The 31st edition of Gérardmer's International Fantasy Film Festival took place in an off-season softness from Wednesday 24 to Sunday 28 January 2024. Covered by KillerS7ven and the celest wolf, the event was worth the trip again since the good-child atmosphere (Ahouuu !!!), the mountain decor, the encounters in queues of waits, the good food (the Tofaille, the Munster and local dishes), discussions between cinéphages and evening ends (more or less watered) at the Grand Hotel bar were held in the Vosges massif.
A varied programming marked by women's revenge, otherwise more fantastic than Last year, recording of five casual interviews on a sofa (Romain de Saint-Blanquat, Demián Rugna, Said Belktibia, Sébastien Vaniček and Jason Yu) and the shooting in the aurora of critical returns in a makeshift studio (mounted in an apartment in the center of town), will thus rhythmize the peregrinations of our two companions.
And if you're going to have to wait a little while to discover everything (many articles and/or videos will follow in the coming days), we start hostilities with the post-session of our canis lupus of the Pyrenees. Follow the blood drops...
Contents
The Forbidden Play
(2023 / Japan / 109 min) by Hideo Nakata
Viewed on Wednesday 24 January at 8 p.m. at the LAC Space. Competition
Naoto Ihara lives happily with his wife Miyuki and their son Haruto. Their happiness is destroyed the day Miyuki dies in a car accident. Naoto falls into deep sorrow while Haruto prays every day that his mother will return to life after having buried one of her fingers at the bottom of the garden. Strange phenomena soon occur...
Actors with eyes scarleted in permanent play, a scenario filled with dreadfully predictable absurdities, a television staging with dishonest kitsch and grotesque effects completely outmoded, haunt this J-Horror faltered about rabble where the few fearers find it difficult to manifest themselves in all this melody. No, this long-haired avenger is really not Sadako!
Morse
(2023 / France / 87 min) de Romain de Saint-Blanquat
Viewed on Thursday 25 January at 2.30 p.m. at the LAC Space. Retrospective vampires
1967, on Mardi Gras. Françoise, 17, is a resident of a Catholic high school. Convinced that she had only one night left before her death, she walled up with her friend Delphine to go to a costume party and be able to live that night like the last.
Convoking a whole section of the vampiric cinema, this ten-movie which seeks with intelligence (initiatory narrative, drama or fantastic horror?) is a first work with marked identity (a onirico-lugubra photograph cultivating a taste for the Hammer) and to the indie soundtrack (from the rock garage) carried by a Léonie Dahan-Lamort Magnetic. "I would prefer not to."
Perpetrator
(2023 / United States & France / 101 min) by Jennifer Reeder
Viewed on Thursday 25 January at 8 pm at the Casino. Competition
Jonny Baptiste is a carefree teenage girl sent to her aunt Hildie, with whom she had no contact. On her 18th birthday, she underwent a radical metamorphosis: a family fate that redefined her, called Forevering. When several teenage girls disappeared in his new school, Jonny, wild and mythical, began to pursue the Perpetrator.
Ferocently feminist and queer-friendly, this series B horrific 100% girl power cunningly hijacks the tropes of the genre but vultures in the blood pools (draining more or less natural holes) that she leaves in her wake. For between situations without tail or head, schizophrenic characters and overlying themes (the transition to adulthood, male predation), this adolescent drama that masturbates clumsyly thinking about cinema of Cronenberg (body horror) and Lynch (music) is bitten by his writing flaws. Mistake this sorority?
The Funeral
(2023 / Turkey / 109 min) by Orçun Behram
Viewed on Thursday 25 January at 10pm at the Casino. Competition
Cemal, a lonely hearse driver, was once entrusted with a mysterious task: a young girl named Zeynep was brutally murdered and the body had to be transported by road to her family in the east of the country. On the way, on one night, he opens the back doors of the van and hears strange grunts emanating from the body of the deceased. He then checks his pulse, but she doesn't have any more. Fascinated by the spectral beauty of the girl, Cemal gradually falls in love with her and starts killing people to feed her...
On the background of a road-trip with a glaucous atmosphere, this horrific drama with a dragging rhythm conveys a subtext about toxic relationships (a Turkish Keanu Reeves agreeing to become a serial killer for « her beautiful ») in conjunction with its rereading of the zombie myth (which returns to its shamanic origin). Believing hard as iron in its high concept, this genre film fed by its cannibalism ad nauseum devours all joy of living up to a liberating final (even so clumsy in its execution). If the living cannot teach the dead; The dead, on the contrary, instruct the living!
