Stanley Film Festival 2015 In Review

This year I was a very lucky man and my wife got us fancy passes to the 2015 Stanley Film Festival in Estes Park. It was this past weekend and it was one of the awesomest experiences of my life. Hanging out with genre film nerds and people that make such genre films, seeing tons of movies that haven't been available to the public as of yet, and just hanging around the historic Stanley Hotel all contributed to that. I'm going to spend the bulk of this entry talking about the movies to hopefully help spread the word about them and contribute in my own small way toward their success. And really, it's all about the movies.

But let me also quickly mention things like the great parties. Bands like Snake Rattle Rattle Snake played, which was super cool. And the awards brunch included such high concepts as our Saw table, requiring us to locate a key hidden in a dummy's mouth to get our silverware and our Re-Animator biscuits & gravy included an awesome green hot sauce in a syringe just because. And if they count as parties, all the other immersive/interactive things going on, it was more than a film festival. It was a full weekend of insanity.

And the people! Jess is quite good at striking up conversations with people at the festival, finding common ground in our obvious similar obsessions with horror movies. Just talking about movies with other people that developed toward the same obsessions over different time periods, talking about other interests, it seemed like everyone was generally easier to talk to there than in the real world. I miss that already.

Oh and being star struck because I don't get to meet a lot of heroes, but there were so many filmmakers in attendance. For every movie we saw but two, at least the writer or director was in attendance for a Q&A after the screening. The insight on the creative process was so inspiring that I am starting to think that I can maybe make at least a short myself someday soon. And submit it to various festivals. And use that to get funding for a real live, honest movie! And start a career and all that. Some directors seemed awesome (particularly Karyn Kusama and Todd Geoghegan) and some seemed somewhat douchey (not going to call them out here) but it was always interesting and inspiring to hear them talk about their craft.

What a great way to segue into the movies themselves! I'll just write a little bit about each one I saw and maybe be more obvious about recommending things that I feel should be recommended. Which is most of what I saw, but some more passionately than others.

Day One: April 30
The opening night film was Cooties, produced by Elijah Wood's SpectreVision. Goofy horror comedy. We saw a lot of goofy horror comedy, which is kind of our main subgenre of "horror" anyway. This had an all star comedy cast including Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, Rainn Wilson, and more (you can look at imdb for such details) and was about teachers surviving a crazy zombie-like outbreak amongst the students. Without giving too much away, there is a lot of kid killin' in the most tasteful way possible. I will highly recommend this when it comes out. I gave it 4 out of 5.

Day Two: May 1
We showed up over an hour early to see Director's Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein. We did not need to do this. We could have easily seen another movie before hand. But with the legendary Leon Vitali in attendance I figured it would be much more popular than it turned out to be. The concept was an odd one: a made up director's commentary track on a DVD for a real movie from the 70s revealing a very strange and tragic string of events (paralleling the story of Frankenstein in its own way) happening behind the scenes. A bit better in theory than in practice, it was still a very interesting concept and a bizarre experience.

Then we got to the main theater for The Invitation. Very anxious and stressful, very good at keeping you guessing, maybe more thriller/drama than horror film but very well executed. This is the new one from Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Jennifer's Body) so I'm sure you'll be seeing it somewhere soon enough. I gave this one a 4 as well.

We only saw three films on Friday due to needing to eat and not seeing one before Terror of Frankenstein. So after dinner and hanging out in the lounge, we made our way to the midnight(ish) movie of the night, Deathgasm. I'd watch it again because it was quite entertaining but I can't give it the greatest rating for a couple reasons. As funny and gory as it was (New Zealand horror comedy), a couple things seemed a little derivative (using a chainsaw...) and disingenuous (it's about a metal fan but it felt like the writer didn't really care about/fully understand metal music and this is coming from someone who doesn't fully understand metal music). But overall, it's a silly comedy and worked great as a midnight(ish) movie. It's not exactly asking to be judged on very high standards. I think I gave it 3.

Day Three: May 2
We started our day at the oldest movie theater in the country (that was originally built as a movie theater) with a world premiere (much of the cast in attendance!) of Some Kind of Hate. The first real horror movie in a way. Very violent, pretty serious, and the second movie in a row that included an instance of a metal head introducing a cool/popular girl to metal music and her life being changed. Is that a common fantasy amongst high school metal heads? Anyway. This reminded both of us of Carrie. The drama factor wasn't as strong as the film wanted it to be, but the horror aspect was great.

We stayed at the old theater for a 35mm print of the classic film Re-Animator. Neither of us had seen it, shamefully enough. But we can no longer say that. Director Stuart Gordon was in attendance to receive the Master of Horror award (an axe, of course) and he sat in the same row as us! And Barbara Crampton presented it to him! What an experience this film was, I don't know how we never made our way to seeing that one in our annual October tradition, but luckily that has been remedied. I don't think I need to say much about this other than the fact that the final act is one of the most amazing displays of ridiculous gore I've ever seen.

We made our way over to the closing night presentation of The Final Girls. Another horror comedy, this one is super meta, think Sherlock Jr. meets Friday the 13th. Or an elaborate episode of Community. Without saying too much, it was quite funny, not quite scary, and surprisingly quite touching. Almost everybody we talked to loved it, I gave it 5 out of 5 stars, and I highly recommend it when it comes out later this year. But it was also the best possible crowd for this type of film, I'm not sure how it would land without having such an enthusiastic crowd. The other concern I must bring up is that one person we talked to that didn't love it. He hated it. He felt like it was too cheeky, that it was making fun of old stupid horror movies and their tropes. I took it as a harmless tribute made with love of the genre, but apparently a small percentage of the audience may not see it the same way.

Day Four: May 3
On the last day we had to see as many movies as we could. Meaning two before we had to head back home to the real world. After the awesome brunch alluded to above, we made our way to see We Are Still Here. The other "real" horror movie we saw. Another one I really don't want to say much about for fear of ruining your experience, I'll just say that it is a haunted house movie, it stars the legendary Barbara Crampton, and it has some amazing amazing practical effects and gore. Maybe the scariest movie we saw all weekend as well. I wanted to give this one a 5 (and kind of regretted giving The Final Girls a 5 the night before) because it was just so great, so mature (particularly for a first time director!) so scary, so mysterious and intriguing enough that I want to re-visit it when it comes out to the public. Unfortunately for some reason we didn't get ballots to vote for this one. See this movie when you can. It was my favorite. Just love.

And finally we caught When Animals Dream. A movie about a werewolf in Denmark. That description made me want to see it in hopes that it would be somewhat similar to Let the Right One In. And I guess it was. Subtle, dramatic, and very Nordic. It really reminded me of the great films I watched in my Nordic Film & Lit class. Like The Match Factory Girl except she turns into a werewolf. I gave it a 4. Just a great depiction of sadness and repression and...well you can probably imagine but you should see it for yourself anyway. It's got the same distributor as Let the Right One In so it'll probably make its way to theaters soon enough.

That is a lot of high ratings. There were some fantastic films. And many we were not able to see. Such is the nature of such things. I want to go back next year. And I highly recommend genre lovers do so as well. It is getting more and more popular and it will probably be crazy. Maybe they'll eventually have to expand it to a full week!