by Allison Yakulis, Staff Writer

MJ’s Allison Yakulis shares some of the flicks she has caught at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival. Check out her thoughts and add some of new movies to your watch list.

Hellbender
Written and directed by John Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser
Starring Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, Lulu Adams
Running Time: 1 hour, 26 minutes

by Allison Yakulis, Staff Writer

Like many good horror flicks, Hellbender has more going on subtextually than the overt witch “ish”, and let me say right now it’s either going to be a very popular Shudder stream or a woefully underrated flick, because the quality is undeniable. And also it got scooped up by Shudder a few weeks ago so, yes, it is very much coming to a small screen near you.

The basic premise is a Izzy (Zelda Adams) and her mother (Toby Poser) live an isolated existence, purportedly due to Izzy suffering from rare autoimmune disorder making contact with other people dangerous for her, but when she finally meets another girl her age (Lulu Adams) it sets in motion a series of revelations about her true nature and her family’s legacy. But really it’s about parenting and talking to your kids about sex and drugs before they find out for themselves (even though there isn’t any sex in the film and just a bit of drinking). Witchy powers and blood magic and being from a line of asexually reproducing hellspawn stands in very convincingly here for lying to your kids about premarital sex and what smoking a joint or two will do.

What I think this movie is really getting at is that teaching solely retroactively erodes trust and that a proactive approach is necessary to provide children with the tools they need to engage with real challenges as they grow up, lest it consume them. To wholly avoid things or to embrace them is too black and white to cover nuanced situations - it is scary to have to train good judgement, and yet that is what best serves new experiences rather than inflexible rules, especially when dealing with inevitable teenage rebellion.

These meditations likely come from firsthand experiences, as Hellbender is a family affair. The Adams clan of father John Adams, mother Toby Poser, and daughters Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams might be familiar from their prior Fantasia Festival entry The Deeper You Dig (2019). They regularly collaborate on creative endeavors beyond film as well - H6llb6nd6r is the Adams’ real life band name, as well as the name Izzy and her mother use in the film.

If I had to draw a comparison, I’d say it feels like if Ginger Snaps (2000) met Raw (2016). There’s elements of “feminine horror” (female body changes, blood, and/or babies), a coming of age slant, awesome special effects, and a bunch of scenes of ex-vegetarian characters eating gross stuff. And while Ginger Snaps skews a little campy and Raw so unflinching that it’s an intense watch (too intense for some), Hellbender manages a convincing bit of worldbuilding and gravity without turning as many stomachs, while still tangling with some of the same overarching concepts.

Even without reading too far into it, Hellbender is simply a well-crafted witch flick. It judiciously doles out scares and effects, saving the more intricate sequences for the last act and accomplishing a lot with practical effects and canny editing. I also strongly believe there should be more blood magic in horror films, as it’s deliciously creepy when done right. If you missed it at the festival, I strongly recommend keeping an eye out for Hellbender on streaming sometime next year.

Hellbender was presented with the short film A Tale Best Forgotten. It reportedly will be added to Shudder’s streaming library in early 2022.

The 12 Day Tale of the Monster That Died in 8
Written by Shunji Iwai
Directed by Shunji Iwai
Starring Takumi Saitoh, Shinji Higuchi, Moeka Hoshi
Running Time: 1 hour, 22 minutes

Iwai released this project episodically during the Covid-19 lockdown back in 2020 as part of a sort of film challenge leveled by Shinji Higuchi to make films of monsters defeating Covid. Later he cut all it together and added some interstitial footage around Japan, drone shots, and interpretive dancers. The 12 Day Tale of the Monster that Died in 8 is plainly not a linear, whole script and in fact feels partially improvised. Of course, this improvisational feel makes it seem more real.

The premise of the film has us following the early lockdown vlog (I guess?) of Takumi Saitoh as he stays at home, video chats with friends, and endeavors to raise a capsule monster that he got from a vending machine shortly before the stay at home order went into effect. He sometimes watches the YouTube channel of a young woman who casts from her dry bathtub and is also raising one of the capsule monsters herself, apparently with more success. 

The 12 Day Tale in itself is its own sort of capsule, as it feels like deja vu to watch Saitoh live and talk about his life in lockdown. His video chats with friends are a little awkward, both from lag and from realizing that he hasn’t seen some of these people he cares about face-to-face in months or years. They talk about what they’ve been cooking. They talk about what they’d been up to before everything changed. They talk about how bored they are. As an American viewer, it’s eerie how familiar it all feels considering I was on the other side of the planet, also having clumsy Zoom chats and cooking elaborate dinners because I was bored and had the time and saying things like “before...you know” and “when all this is over we should…” Whenever the camera goes outside, the streets are almost entirely deserted; in that way, they looked familiar. The streets around my house were empty like these. My days would smear together like this. I was anxious and bored and I missed my friends and my life. Things are different now, almost a year and a half later, but not so much that I don’t remember what it was like when Covid was new.

