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The renaissance of the horror anthology has been wonderful in spirit and mostly terrible in execution. Following the fan love for Michael Daughery's Trick or Treat, it seemed as though every genre filmmaker under 40 was contributing to one collection or another, from the grainy V/H/S series to the often insufferable output of The ABCs of Death.
Needless to say, I've found modern anthologies disappointing (and occasionally, infuriating). But that doesn't mean I've given up on them just yet.
Story 1: The Way Out
Directed by the trio Radio Silence (they of the disappointing Devil's Due and the 10/31/98 segment of the first V/H/S), The Way Out follows a pair of men on the run from what appears to be an unidentified crime. As they speed their rickety pickup truck down a deserted highway, they are pursued by strange floating skeletal creatures that follow them right inside an ominous gas station.
We'll get back to this.
Story 2: Siren
A trio of young women break down on that same lonely highway, accepting a ride from an oddly sunny 1950s-esque couple who take them back to an ominous meatloaf dinner. Something is clearly amiss, but there seems to be an added weight in how their presumed leader played by Starry Eyes' passive aggressive rival, Fabianne Therese) is seen as being responsible for the untimely death of one of their members. Directed by first timer Roxanne Benjamin, Siren has some fun with its almost Parents-ish vibe. It also feels the most incomplete, as it offers up a lot of unanswered questions. While I generally believe one of the the keys to anthology segments (much like short stories) to be telling a complete tale in under 30 minutes, this was definitely the one story I wanted to see more of.
Story 3: The Accident
The Signal's David Bruckner directs this tight little tale about an ill-fated and too easily distracted man named Lucas whose cell phone chat with his wife leads to him smashing into a young lady in the middle of nowhere (well, Southbound's hell-ish highway). After some internal debating, Lucas calls emergency services and spends the rest of his evening trying to save his victim in an abandoned hospital with only the mysterious, not-quite-right dispatcher voices to guide him.
While it doesn't necessarily do much, The Accident was my personal favorite segment of the bunch. Mather Zickel's Lucas toes an interesting line between being a guilty manslaughterer and a poor unlucky bastard, while the ambiguity of the dispatch voices are just odd enough to keep you on edge. Anthologies are almost always morality tales, and this one serves as a different spin on that idea.
Also, death gurgles are intense.
Story 4: Jailbreak
Patrick Horvath (The Pact 2) directs this one. A raging man storms into a worn-down bar demanding to see his long-lost sister Jesse. The bartender (Orange Is the New Black's Matt Peters) agrees to drive him down that familiar highway to where Jesse is working as a sort of satanic tattoo artist (or something?). It's hard to say too much more without giving away some of the bigger happenings, but let's just say that when your little sister disappears down a highway to hell lorded over by floating skeleton people and bar werewolves, maybe it's best to leave her put.
Story 5: The Way In (aka Story 1: Part 2)A seemingly normal couple is spending a family weekend in a rented home with their teenage daughter before she goes to college. Before they can sit down to their last supper, three masked men show up for some violent payback. The story plays like a fairly standard home invasion, but much like Siren, it also drops some mysterious clues without revealing all of their details.
Overall, Southbound offers a fresh and easily watchable take on the anthology format. Each story leads into the other in an organic way and while there's not a specific wraparound tool used to tie everything together, the themes and basic idea of this purgatory-like road to hell work extremely well when all put together. The styles and tones are more complimentary than consistent, which helps the full picture add up to something fresh.
High Points
As grouches continue to whine about the lack of good horror in the modern era, one can point to the credits of the cast and crew of Southbound to show connections to a slew of good-to-great genre films of late: actors from Starry Eyes, YellowBrickRoad, The Signal, and a few more (not to mention the film's wraparound DJ voice is done by none other than Larry Fessenden)
Low Points
We can't hit all of our CGI out of the park, but sometimes it hurts when almost all of it fouls
Lessons Learned
You know, don't kill innocent people and you won't go to hell or be forced to relieve a horrible monster chase for eternity
Rent/Bury/BuyAfter my increasing embitterment over the new age of jerky bro-tastic anthologies, Southbound is an extremely pleasant little renewal of faith in the genre. The film isn't perfect, but it's a good ride. You can find it on Amazon Prime.
