¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019 [10 of 13] VELVET BUZZSAW (2019)

13 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[10 of 13]

VELVET BUZZSAW

(January 2019)

"Look, I came to the museum because I wanted to change the world through art. But the wealthy vacuum up everything, except crumbs. The best work is only enjoyed by a tiny few. And they buy what they’re told. So, why not join the party?”

Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw takes place in the dangerous waters of the art world, where most everyone is only too eager to deploy a scathing remark or a catty side-eye while they’re busy co-opting an artist’s true passion to make a quick buck.

It’s a world populated not just by artists, but by all the other personalities that tend to accrete around them, like critics or gallery owners.

The former is represented by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Morf Vandewalt, an inveterate critic who’s apparently unable to switch off his being “selective,” even for funerals, while Rene Russo’s Rhodora Haze is one of the latter. Once a self-described anarchist, from her days as a member of the punk band Velvet Buzzsaw, Rhodora is now a “purveyor of good taste,” as the owner of Haze Gallery.

They’re only two of the noteworthy collective of characters (and performers: Toni Collette! John Malkovich!) in this tale of art taking its overdue revenge on the industry that’s savagely exploited it, oh so cruelly and elegantly.

“Let me fill you in.

“All this… it’s just a safari to hunt the next New Thing and eat it.”

As an artist, as someone who creates, that dizzyingly high target you’re always aiming for is to create art that speaks to the audience, that can touch them in ways they never expected.

There’s a moment in the film that encapsulates that feeling masterfully, where Malkovich and Daveed Diggs--who play an established artist who’s seen better days and a new up-and-comer, the old school and the new--stare enraptured (or “ensorcelled,” as Morf would have it) at a piece of art in a gallery.

Velvet Buzzsaw takes that idea, and tosses it headfirst into horror movie territory as the art of one Vetril Dease proves to be art that can touch you hard enough to kill you.

It’s art that--to use Rhodora’s words--charges and mauls and devours.

It’s art that eats its audience.

Or, more to the point, it’s art that eats anyone who tries to profit off it in ethically questionable ways.

“We don’t sell durable goods, we peddle perception. Thin as a bubble.”

As much as Velvet Buzzsaw is a horror movie, complete with gruesome, gory deaths, what I feel is more noteworthy is that it’s also a savagely funny satire of the art world and its denizens.

Gilroy’s script impishly skewers an industry that constantly co-opts new voices and visions into its maw, all in the name of the Almighty Dollar, turning them into Brands and using them until they’re no longer of any worth, then tossing them out for some other bright new shiny talent.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s a world at once terrible and ludicrous, where a bunch of plastic garbage bags or a dead body in pools of blood can be mistaken for contemporary art.

A world where the Critic is God (the one and only Voice that can apparently determine a piece’s beauty and worth, but also a Voice only too ready to spew cruel and merciless invective), a world where true, passionate creativity and artistic integrity are forever haunted by the “money question.”

“So much easier to talk about money than art.”

As Rhodora points out to a Morf who’s already left the room (and as the one sheet’s tagline says), all art is dangerous.

Or at least, art is meant to be dangerous.

Art should provoke and challenge, inspire and elevate.

Instead, it’s become mired in an industry that’s far more interested in “tax issues,” the promise of “significant appreciation,” and “cutting-edge analytics to maximize deal flow and global demand.”

The industry has filed down the teeth of art, all the better to sacrifice it at the altar of commerce.

Velvet Buzzsaw imagines all those teeth grown back, turned into razor sharp fangs.

“Well, I’m going to meet with your board tomorrow and suggest a reduction in the Emerging Artist Exhibit.

“They don’t sell any tickets anyway.”

Parting Shot: Pat Healy (familiar to these parts from past ¡Qué horror! titles Cheap Thrills and Tales of Halloween) appears briefly as the “Man From Perlack.”

(Velvet Buzzsaw OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #12

VELVET BUZZSAW

(January 2019)

"Look, I came to the museum because I wanted to change the world through art. But the wealthy vacuum up everything, except crumbs. The best work is only enjoyed by a tiny few. And they buy what they’re told. So, why not join the party?”

Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw takes place in the dangerous waters of the art world, where most everyone is only too eager to deploy a scathing remark or a catty side-eye while they’re busy co-opting an artist’s true passion to make a quick buck.

It’s a world populated not just by artists, but by all the other personalities that tend to accrete around them, like critics or gallery owners.

The former is represented by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Morf Vandewalt, an inveterate critic who’s apparently unable to switch off his being “selective,” even for funerals, while Rene Russo’s Rhodora Haze is one of the latter. Once a self-described anarchist, from her days as a member of the punk band Velvet Buzzsaw, Rhodora is now a “purveyor of good taste,” as the owner of Haze Gallery.