Amelia's Children
(2023 / Portugal / 92 min) by Gabriel Abrantes
Viewed on Friday 26 January at 09:00 at the Casino. Competition
Orphaned since his birth, Edward discovered in adulthood that he had a twin and a mother he did not know. With his girlfriend Ryley, he goes to meet them in their beautiful, isolated home in the heart of a recluse area. After the reunion, the young couple realizes that appearances are misleading: Edward's family hides a monstrous secret.
Fauncing familiarity even if it is comforted in common places, this fantastic-horrific drama that goes back to the genealogical tree of Portuguese folklore (not without hischcockian DNA) is interested in eternal youth in a paradise of facade (at the European decor) where a cauldron filled with ring humor, Malaysian scenes and projections of violence. Let us embrace the truth that time commands old age to destroy beauty!
Resvrigis
(2023 / Italy / 90 min) by Francesco Carnesecchi
Viewed on Friday 26 January at 8 pm at the Casino. Competition
Sara and her friends go hunting in the mountains. But there's something malicious around the depths of the woods. The hunting game, which was supposed to be a moment of relaxation, will turn into a real nightmare...
A walk in the woods with a heavy ambience but on the trail marked for a classic survival with a rudimentary pitch, where a cheap creature gently throws clichés on legs together by a traumatic event only functional. And if mysticism takes part in hunting, it's for « giving the change » And not slaughter the game. The fantastic Italian cinema is more than the shadow of itself!
When Evil Lurks
(2023 / Argentina / 99 min) de Demián Rugna
Viewed on Friday 26 January at 10 pm at the Casino. Competition
After discovering a mutilated corpse near their property, two brothers learn that the strange events in their village are caused by a demonic spirit that has taken home in the purulent body of a man. The evil suffered by the latter soon spread as an epidemic, affecting other inhabitants of the region.
While the churches have long died, this demonic possession which spreads like an infectious disease celebrates the advent of the « end of the world » by doing a large carnage on a growing scale. Traumatic and up to the endist (she saves no one), this horrific work, which is deceitful with falcian macabre hints and inevitable fatality, plays on an unpredictable fear... At a thousand places therefore facilities revived from a genre rinsed since Exorcist. When evil is born, nature dies!
Roqya
(2023 / France / 91 min) by Saïd Belktibia
Viewed on Saturday 27 January at 09:00 in Paradiso. Out of competition
Nour is smuggling exotic animals for healers. When a consultation derails, she is accused of witchcraft. Pursued by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and separated from her son, she then launched herself into a wild race to save him. The tracking begins...
While we are talking about « belief » in the broad sense, this social drama with the rarely addressed theme is shaken by an ordinary witchcraft (our words necessarily having an impact on the person who receives them) forcing his râqi (or rather his charlatane interpreted by a Golshifteh Farahani « Owned ») to stop the practice of self-medication to save his own flesh. And taking unexpected detours in order to build a evil intimately related to the complexity of human nature, it is by consulting his primitive instinct that he finds his salvation. Educate yourself so that you do not blindly believe in something that imposes on your eyes!
It's a Wonderful Knife
(2023 / United States, United Kingdom & Canada / 87 min) by Tyler MacIntyre
Viewed on Saturday 27 January at 5:30 pm at the LAC Space. Out of competition
One year after saving Angel Falls' city from a serial killer on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruther did not recover from this traumatic evening and made the wish never to be born. Her wish fulfilled, she finds herself in a parallel nightmare universe where she never existed and in which the killer is back. In order to regain its own reality, Winnie has to face again!
When the classic of Capra (Life is beautiful) is visited by the bloody angel of the slasher, the spectator is invited to a cool B series that amuses the codes and clichés of the genre (not to mention those of the Christmas movies) while the colors turn off following a waiver upset by a masked killer with a striking look. Remember... Last winter!
Sleep
(2023 / South Korea / 99 min) by Jason Yu
Viewed on Saturday 27 January at 8 pm at the LAC Space. Competition
The life of a young couple is upset when the husband becomes sleepwalking and becomes someone else at night. His wife, submerged by the fear that he would harm their newborn, then no longer finds sleep...
