For decades, the Sundance Film Festival has showcased the best that independent film has to offer: drama, quirky comedy, documentaries with deep social commentary and...horror? Believe it or not, great genre fare like Saw, The Blair Witch Project, 28 Days Later, American Psycho, The Descent, Open Water and High Tension received early exposure at Sundance, and this year, the horror slate is as full as it's ever been.
The annual festival's Park City at Midnight event features horror, exploitation, surreal comedy and all things offbeat, in tribute to the midnight movies of the '70s and early '80s. This year's lineup, running January 17-27, 2008, promises to frighten, amuse and thoroughly entertain.
Baghead
Directors: Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass
Starring: Steve Zissis, Ross Partridge, Greta Gerwig, Elise Muller
Plot: A parody of genre films like The Blair Witch Project, Baghead finds a group of friends on a weekend getaway being tormented by a stranger wearing a bag over his head...Or are they?
The Broken
Director: Sean Ellis
Starring: Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins, Asier Newman, Michelle Duncan, Melvil Poupaud
Plot: A British woman tracks down a woman who appears to be her exact double. Let's hope it's better than Drew Barrymore's Doppelganger or Jean-Claude Van Damme's Double Impact.
Donkey Punch
Director: Olly Blackburn
Starring: Jaime Winstone, Julian Morris, Nichola Burley, Jay Taylor, Robert Boulter, Sian Breckin, Tom Burke
Plot: British vacationers aboard a yacht in Spain must decide what to do when one of them dies in a freak accident. In the US, this would be called Lawsuit.
Funny Games
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Brady Corbet, Devon Gearhart, Michael Pitt
Plot: Another horror remake, but this time it's an unusual selection: an American version of the deeply disturbing Austrian film of the same name about a wholesome family being terrorized by two adolescent sociopaths.
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
Director: George A. Romero
Starring: Nick Alachiotis, Joshua Close, Laura DeCarteret, Joe Dinicol, Amy Ciupak Lalonde, Tatiana Maslany, Michelle Morgan, Megan Park, Todd Schroeder, Chris Violette, Scott Wentworth
Plot: It already showed at the Toronto Film Festival in September, but this is the American premiere of the legendary George Romero's latest zombie opus. It features a group of students filming a horror movie when one of those pesky zombie outbreaks occurs. Bring me my decapitatin' gloves!
Otto; or, Up With Dead People
Director: Bruce LaBruce
Starring: Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Susanne Sachsse, Marcel Schlutt, Guido Sommer, Christophe Chemin, Gio Black Peter
Plot: A quirky, introspective Canadian-German production revolving around a gay zombie looking for love in all the wrong places.
Timecrimes (AKA Los Cronocrimenes)
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Starring: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernandez, Barbara Goenaga, Juan Inciarte, Nacho Vigalondo
Plot: A Spanish time traveling film about a man who meets himself in the past, with disastrous consequences...like re-living middle school. Ack!
Two horrific films have even managed to escape the confines of the midnight slot:
Fear(s) of the Dark (AKA Peur(s) du Noir)
Directors: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Callou, Richard McGuire, Pierre Di Sciullio, Lorenzo Mattotti
Starring: Guillaume Depardieu, Nicole Garcia, Aure Atika, Arthur H, Louisa Pili, Francois Creton, Christian Hecq
Plot: A dark animated French film about the nature of fear. Beret optional.
Red
Directors: Trygve Allister Diesen and Lucky McKee
Starring: Brian Cox, Tom Sizemore, Robert Englund, Amanda Plummer, Angela Bettis, Kyle Gallner, Shiloh Fernandez
Plot: From Lucky McKee, director of indie horrors May and The Woods, comes every octogenarian's dream: an old man seeks vengeance for the death of his dog at the hands of some punk kids. And cut your hair, you hippies!
As these films hit Sundance in early 2008, a pair of horror films from the 2007 festival ironically will be opening across the country around the same time: Teeth takes a bite out of theaters January 11, and The Signal invades on February 22.