The Signal is a minor gem of a film, a tri-directed 2007 horror/comedy/thriller that hints at greatness, revels in dark humor, and ultimately slides into a romantic snooze. Frightening, funny, and frustratingly uneven, this is a fine--if flawed-- foray into low budget independent cinema by the mighty (and low profile) triumvirate of David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry. No, I don't know much about them--including who directed which segment--but they're definitely on my radar for future films.
Quick Plot: After a night romp with a mixed tape-making lover, unhappily married Maya (Anessa Ramsey) returns home to discover her bearish husband (AJ Bowen, channeling the Pam-spurned Roy from The Office) wielding a baseball bat at his sports buddies while the big screen TV ominously plays a psychedelic glow of rainbow sherbet. Anyone who’s read Stephen King’s Cell can guess that technology is a little angry with us (or maybe just bored) and is looking to arouse a good ol’ round of mass insanity and violence in its human consumers.
Evil machinery is nothing new, but The Signal’s freshness lies in its construction: the film is told in three parts, with three directors using three distinct styles to follow a handful of characters through a night and day in a small city gone mad. The approach is similar to another recent indie horror, The Zombie Diaries, with both benefiting from using standard monster setups that enter new and darker directions.
Part I is raging horror, as Maya attempts to escape the city of Terminus with the help of a possibly crazy, possibly just well-equipped with survival skills Sahr Ngaujah. The intensity recalls the opening of Dawn of the Dead 04, as the spread of violent chaos spreads through the hallways of a modern apartment complex and into an empty street at dawn. The fear is real, the action is unpredictable, and we're caught in an intensely believable and terrifying world on the edge.
The second segment abruptly switches moods to capture the blackest of comedy, as Maya’s weirdly cheerful neighbors prepare for a sunny and balloon-filled New Year’s party, unaware that their guests may be delayed (or dismembered or dead). The performances are very deliberate and a tad one dimensional (although Scott Poythress does make a refreshingly unconventional leading man) but once you accept the new direction, the laughs are as hearty as they are bloody. There is still plenty of horror to be found--Bowen's exterminator by way of Abu Ghraib is a sight I won't forget anytime soon--but the comedy is perfectly pitched in a very dark hue.
It may be a matter of personal taste, but I got lost in the third segment, which moves the perspective to Maya’s boyfriend (Justin Welborn, who probably spends an average of eight minutes a day convincing people on the street that he's not Simon Pegg) as he makes his heroic way to the city’s edge. The contrast in tone from the offbeat macabre silliness of the previous segment to the quiet drama of this part feels too jarring and dull. Although we do care for this unlucky couple, the flashbacks, musical cues, and general heaviness of their conclusion feels much longer than its thirty minute run time .
High Points
A conversation with a smoking head-in-a-vice is as wonderful as it sounds
Something that always scares me about raging human horror is the manual factor; being shot is probably painful, but being killed by hand tools seems far worse
Call me nerdy, but Lewis and Clark jokes never fail to succeed
Chad McKnight's performance as a lazily oversexed and generally unwanted (even if the world didn't have The Crazy) guest is, for a brief time, the ahem, life of the party
Low Points
Clark's frantic-yet-somehow-exposition-rich explanation of what the signal may be drags down the center
The montageness of Part III never feels earned
Lessons Learned
When everyone in your neighborhood has turned into a raging homicidal maniac, it’s probably unwise to walk around with head phone at full blast
Despite previous evidence to the contrary, duct tape does not solve every problem
Always wear your seatbelt
Rent/Bury/Buy
This modest sleeper was well discussed through 2008, even garnering an Independent Spirit Award nomination. It's a highly imperfect film, but certainly worth a viewing, if only to form your own opinion on what worked and didn't. There's a part of me that wished the entire film had been done in the brutal style of the first third and another part that wanted a full-length comedy with all the violent cruelty of the second segment. Ultimately, the triple action made this a unique experiment that has its low points, but succeeds at creating atypical scares and laughs. The DVD comes with a commentary and several extras, so it's an investment worth making if you enjoy violent horror and/or black and bloody comedy with a modern twist.
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