They’re only two of the noteworthy collective of characters (and performers: Toni Collette! John Malkovich!) in this tale of art taking its overdue revenge on the industry that’s savagely exploited it, oh so cruelly and elegantly.

“Let me fill you in.

“All this… it’s just a safari to hunt the next New Thing and eat it.”

As an artist, as someone who creates, that dizzyingly high target you’re always aiming for is to create art that speaks to the audience, that can touch them in ways they never expected.

There’s a moment in the film that encapsulates that feeling masterfully, where Malkovich and Daveed Diggs--who play an established artist who’s seen better days and a new up-and-comer, the old school and the new--stare enraptured (or “ensorcelled,” as Morf would have it) at a piece of art in a gallery.

Velvet Buzzsaw takes that idea, and tosses it headfirst into horror movie territory as the art of one Vetril Dease proves to be art that can touch you hard enough to kill you.

It’s art that--to use Rhodora’s words--charges and mauls and devours.

It’s art that eats its audience.

Or, more to the point, it’s art that eats anyone who tries to profit off it in ethically questionable ways.

“We don’t sell durable goods, we peddle perception. Thin as a bubble.”

As much as Velvet Buzzsaw is a horror movie, complete with gruesome, gory deaths, what I feel is more noteworthy is that it’s also a savagely funny satire of the art world and its denizens.

Gilroy’s script impishly skewers an industry that constantly co-opts new voices and visions into its maw, all in the name of the Almighty Dollar, turning them into Brands and using them until they’re no longer of any worth, then tossing them out for some other bright new shiny talent.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s a world at once terrible and ludicrous, where a bunch of plastic garbage bags or a dead body in pools of blood can be mistaken for contemporary art.

A world where the Critic is God (the one and only Voice that can apparently determine a piece’s beauty and worth, but also a Voice only too ready to spew cruel and merciless invective), a world where true, passionate creativity and artistic integrity are forever haunted by the “money question.”

“So much easier to talk about money than art.”

As Rhodora points out to a Morf who’s already left the room (and as the one sheet’s tagline says), all art is dangerous.

Or at least, art is meant to be dangerous.

Art should provoke and challenge, inspire and elevate.

Instead, it’s become mired in an industry that’s far more interested in “tax issues,” the promise of “significant appreciation,” and “cutting-edge analytics to maximize deal flow and global demand.”

The industry has filed down the teeth of art, all the better to sacrifice it at the altar of commerce.

Velvet Buzzsaw imagines all those teeth grown back, turned into razor sharp fangs.

“Well, I’m going to meet with your board tomorrow and suggest a reduction in the Emerging Artist Exhibit.

“They don’t sell any tickets anyway.”

Parting Shot: Pat Healy (familiar to these parts from past ¡Qué horror! titles Cheap Thrills and Tales of Halloween) appears briefly as the “Man From Perlack.”

(Velvet Buzzsaw OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[8 of 10]
The TV Horror Slot

And it's a tie!!!

CHANNEL ZERO: NO-END HOUSE

(September 2017)

"God! I keep... waiting for one of you to understand how magnificent this place is!

"All the gifts that it can give you! Because memory is a disease!

“And then this house is the cure! How can you not see that?!”

One of the most amazing things about Channel Zero’s sophomore season is that, though it still fundamentally feels like a Channel Zero story (in so much as the Channel Zero logo doesn’t look out of place in the opening credits), it does so despite the fact that it has a different kind of horror at its core, compared to the horror of Candle Cove.

With its central themes of memory and loss and instinct and co-dependency, No-End House is also surprisingly moving, balancing out the horror with genuine emotion, thanks in no small part to a commendable cast, which includes the excellent John Carroll Lynch.

CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

With both No-End House and Butcher’s Block making the cut this year, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best of current television horror can be found.

“You were so scared of losing your mind and then you just gave it away…”

With the insidious spectre of mental illness and the desolation of sacrifice zones some of its preoccupations, Butcher’s Block is “… particularly inspired by Argento films, by Candyman, by Nicolas Roeg films” (in the words of Channel Zero’s creator and showrunner, Nick Antosca).

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson (who brought Lynch to the, ahem, table), Butcher’s Block makes it three for three for Channel Zero, and, once again, the ante is upped for its next season, The Dream Door, directed by E.L. Katz, no stranger to these parts due to Cheap Thrills.*

With reversals, a motley crew of protagonists, and a steady, occasionally hallucinatory build to a Grand Guignol climax, Antosca, Stevenson, and company have brought us a “… particularly bizarre flavor” of horror in Butcher’s Block.

Oh, and did I forget to mention?

