The best part about a film festival — any film festival — is that you don’t always know what to expect. The Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival with Star bolstered its line-up with the introduction of the After Dark section last year. Horror and fantasy are, broadly, the genres the After Dark category seems to going for, but as you will find with the five films in the section this year, filmmakers around the world are constantly pushing the boundaries of the “scary movie”.
The Wailing ( Goksung )
Director: Na Hong Jin |Fiction
Country: South Korea | Year: 2016
Language/s: Korean | Time: 156 Mins
Na Hong-Jin has directed rivetingly scary films like The Chaser and The Yellow Sea in the past, but neither of those movies inhabited the intrigue or the horror of his latest festival favourite, The Wailing . The film begins in a small town in South Korea, where mysterious events have thrown the population in a tizzy. Residents are found murdered by people suffering from what looks like a drug-induced daze, locals contract mental illnesses overnight, and more bodies show up.
The protagonist, police officer Jong-goo, finds his life turned upside down — first by the pressure of investigating the strange happenings, and then by the discovery that his own daughter has been possessed by an evil spirit, which seems to be the root cause of everything that’s going wrong around him.
The Wailing builds up the dread in audiences steadily; the plot unravels like a mystery thriller rather than a typical horror film. There are plenty heart-stopping moments, but what truly sets the film apart is its ability to keep audiences constantly on their feet; half-a-dozen plot twists peppered over the 150-minute run time constantly test your comfort.
A lengthy sequence, involving the exorcism of the spirit residing within the little girl is set to a thumping background score, and shot and edited with such dexterity, it leaves you gasping for breath. You’ll be horrified, but you won’t be able to look away.
Under The Shadow
Director: Babak Anvari |Fiction
Country: Jordan, Qatar, UK | Year: 2016
Language/s: Farsi | Time: 83 mins
Each of the After Dark films have something to offer. But if you must pick, Under The Shadows is one of two films in this category that is unmissable. It’s a stunning film, made up of moments so scary, you will want to grab on to whatever’s within reach (I reached out for a pillow at one point).
The film focuses on the relationship between a mother and daughter living in suburban Tehran, the 1980s War of the Cities providing a gloomy backdrop. It begins with Shideh (portrayed brilliantly by Narges Rashidi), being disallowed entry back into medical school owing to her brush with left-wing student politics. At home, Shideh, works out to VHS cassettes of American songs, while keeping up the pretence of being a “good Muslim woman” in her public interactions. The film catches steam when inhabitants of her building begin to flee the city one by one, while Shideh remains resolute in her belief that her daughter would feel safe in her own surroundings.
Under The Shadows is packed with moments you would expect from a movie about a woman and child living in fear in an empty building, and while Anvari incites fear with help from familiar tropes, he also subverts them along the way. The clichéd character-gets-startled-by-her-own-reflection moment, for example, has Shideh jumping on seeing her reflection because she’s wearing a head scarf. It’s as if a different woman stares back at her — one forced to embrace conformity rather than the free-spiritedness she usually exudes — and therein lies her life’s biggest fear.
THE SIMILARS (LOS PARECIDOS)
Director: Isaac Ezban |Fiction
Country: Mexico | Year: 2015
Language/s: Spanish | Time: 89 mins
Nothing about Isaac Ezban’s sophomore Spanish feature is commonplace, right from the setting — an eerie bus depot miles away from Mexico City — and the retro-cool treatment of the story set in 1968, to the eccentric confluence of genres (Ezban switches from horror to camp to dark humour effortlessly). The plot is flimsy, but the director’s madcap, Twilight Zone-inspired handling of the story is what makes The Similars engaging.
The characters are an assortment of troubled humans: a mining worker devastated about not being able to make it to his child’s birth, a pregnant woman on the run from an abusive boyfriend, a medical student with political inclinations, a gibberish-spouting native woman, a caretaker who wants nothing more than the inhabitants of the depot to leave as soon as possible, and a woman whose kid suffers from a mysterious illness. They find themselves trapped within the four walls of the depot, first due to a raging storm, and then by supernatural forces that make it impossible for them to contact the outside world.
The Similars is the kind of film that leaves you befuddled at several points with its strange plot twists, and yet, you’ll find yourself getting sucked into Ezban’s world and sharing the horrors faced by his characters.
THE LURE (CORKI DANCINGU)
Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska |Fiction
Country: Poland | Year: 2015
Language/s: Polish | Time: 92 Mins
Another genre-hybrid, The Lure is a “creature” drama unlike others. The non-humans in question here are a pair of mermaids who lure the attention of a band of musicians jamming on a Warsaw waterfront one night. The two sisters, Silver and Golden, are then integrated into the terrestrial population, their hypnotic voices becoming the main attraction of a night club the musicians perform at. Silver begins to fall for the bass player — a dangerous proposition for a mermaid — much to the chagrin of Golden, who finds herself giving in to her hunger for human prey. One’s attraction to human emotion collides with the other’s streak for destruction.
Agnieszka Smoczynska’s Polish debut is a visual delight; the 1980s backdrop getting a contemporary treatment, with eye-filling production design and beautiful musical set-pieces. The film’s biggest triumph is its ability to humanise its protagonists, making you root for them even as you remain fearful of their true nature. The Lure isn’t as much a scary movie as it is an exploration of two disparate worlds merging, and its consequences.
The Greasy Strangler
Director: Jim Hosking |Fiction
Country: USA | Year: 2016
Language/s: English | Time: 100 mins
Big Ronnie and Big Brayden are a father-son duo who take travellers on disco-themed tour walks in downtown Los Angeles. The patriarch dominates the offspring, even taking away the attention of one of their clients, Janet, the only woman who’s ever shown interest in Big Brayden. At night, Big Ronnie turns into The Greasy Strangler, an oil-covered monster who hunts for prey.
Director Jim Hosking’s film stands apart in the After Dark section, in the sense that it steadfastly combines horror elements with black humour. Big Ronnie’s murderous escapades, for example, are only a set-up for shots of him getting clean of grease at a car wash service, while the establishment’s blind owner remains oblivious.
The film’s international reviews range from “Disgusting, deviant and pleasurably weird at heart” by indiewire.com to a zero rating by The Guardian (“There’s nothing to this relentlessly inane horror comedy once you get past all the genitals”), and neither seem surprising. The Greasy Strangler is an acquired taste.
Pro-tip: Skip dinner (especially the oily variety) before you venture in for this one.
Aniruddha Guha is a film critic and writer. He tweets at @AniGuha
