First up, Right at Your Door (2006): This one screened at Fantasia last year as part of a series on Urban Apocalypses that included Mulberry Street (see below) and the excellent The Signal. The premise is straight forward enough: after seeing his wife, Lexi (Mary McCormack) off to work, Brad (Rory Cochrane, best known as Slater from Dazed and Confused) is shaken from his lazy morning routine by a series of explosions in downtown L.A. Being the good husband he is, his first instinct is to hit the road and rescue his wife who is stuck in traffic with a dead cell phone, but panicking cops and fellow motorists mean that he can't get past the L.A. suburb where there new house is located. He returns home to plot his next move and is startled to find the gardener from next door in his house. The gardener convinces Brad to seal up his house from the inside as the radio instructs as it now seems the explosions were "dirty" in nature and toxic ash is showering down on most of the Los Angeles area. The real drama starts when Lexi returns, having walked home after abandoning her car on the freeway. Being that Brad isn't the only one in the house now, he makes the agonizing decision to leave Lexi outside since she is covered in ash and therefore "contaminated". Will she survive long enough for help to find them, and when help does arrive, will it be enough?
While certainly far from perfect, Right At Your Door does an excellent job of ratcheting up the tension with limited funds and locations. Writer/Director Chris Gorak wisely puts the focus on the actors, making the film more about Brad and Lexi's relationship than about the citywide meltdown happening around them. The result is a film that is instantly relevant to the viewer, unlike other overblown apocalyptic films like Deep Impact, for example. The film is as much about whether Lexi will survive her toxic exposure as whether Lexi and Brad's relationship will survive this incredible strain on their relationship.
Where the film starts to break down is after the introduction of new characters and locations. Lexi strays multiple times from the back porch, sneaking through neighbors yards and even rescues a young boy she finds wandering around. The introduction of the child does add a nice moment where Brad ponders about the children they never had, but the forays ultimately slow down the momentum that has been building and dilutes the feeling or claustrophobia that drives much of the tension in the film.
However, these nitpicks are minor in light of the excellent performances provided by both Cochrane and McCormack. The chemistry between the two actors is very good and it is easy to believe that they are a married couple in their 30's full of love and frustrations. Where the film really breaks down is the Twilight Zone-ish twist ending, but everything else up to that point is good enough to still recommend the film highly as a well written, intelligent and nuanced portrait of urban paranoia.
Later that same day we indulged our curiosity and rented Southland Tales (2006), Richard Kelly's long shelved follow up to Donnie Darko. Remember how I was talking about overblown crap? This is pretty much the definition. While I'm sure Kelly and his buddies in the movie (including Kevin Smith) will get a kick out of watching the movie together and reminiscing about the fun they had shooting it, I cannot figure out for the life of me how it got made in the first place. It is confusing, poorly constructed, wildly self-indulgent and ultimately, largely boring.Somehow, there is still a certain charm to it that I can't quite place my finger on. Maybe it's the fact that it's so clearly the bizarre vision of one person, even if that vision isn't really that interesting. Maybe it's the fact that the best performances in the thing come from Seann William Scott and Sarah Michelle Geller. Maybe it's to do with the rampant stunt casting: Christopher Lambert as an underground militant, Wallace Shawn in lipstick, Kevin Smith in old-man make-up... Maybe it has to do with Kelly's choice to cast the comedians in the dramatic roles (Cheri Oteri, Will Sasso, Jon Lovitz, Amy Poeler, etc.) with mixed results. However, whatever it is it is not enough to recommend the film. It is just too long and too weird and too all over the place to justify sacrificing 2 and a half hours of your life to watch it. Oh, did I mention it's narrated by Justin Timberlake?
Normally I revel in the "so bad it's good", but Southland Tales feels more misguided than anything else. It clearly wants to be funny and wacky, but is instead tacky and forced. The script feels mainly like an excuse to get famous people to say really dirty things. The construction of this post-apocalyptic world wants to be nuanced and political, but is instead juvenile and half-baked. I can't call it a disappointment because my expectations going in were very low, but it will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the greatest miscalculations a major studio has ever made. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: it's also a musical. Drugs might have helped, but I kinda doubt it.
Luckily, the third film of the day washed away the stale taste. Mulberry Street is similar to Right at Your Door in that they are both low budget, limited location horror flicks with a very simple premise. This time the setting is New York and the premise is this: the rats have started attacking people who then turn into ferocious, man-eating "rat people". Sounds pretty stupid, right? Well it isn't. It's actually really, really good and the perfect antidote to overblown crap.Like Right at Your Door, Mulberry Street focuses on characters to make the outlandish events accessible to the viewer. The setting is a tenement on Mulberry Street which has recently been purchased for development with the tenants facing imminent eviction. The first character we are introduced to is Clutch (Nick Damici), a retired boxer awaiting the return of his daughter, Casey (Kim Blair), who has just been released from the veteran's hospital after a stint in Iraq. Clutch is a good guy, shy when it comes to women (specifically his neighbor Kay (Bo Corre)), and always willing to help out the elderly or less fortunate. Damici, who also co-wrote the script, gives an excellent and nuanced performance, really adding to the film's effectiveness.
The rest of the plot is fairly formulaic: rats attack people, people attack people, everybody freaks out, citizens of tenement fight back; but what makes it work is what director Jim Mickle left out. First off, there are no guns & no clever kills. Clutch and Casey fight back with what they've got: fists and heavy things. Second, there are no clever one liners. which isn't to say there aren't moments of humour, but it's the kind of dark, deadpan humour that suits the story and the characters. And most importantly, the film is not a cliche laden, movie referencing comedy. Everything is played deadly straight, resulting in real empathy, real tension and real suspense.
Shot for about $30,000 in the director's apartment, Mulberry Street is the kind of serious, thoughtful indie horror that deserves to be celebrated. Highly recommended.
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