Rutger flippin’ Hauer is in this one!

“You know, if you don’t eat enough protein, the body just starts to eat itself. Yeah, I read that in a Reader’s Digest.

“You just get so hungry, your heart will just up and eat itself! And then it moves on to your brain, and then it goes down to your spine, and suddenly, you’re just dead!

“Happens to vegetarians all the time.”

(Channel Zero: No-End House OS courtesy of impawards.com; Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block OS courtesy of dreadcentral.com.)

*Katz also directed “A is for Amateur” for ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, ABCs of Death 2, and was an associate producer on Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die, one of the Serial Killer Thriller runners-up on the 2012 rundown.

He was also co-producer on the non-¡Qué horror! title, The Aggression Scale, so, yeah… Katz has been ‘round these parts a lot, even when he wasn’t fronting a film.

Here’s hoping he comes back for The Dream Door…

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #11

CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

No, you haven’t experienced a time slip.

There are indeed two seasons of a TV show that have staked out Candidate slots in the same year, a ¡Qué horror! first!

With Butcher’s Block, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best of current television horror can be found.

“You were so scared of losing your mind and then you just gave it away…”

With the insidious spectre of mental illness and the desolation of sacrifice zones some of its preoccupations, Butcher’s Block is “… particularly inspired by Argento films, by Candyman, by Nicolas Roeg films” (in the words of Channel Zero’s creator and showrunner, Nick Antosca).

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson (who brought Lynch to the, ahem, table), Butcher’s Block makes it three for three for Channel Zero, and, once again, the ante is upped for its next season, The Dream Door, directed by E.L. Katz, no stranger to these parts due to Cheap Thrills.*

With reversals, a motley crew of protagonists, and a steady, occasionally hallucinatory build to a Grand Guignol climax, Antosca, Stevenson, and company have brought us a “… particularly bizarre flavor” of horror in Butcher’s Block.

Oh, and did I forget to mention?

Rutger flippin’ Hauer is in this one!

“You know, if you don’t eat enough protein, the body just starts to eat itself. Yeah, I read that in a Reader’s Digest.

“You just get so hungry, your heart will just up and eat itself! And then it moves on to your brain, and then it goes down to your spine, and suddenly, you’re just dead!

“Happens to vegetarians all the time.”

(Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block OS courtesy of dreadcentral.com.)

*Katz also directed “A is for Amateur” for ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, ABCs of Death 2, and was an associate producer on Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die, one of the Serial Killer Thriller runners-up on the 2012 rundown.

He was also co-producer on the non-¡Qué horror! title, The Aggression Scale, so, yeah… Katz has been ‘round these parts a lot, even when he wasn’t fronting a film.

Here’s hoping he comes back for The Dream Door…

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[8 of 13]

ABCs OF DEATH 2

(September 2014)

The following feature film was created by 26 directors from around the world. Each director was given a letter of the alphabet and asked to choose a word.
They then created a short tale of death that related to their chosen word. They had complete artistic freedom regarding the content of their segments.

Anthologies and consistency are rarely a close partnership.

Because of so many factors, chances are, in any given anthology, there will probably be entries that you will love, entries that you will not love, and entries that you will feel indifferent towards.*

I guess the original The ABCs of Death was simply too much of a mixed bag for me to feel right about giving it a blanket ¡Qué Horror! nod.

Thankfully, that isn’t the case with the follow-up, the definite article-less ABCs of Death 2.

Among the definite standouts, we’ve got: the stop-motion grotesqueries of Robert Morgan’s “D is for Deloused”; Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper’s “K is for Knell”; Jen and Sylvia Soska’s “T is for Torture Porn”; and Chris Nash’s showstopping “Z is for Zygote.”

(Well, it would have been a showstopper if it had been anywhere else but at the end; as it is, it’s the most brilliant, WTF ending the anthology could have hoped for. Nash is known for his Skinfection Trilogy of short films: “My Main Squeeze”; “Blackhead”; and “Liplock.” He also submitted the entry “T is for Thread” for The ABCs of Death, though that slot was ultimately taken by Lee Hardcastle’s “T is for Toilet.”)

We’ve got the excellently-paced and edited “N is for Nexus” by Larry Fessenden (yay!) and “S is for Split” by Juan Martínez Moreno; the future dystopia of Vincenzo Natali’s “U is for Utopia”; the sordid goings-on in Jerome Sable’s “V is for Vacation”; and the gonzo bizarro “Y is for Youth” by Soichi Umezawa.

There’s also the weighty horror of Julian Gilbey’s “C is for Capital Punishment”; Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s “F is for Falling”; and Dennison Ramalho’s “J is for Jesus.”