Between psychological drama and supernatural suspense, this « feel good horror movie » (tenit) its director) where modern science and ancient superstitions coexist in anxiety before sleep turns into a nightmare. But when he thinks of duality by mixing laughter with fear, it's when he wakes up to meditate on marital life (a permanent test). Do we really know who shares our bed?
The Damned One
(2023 / France / 80 min) by Abel Danan
Viewed on Sunday 28 January at 10.30 a.m. at the LAC Space. Competition
Yara, a young Moroccan with disorders, came to study in Paris. Confined in her apartment, she is the prey of frightening phenomena, mixing bits of her past and monstrous appearances. One night, a mysterious appearance disturbs her daily life, pushing her to the brink of madness...
In this closed house imposed by confinement, a real catalyst of human fragility and the fear of the other, a supernatural drama with an agonizing atmosphere (a deliberately repugnant photograph) and ingenious staging (as when the camera was mounted on a fan) takes its quarters with Moroccan divination in its suitcases. Are we all potentially crazy?
Waiting for the night
(2023 / France & Belgium / 104 min) by Céline Rouzet
Viewed on Sunday 28 January at 2:00 pm at Paradiso. Competition
Philemon is a teenager not like any other: to survive, he needs human blood. In the pavilion suburb a little too quiet where he moves in with his family, he does everything to blend into the decor. Until the day he falls in love with his neighbor Camila and draws attention to them...
As fond as this family lends all the sacrifices for one of its members « Other », this family drama poignant with vibrant colors, fantasy light and solid casting settles in a pavilionary suburb Ikea with as neighborhood, the false normative appearances of society. And haunted by the emotions of his teenager, a victim of an orphan disease that prevents him from becoming socially integrated, he flirts in the shadows of refuges of a teen movie with vampiric impulses. Blood is life!
The Soul Eater
(2023 / France / 110 min) by Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo
Viewed on Sunday 28 January at 4:30 p.m. at the Casino. Out of competition
Commander Elizabeth Guardiano is charged with investigating a double murder of a rare brutality in a small commune in the Vosges. On the spot, she met the gendarmerie captain Franck de Rolan, who faced a series of disappearances of children. Impressive in the face of a hostile village, they will be forced to join forces to discover the truth, a terrifying truth marked by occult legends...
Based on the novel byAlexis Lapsker, this peasy polar against the background of murders and disappearance of children is as untied as anarchy. Television staging, laughable actor's game, inconsistencies with shovel, grotesque situations, dialogues without any credibility and procedural implausibility have actually pollute the crime scene (glauque à vai). Turn on your TV instead to find the hit police show « Murders to... ». A huge mess!
New Life
(2023 / United States / 85 min) by John Rosman
Viewed on Sunday 28 January at 8 pm at the LAC Space. Out of competition
Jessica Murdock is a woman on the run who is desperately trying to escape the authorities by crossing the Canadian border. She is tracked down by Elsa Gray, who is neither a police nor a federal agent, but rather a mercenary who has a gift to find people who are trying to disappear. As the pursuit tightens, bodies are found on Jessica's way. The confrontation between these two women, in search of meaning and redemption, seems inevitable.
Filled with mysteries and stimulated by invested actresses, this strained track gradually evolving into a post-pandemic drama with horrific symptoms (of which I would tait nature) turns out to be a square B series (to American) where the scenario that never ceases to surprise looses some shock attacks. Even a prisoner of his own body, we must fight and keep hope in life!
The rankings
The Jury feature films of the 31st edition of Gérardmer's International Fantasy Film Festival, chaired by Bernard Werber, surrounded by Caroline Anglade, Melanie Bernier, Clovis Cornillac, Charlotte Gabris, Jean-Paul Salomé, Mathieu Turi and Sébastien Vaniček awarded the following prizes:
Grand Prix : Sleep
Jury Prize : Amelias Children and Waiting for the night
Award for Criticism : When Evil Lurks
Public Prize : When Evil Lurks
Young Jury Prize : The Seeding
The Jury Short Films of the 31st edition of Gérardmer's International Fantastic Film Festival, chaired by Bernard Minier, composed of Adrien Meniale, Alice Half, Mr Poulpe and Mara Taquin awarded the following award:
Grand Prix du court film : Transylvania
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