause people to rapidly turn into rabid man eaters who have flammable blood and breath gasoline. Actual gasoline is now inert as well, because fuck it. The zombie apocalypse seems to take minutes, yet people are armed and ready within moments. There’s crazy doctors in mobile labs who are already running experiments as if they’ve been waiting for this their whole lives. The comets also cause some people to become telepaths. It’s all crazy and silly and awesome. By the end of the film you’ve got mad max style armored vehicles powered by zombie breath and telepathic punk chicks controlling the undead, its fantastic.

The one thing keeping this from being an instant classic is simply that, while its full of fun moments and crazy ideas, it never finds a real story worth telling and never develops characters worth caring about. It’s all spectacle and insanity. Great in the moment, but unfortunately not something thats going to stay with you.

Looking forward to any of these films? Be sure to check out Part Two here!