Sean Parker
The Boston Underground Film Festival got underway on Wednesday night with a duo of big-screen beachside films that manage to evoke every manner of summer except the chilled vibes. Tensions ran high in the packed Brattle auditorium for The Surfer, which was a blast to watch with a crowd.
The Surfer
If you’re a fan of the densely layered film stylings of Lorcan Finnegan’s filmography (Vivarium, Nocebo, Without Name), you’ve been anxiously awaiting The Surfer since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May. But odds are probably better that the sight of Nicolas Cage in a surf suit facing off against Nip/Tuck’s Julian McMahon in the film’s trailer provided the serotonin boost to put the movie on your radar.
Cage plays a nameless character, known only as The Surfer in the credits, whose lifelong dream of buying back the cliffside Australian home he grew up in with his father is soon to become a reality. Excited, The Surfer and his Kid (Those Who Wish Me Dead’s Finn Little) head to the local beach only to find it gatekept by the colorful locals. Harrassed and forced to leave, The Surfer’s son leaves while he sticks around, observing the locals and their guru, Scally (McMahon). But as time wanes on and the days pass, The Surfer’s life becomes more and more upended as he’s stripped of his possessions, job, the offer on the house, and eventually his sanity.
Having to keep my assessments brief will not do service to what Finnegan and writer Thomas Martin have created with this sufficiently sandy, sun-soaked psychosis spiral that mashes up Wake in Fright with Fight Club. The film subtly shows cycles of violence bred from toxic masculinity and showcases them through indoctrination mechanics leading to fascist ideologies. Cage is at his unhinged best, and Finnegan takes his directing game up a notch with this one, too. It isn’t easy to create the heavy, engrossing, fast-paced tension of The Surfer, especially under the bright, hot, Australian summer sun.
Muerte en la Playa (Death on the Beach)
Capping off the beach-themed opening night of BUFF 25, Enrique Gómez Vadillo’s forgotten (and thought lost) film Muerte en la Playa graced the silver screen of The Brattle Theatre. One of two reparatory screenings this weekend, Vadillo’s sun-soaked queer neo-noir telenovela was a far cry from the ostentatious and exaggerated thriller I expected when seeing the film’s first frame of a bloodied corpse with a fire poker protruding from where the sun don’t shine. While captured intensely, the movie isn’t as thrilling as one might suspect. Muerte en la Playa isn’t so much about murder as it is about thirty-year-removed taboo subject matter and trauma, giving it a much heavier tone than I was ready for.
David (Andrés Bonfiglio) is home following an incident at school that led to the death of an abusive teacher. But, now that he’s back, his mother’s (Sonia Infante) new fiancé, Paul (Rodolfo de Anda), can’t stop trying to set him up with girls. Having had his sexual awakening at the hands of his instructor, David finds no interest in women, which is deeply troubling to Paul. Paul’s worries only begin to increase when the bodies of two men wash up on the beach near where they’re staying, two men that David had been seen hanging out with the day before. As David moves on to new friends, Paul hatches a scheme to out David by having his mother catch him in the act.
Though Muerte en la Playa features some gorgeous cinematography and a plot slightly ahead of its time, the film’s pace was far too slow for me to become embroiled in. It’s sleazy and despicable, and I should have loved it. Plus, the abject bigotry alone validates David’s impetuous murder spree. It’s a rare “root for the killer” film, and you don’t feel bad about it because it’s the entire world around him that sucks.
The American Genre Film Archive has restored Muerte en la Playa from its original film elements, and it has never looked better. There’s still a little grain on the film, and you can tell the final reel with the credits on it was missing from the newly discovered print, but the rest of the presentation is immaculate. It’s always amazing to me to see something from the 90s-80s-70s (I’m not ready to just say “the 1900s” yet) that looks like it could have been released a few years ago, and Muerte en la Playa, no matter how you feel about it, has been restored with great care.
Chain Reactions
If you’re a die-hard Leatherface fan and have never been able to articulate to your friends why The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the reason there is a slasher subgenre, don’t worry because Alexandre O. Phillippe has you covered. In this one-hundred-and-one-minute love fest of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 indie classic, the film that left an indelible impression on the horror genre fifty years ago finally gets the tribute it undeniably deserves.
An unorthodox documentary, Phillippe’s Chain Reactions is brought to life through conversations with five horror film lovers: Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, and Karyn Kusama. Each provides their views of the film, some similar and some different, showing the subjective power of film to provoke different responses. Chain Reactions captures how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre inspired and shaped the careers of these five artists by also showing a host of movies the film inspired, as well as the films it was inspired by.
I’m a sucker for a good doc about movies, and Chain Reactions is quite different from many others out there. The recent trend of horror and genre film documentaries to emerge (Who Done It: The Clue Documentary, Living With Chucky, Nosferatu: the Real Story) has been phenomenal for horror fans, but the film’s models have all been relatively one-note. Chain Reactions is very free-flowing, like a friend passionately describing their favorite movie to you. I’ve long been a fan of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but Chain Reactions has given me a deeper appreciation for the film.
Fréwaka
To escape the grief associated with a mother who never wanted her, a young home healthcare nurse named Shoo (Clare Monnelly) travels to a remote Irish town to administer care to an elderly woman (Bríd Ní Neachtain) said to be mentally unwell. Upon arriving, Shoo manages to calm the agitated and paranoid Peig, but she warns Shoo of unseen creatures that have taken a shine to her. The longer Shoo stays in the house, the stranger her experience becomes as her mother’s death becomes somewhat entwined with Peig’s care, leading to hallucinations that cause others to call her sanity into question.
Fréwaka is an atmospheric roller coaster of jumpscares and emotional whiplash. Clarke’s journey through generational trauma is superbly crafted through the lens of a woman who fears she’ll become just like her cruel mother, who was also afflicted with a mental health condition. Though you may be able to see hints of director Aislinn Clarke’s climax, this folk horror story bends in ways you won’t see coming. Fans of the subgenre will find elation in this exceptionally crafted and vividly cinematic new film that you might like to pair with 2023’s The Lord of Misrule or the short film in BUFF’s Dunwich Horrors block, Methuselah.
While Fréwaka is wrought with mystery and comes together in a way that satisfies the story, I was hoping for more clarification in the more fantastic portions of the film. While heartache tied to loss is the key to understanding the film, much remains unanswered. Fréwaka, which means “deeply rooted” in a way that relates to heritage, is an enthralling thriller that certainly brings it all back to family better than a Fast and Furious movie, but it could use a bit more bite toward the end.
Vulcanizadora
Vulcanizadora was a film I needed to get my eyes on the moment I heard about it, and I was lucky enough to see Joel Potrykus’ profoundly absorbing character drama last summer. The movie, about two aging punks who have gone to the woods to uphold a years-long pact, is a pseudo-sequel to 2014’s Buzzard, though it’s conceptually far heavier than its counterpart. If Buzzard was about living on the edge, Vulcanizadora is about where that life will eventually lead when luck runs out.
You will never see Vulcanizadora the same way twice, and I envy that about the audience at BUFF 25 last night. The film’s two-act structure may make you feel over-encumbered at first as you try to figure out the purpose of Marty (Joshua Burge) and Derek’s (Potykus) impromptu camping trip. But, after a jaw-dropping event splits the movie in two, the second half makes you realize the purpose of it all. It’s made even better by the sincerity of Burge’s performance. This dread-drenched film sticks in your brain and stays there for days.
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There’s so much to come and see this weekend at the Boston Underground Film Festival, including the 40th Anniversary Premiere of Re-Animator in 4K, Head Like a Hole, and F*cktoys. Tickets are available through the Brattle Theatre box office.
