Fantastic Fest Wrap Up: Day Four

By Shannon Hood and Jane Almirall

Shannon: It was all interviews, all day. First up was director Jim Mickle from Stake Land, along with actors Nick Damici and Connor Paolo.  What a great group of guys.  The trio were there to promote their post apocalyptic road/vampire movie.  Look for the interview and a review of Stake Land in the next week or so.

Our second interview of the day was with director Adam Green (Hatchet, Frozen, and Hatchet 2) along with Danielle Harris and Kane Hodder for Hatchet 2.  This was an exciting interview for me.  I’m a big Adam Green fan, and I’ve been watching Kane Hodder in horror movies since the late eighties.

Press day wrapped up with a chat with the Australian director Josh Reed, actress Qwen Boylan, and actor Wil Traval, who were discussing their IFC featured film Primal. All three interviews and film reviews will be published as soon as we can get them up.

Jane: The Housemaid 1960  Digitally remastered, this film is a slowly-paced, stylized tale of a prosperous family and their mentally unstable housemaid.  Characters manipulate, lie, plot and psychologically torture one another after the father conducts an impulsive affair with the maid, the consequences of which escalate out of control.

I must confess, the overly dramatic acting style made this feature a bit of a slog to get through, but a surprising twist at the end paid off in a big way.

Hatchet 2 (directed by Adam Green starring Kane Hodder and Danielle Harris.) This film plays like a cinematic love letter to the slasher films of the 80’s – the horror movies of my childhood that I grew up loving.  Many horror film icons turn up as characters as Marybeth and Victor Crowley square off for mutual retribution, resulting in the kind of revolting gore and over the top violence that fans of Hatchet have come to expect from Adam Green. Hatchet 2 features some inventive and disgusting kill scenes (FUN!) and in defiance of censorship will be released as an unrated feature.

Jack Chop (directed by Adam Green.) This short film was the bumper preceding Hatchet 2 – which nicely set the tone for the somber exercise in minimalist restraint that was the main feature.  I kid!  This 3 minute, mock-infomercial for a jack ‘o lantern carving kit was a gory, goofy bit of slapstick – in the vernacular of the director, it was wicked awesome.