And entries from a few other ¡Qué Horror! alumni: “A is for Amateur,” directed by E.L. Katz and written by David Chirchirillo (who collaborated on ¡Qué Horror! 2014 title, Cheap Thrills) and “X is for Xylophone,” which sees Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo once again work with their dark muse, Béatrice Dalle.

“Based on a franchise dream by Ant Timpson,” with a title sequence directed and animated by Wolfgang Matzl, ABCs of Death 2 is without a doubt a stronger title than its predecessor, and it most definitely deserves a ¡Qué Horror! shout-out.

It’s also given me a whole boatload of faith and excitement for the third installment in this franchise dream, which is announced at the tail end of the credits roll.

Huzzah!

* There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, such as when all the segments are executed by one person (Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat, which wound up on the ¡Qué Horror! 2010 Final 13) or if the number of segments is low to begin with (Little Deaths, which has three segments; anthologies with four segments or more, that’s where I think you start to get into trouble with consistency).

(ABCs of Death 2 OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[11 of 13]

13 SINS

(March 2014) 

"... Great wealth is within your grasp. 36 hours from now, you can be a very rich man. All you have to do is complete 13 challenges.”

The last time Daniel Stamm was hanging ‘round these parts was for the ¡Qué horror! 2011 candidate, The Last Exorcism.

This time out, he barges into the Final 13 by helming the English language remake of Chukiat Sakveerakul’s 13 Game Sayawng, where a grotesque game show gradually turns its contestants into savage cutthroats, all for that next bit of green.

“I will dance with the Golden Toad.”

Not only is the action relocated to New Orleans, but the stakes are amped up considerably for the film’s protagonist, Elliot Brindle (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’s Mark Webber): he’s got a pregnant soon-to-be wife (True Blood’s Rutina Wesley) and mentally disabled brother (Devon Graye, who played teen-aged Dexter Morgan) who are depending on him.

And while there are certain elements from the original which have been excised (thankfully, the awkward tonal shifts and, less so, the active female supporting role), there are also welcome additions: among them, a deeper glimpse into the game’s backstory, and some familiar genre faces (Ron Perlman and Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Plus, George Coe (who currently voices Woodhouse on Archer) doing the “Game Voice.”

“So says the Golden Toad: ‘A brave arm makes a short sword long.’”

The changes from the original (which include the specifics of most of the game’s challenges) serve to tighten the narrative’s plot and thematics, and also serve to foreground the dark empowerment and paranoia that engulfs Elliot as he gets further along in the game.

Ultimately, 13 Sins is not only a more refined and polished version of 13 Game Sayawng, it’s also a harder-hitting and more emotionally potent piece.

“Try to think of this in the most positive, empowering way as a gun pointed to your head.”

Parting Shot: This could actually make an interesting double feature with Cheap Thrills...

(13 Sins OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[3 of 13]

CHEAP THRILLS

(March 2013)

Old friends Craig (Pat Healy) and Vince (Ethan Embry) haven’t seen each other for five years, and a chance meeting with Colin (David Koechner) and his wife, birthday girl Violet (Healy’s The Innkeepers co-star Sara Paxton) opens them up to the opportunity (and a night) of a lifetime…

This feature debut of E.L Katz, co-written by Deadgirl scribe Trent Haaga with David Chirchirillo, is definitely one of the most disturbing entries amongst this year’s ¡Qué horror! 13, and that’s saying something.

It’s got some streaks of black humor running through it, but ultimately, it’s a potent portrait of just how petty and cruel individuals can be in the light of monetary reward; it’s about the horror of how far desperate people will debase themselves for some cold hard cash.

Parting Shot: A review of past ¡Qué horror! title, Deadgirl, can be found lurking in the Archive.

(Cheap Thrills OS’ courtesy of impawards.com)

¡Qué horror! 2014

Candidate #6

CHEAP THRILLS

(March 2013)

Old friends Craig (Pat Healy) and Vince (Ethan Embry) haven’t seen each other for five years, and a chance meeting with Colin (David Koechner) and his wife, birthday girl Violet (Healy’s The Innkeepers co-star Sara Paxton) opens them up to the opportunity (and a night) of a lifetime…

This feature debut of E.L Katz, co-written by Deadgirl scribe Trent Haaga with David Chirchirillo, is currently in the running for the most disturbing entry amongst this year’s ¡Qué horror! crop thus far, and that’s saying something.

It’s got some streaks of black humor running through it, but ultimately, it’s a potent portrait of just how petty and cruel individuals can be in the light of monetary reward; it’s about the horror of how far desperate people will debase themselves for some cold hard cash.

Parting Shot: A review of past ¡Qué horror! title, Deadgirl, can be found lurking in the Archive.

(Cheap Thrills OS’ courtesy of impawards.com)