#jay dahl

[cultfaction]

Second trailer released for Halloween Party Directed by Jay Dahl, Halloween Party follows a college student who unwittingly releases terrifying entities from her school's past via a Halloween themed computer meme. It stars Bradley Bailey, Scott Bailey, and Jason Daley.

[stickymoviestar]

スナッチャーズ・フィーバー -喰われた町-

2014年製作 原題 There are Monsters 監督 ジェイ・ダール

ホラーなんだけど痛さはない。ビクッってなるシーンが少しあるけど、映像としては控えめ。かといって心理的に怖いわけでもない。

中盤まではなかなかイイんだけど後半もたつく感じ。

『ブレア・ウィッチ・プロジェクト』よりタチの悪い手ぶれシーン。もぉなんだかわかんないって思うはず。

★: Poor (satisfaction: less than 20%)

[theweldontimes-blog]

There Are Monsters (By: Paul Neville)

"Fuck composition, we're just going to shoot it." I'm paraphrasing one of the characters in Jay Dahl's There Are Monsters when they describe their plan for shooting the documentary within the story. Judging from There Are Monsters, it was also the philosophy on the set of this movie.

  There Are Monsters is based on a short film by the same creative team from a few years ago. It concerns four young people who set out to make a documentary. Weird things happen along the way. Eventually, they are picked off one by one by an army of monsters. You see everything coming from a mile away.

  It's a found footage movie, in of itself not a bad technique - V/H/S/2, another film at the AFF, makes fine use of it. But Monsters uses it inconsistently; the explanation for these events being filmed is that the characters are videotaping the behind-the-scenes of a documentary they are making. This does not explain the enumerate occasions where scenes are filmed in the same style but without the possibility of a character holding a camera. The found footage device is used at the convenience of the filmmaker, not because it helps tell the story more effectively. It’s his excuse for the movie being unintelligible, poorly shot and out of focus, but it doesn’t earn it.

  I hesitate to pile on too much. The director, introducing the movie, revealed he had been working on it for five years. Anyone who spends that much time working on an artistic project should be commended. This is doubly true for those brave enough to submit their work to an audience. Without a doubt there are genuine moments of terror, and many moments of suspense are quite effective. The performances are uniformly strong, though no one is really given a character with any real depth – a day later, I couldn't tell you any of their names. Inevitably, they all get killed in less and less interesting ways. Lambs to the slaughter here.

  The short film featured older actors in the lead roles, and an isolated house for a setting, two things that helped establish a sense of realism. For the feature, the older couple has been replaced by four attractive, young documentarians. One must begin asking whether Cabin in the Woods has ruined all movies with this premise? In light of Cabin, it was hard not to chuckle at a scene un-ironically set at an ominous gas station, the stoner character archetype, or the increasingly ridiculous behavior of the characters.

  The downside to the five-year post-production is the chance that something else steals your thunder. "I'm in a fucking horror movie", a character quips. It's a genuinely funny line, well delivered. But it seems so insubstantial when compared to Cabin's total self-awareness. You can almost picture the Director patting himself on the back when he came up with it in the pre-Cabin days. Now, it just a tease for better movie that exists elsewhere.

  There Are Monsters was billed as the scariest movie to come out of Atlantic Canada. On the strength of that tagline, I checked it out. In retrospect, I’m not sure how meaningful that marketing hook is. After all, I have no idea how many horror movies have come out of Atlantic Canada. I gather not many, so it’s kind of like selling something as being the best romantic comedy about genocide [The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Rwanda? Shake Hands with the Devil Wears Prada? Oh god, I am so sorry –Ed.]

  Aside from being unhelpful, the marketing hook was also not true - the short film was scarier.

  Final Rating: (D+)

[osamot]

Beware of kids