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DEADGIRL at the Toronto International Film Festival
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by Tomitheos | September 7, 2008 at 12:19 pm
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The secret of why horror films make some people scream in terror while others may simply laugh is revealed.
The screening for Deadgirl premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival after midnight last night in the Ryerson Theatre.
The uniqueness of the controversial first time feature movie Deadgirl was that it was completely 'digitally mastered' which is a first in low budget feature productions to use the CODEX 'tapeless' method.
My mind-tank is full with the typical slasher films and predictable hitchhikers in the woods scenarios.. but even though Deadgirl parallels the original Exorcist (in that it has a zombie-like girl strapped to a bed) Deadgirl ends up being a good old-fashioned horror with less gore and more loud and snappy digitized imagery for its audience. And in doing so with some dark comedy, the production smartly avoided all the pitfalls of sex exploitation as the final cut successfully delivers outrageously perverse thrills and mind bending chills.
The movie starts off as a coming of age tale the character Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez a young Joaquin Phoenix ringer) and JT (Noah Segan) as the high school outsiders from the wrong side of the tracks where Rickie's character is lusting after his childhood crush JoAnn (co-star Candice Accola) who is not even remotely interested in him anymore.
As the story line progresses Trent Haaga's script guides the viewer to where both Rickie and JT skip their class to explore an abandoned mental hospital asylum. Eventually they open a rusted door that leads into a freddy-krueger-like boiler room where they discover the naked body of a woman strapped to a gurney bed and covered in plastic.
Intentions are dark and perverse when the body shows signs of life, and JT suggests he and Rickie shouldn't waste the opportunity to have some lewd and lusty fun with their naked female captive.
Rickie is disgusted by his friend's intentions but shows evident signs of struggle with his own moral compass. A dangerous battle of wills and sexual release erupts between friends, leading to a disturbing climax. My rude awakening during the movie that jolted me out of my suspension of disbelief was the supernatural twist to the plot; I wanted to believe the supernatural twist of a bitting zombie angle the movie took to explain why the Deadgirl was still 'alive'... however, my mind's thinking wanted to stay true to the realism of the movie's beginning where I had assumed that the institutionalized Deadgirl was showing signs of life from residual electroshock treatments to the brain. Since I had justified in the beginning that the Deadgirl's brain was supercharged with electricity allowing the body to remain in an 'alive state' (and of course to why the Deadgirl remained as an 'active character' in the film), when the movie took a sudden turn to the bitting-zombie angle, I felt like I was now asked to stretch and suspend my sense of disbelief even further.. But in retrospect it was presented as a dark comedy, so keeping that in mind, that supernatural twist made the movie a little less scary; being grounded in reality as a viewer I was able to step back and laugh at the dark comedic moments that were layered beneath the surface of the gruesome story-line that followed. While the imagery was disturbing at times, it was interesting to see the progression of the audience's psyche to horror films today. Where in the past the audiences screamed and some even fainted in cinemas at horror scenes.. today's crowd is a little more desensitized at spinning heads and shaking beds and that is where the comedic moments come in. Yet I still believe that fear in movies remains in anticipated yet surprising moments of sudden scary images. The producers Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel were clever enough to know that the Hollywood film industry has not really produced this type of scary movie since the 1970's, and I believe that for this reason it wasn't a stretch to see so many local Ryerson students lined up around the block for several hours to see this since this movie genre is new to them. In conclusion I believe it was the creative digital editing in Deadgirl that created the 'uncomfortable anxiety' of the gruesome over the top sex acts in the story line that made some audience members scream while others laughed. Tomitheos reporting from Toronto ******************************* DEADGIRL playing again Monday September 8th 5PM AMC 2 and Friday September 12th at 9PM AMC 6 Movie clip interview: http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/13520 MARCEL SARMIENTO as a participant in the new director's programme at Twentieth Century Fox's Searchlab, where he made It's Better to Be Wanted for Murder Than Not to Be Wanted at All (03). His other feature films include Heavy Petting (07) and Deadgirl (08). GADI HAREL spent his early career as an apprentice to a private eye, wrote periodically for The Learning Channel and reported for The New York Observer. His films include Nights Like These (03) and Deadgirl (08). Country: USA Year: 2008 Language: English Runtime: 101 minutes Format: Colour/HD
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 21:09 on September 7th, 2008
Tomitheos, I like this story. It's good stuff. Thanks for the heads up!
Sounds a bit disturbing i na few ways. But it's always interestign to see horror taken in new directions. Might have to catch it on DVD, or in theaters if it comes stateside?
Regards
~Michael Gmirkin
at 05:51 on September 8th, 2008
If you do see it in theatres Michael pass on the popcorn, you'll thank me for it later ; )