The film stops short of saying anything definitively about all this. It’s more experiential, a series of snapshots of what it was like. I think the capsule monster is supposed to represent hope, the tools we’ll use to beat this thing, but it also reminded me of the pets and plants and sourdough starter everyone was heaping their energy on during the dull early days where many were searching for something to love and care for. On day 2, the capsule splits into three and Saitoh names them after flu and SARS drugs (Avigan, Remdesivir, Ivermectin), although this is dropped after they begin to resemble Ultra Seven monsters instead. On day 12 the remaining monster begins to resemble a face mask.

On the other hand he continues to check in on the YouTube influencer and her monster, lamenting that hers is growing and changing more rapidly, which seems more reminiscent of those crappy clickbait articles about Whether Or Not You’re Using Your Stay-At-Home Time To The Fullest.If you can get past the need for a traditional narrative format, The 12 Day Tale is beautiful and relatable in a quiet, understated sort of way. It’s a small movie about small things happening during a world wide event. It’s hopeful, despite its painful setting. It just might be the sort of Covid film you need to see.

The 12 Day Tale of the Monster that Died in 8 will be available for remote viewing (streaming) for the duration of the festival. Tickets are available here.

Alien On Stage
Directed by Lucy Harvey, Danielle Kummer
Starring Jason Hill, Lydia Hayward, Jacqui Roe
Running Time: 1 hour, 23 minutes

Just imagine, you’re a humble bus driver in a small town in England. You and some of your theatrically-inclined family and coworkers work really quite hard on a stage adaptation of a Ridley Scott film. You aspire to sell out the small hundred-some seat theater in your small town but only get 20 people to come. What else did you expect? You’re not real actors. No one cares, the show is over, and that’s the end of that. Done and dusted, or whatever it is they like to say.

But sometimes the right person is sitting in the audience. They see your hard work and your earnestness and they decide, no, this isn’t over yet. And after some drum-beating and crowd-funding you’re playing the West End with your rag-tag band of amateur performers and it’s a packed house. And it’s terrifying and amazing and humbling. Sometimes in life really, really cool things happen, and that stuff is magical. The theater kid inside you is going to feel so loved and affirmed watching this film. It’s one of those things that show that the first step to living your dreams is to do the thing, and through hard work and a little luck you just might make something wonderful happen.

Alien on Stage is a story where the little guy wins. Where horror fans show the heck up and bring a good attitude with them. And while it’s naive to think this happens often, it’s nice to see one of those rare instances where dreams do come true.

I do want to stress the average-Joe-ness of everyone involved. Dave Mitchell, intrepid director, doesn’t have a theater background so much as a military one; it’s a double edged sword of leadership experience and organization with the limitation of having to continuously self-soothe lest he blow his top at actors still not being off-book days before their West End premiere. Stage managing, playwriting, costumes, sound effects, and lights all fall to his son’s Luc and Raymond and Raymond’s girlfriend Aime. His wife Lydia plays Ripley and the rest of the cast is filled out with other employees of Dorset’s public transit system, the most experienced of whom have but high school drama classes and local theater on their resume. Their special effects guy Peter Lawford is a car modeling hobbyist who manages to put together a surprisingly convincing alien suit, bursting eggs, and scurrying alien puppets with only his existing know-how and some tips from website Indeed. In short, you would expect exactly none of the people involved to ever end up performing a play on the English version of Broadway.

But aside from the lack of credentials, can we also talk for a minute about how scaling up is hard, even for professionals? Their lighting person had never used an array that big and learned the board in less than a day. Taking time to mic up all the actors ate into rehearsal time, but was necessary for a venue that was that much larger. The alien entered through the aisles in a costume he couldn’t see out of well (as evidenced by him being led around by the hands backstage) in a theater they had spent less than 24 hours preparing with. I’ve seen dress rehearsals get derailed due to tech issues or accidents and the fact that this wasn’t a total mess is actually pretty incredible. Using gear and a space you aren’t accustomed to with little practice is hard no matter who you are.

Alien on Stage is so much fun. It’s so awesome to see people doing something they enjoy, and having other people support them. It’s hard to put yourself out there creatively and it’s crushing not to find a community that can appreciate what you’re doing. This could’ve been nothing - instead it’s immortalized as a doc that makes you believe in art and performance and luck and that good things can happen for people. What everyone involved accomplished is extremely impressive. I loved it. I’m sure you will too.

Alien on Stage will be available for remote viewing (streaming) for the duration of the festival. It will be presented with the short film Giant: The World of Filmmaker Jeff Leroy. Tickets are available here.