Crete Library Film Club 9th Annual Horror Fest

Hey everybody!

October is already flying by and Halloween will be upon us soon enough and with it, my favorite Film Club event: Horror Fest.  This year we will be meeting Wed. and Thurs. the 30th and 31st.  We will be following the same format we have for the past 9 years.  Both nights we will be watching double features.  The first movie starts at 5pm each night, and the second, some time around 6:45pm.  Some of them are bit a longer this year and time will be a little tighter than usual, so the earlier we can start the second film the better, but we will make it work.

For this year's theme, I've chosen four films put out by the production company A24.  I haven't been disappointed by one of their releases yet, so I always get excited when I see their logo pop up before a film.  Their horror offerings are great examples of how a movie can be a horror movie but still be as compelling a drama, comedy, or otherwise.  So, without further ado, your 2019 Horror Fest lineup:
(click the titles for trailers)

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 30th

It Comes at Night-5:00pm
The Killing of a Sacred Deer-6:45pm

THURSDAY, Oct. 31st

The Blackcoat's Daughter-5:00pm
Hereditary-6:45pm

I hope you can make it out for this spooky Film Club tradition.  Below are more in-depth looks at each film.  Hope to see you there!

It Comes at Night is a 2017 American horror film written and directed by Trey Edward Shults.  It stars Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, Christopher Abott, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Riley Keough.  A highly contagious outbreak has ravaged the world.  Paul, his wife Sarah, and their teenage son Travis have secluded themselves in their home deep in the woods in an undisclosed location.  Their peace is disturbed when a stranger arrives.  The film has an 87% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Brian Tallerico, writing for Rogerebert.com, gave the film 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, “It’s important that Shults’ vision of the end of the world opens not with an attack but with the kind of event that forever twists the trajectory of a young man’s life: the death of a loved one.  It is a movie in which the villains are loss, grief, pain, fear, and distrust-very human emotions and it has no traditional undead brain eaters.  There are no zombies in the streets, boogeymen in the basement or witches in the woods-and yet it is one of the most terrifying films in years.  Most of all, It Comes at Night is a film in which the true elements of fear come from within, not from outside.  Sure, it’s not exactly a new concept-George A Romero, John Carpenter and Stanley Kubrick have created the cinematic templates for such a thing but it’s remarkable to consider how much horror mileage that Shults gets out of a film with no traditional villains.  In a sense, it’s a reverse horror films, one that tells us, “Sure, the outside world is scary, but it’s distrust and paranoia that will truly be your undoing.  The real enemy is already inside.  Now try and get some sleep.” Good luck with that last part.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a 2017 psychological thriller film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, from a screenplay by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filipou.  It stars Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, and Bill Camp.  The film follows a cardiac surgeon who secretly befriends a teenage boy with a connection to his past.  He introduces the boy to his family, who begin to fall mysteriously ill.  The film currently holds an 80% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Brian Tallerico, writing for Rogerebert.com gave the film 3.5/4 stars, saying this in his review, “Farrell is phenomenal here, finding the shades of a man whose greatest sin may be his refusal to admit he’s only human.  In the end, that may be the message of the film-when you play God, you must deal with the consequences.  The Lanthimos-Farrell dynamic is one of those relationships in which the creator and actor are so clearly on the same page it invigorating.  That’s a good word for The Killing of a Sacred Deer.  It’s a film that challenges viewers in such fascinating ways and feels so refined in its filmmaking that it’s invigorating to watch.  It’s a rare movie indeed that can be this alternately terrifying, hysterical, strange, and heartbreaking, often in the same scene.  Like the Greek myth that inspired the film, it feels powerful enough to be timeless.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a 2015 Canadian-American supernatural psychological horror film written and directed by Osgood Perkins.  The film stars Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, Lauren Holly, and James Remar.  Over their winter break, two Catholic schoolgirls get left behind at their boarding school at which the nuns are rumored to be Satanists.  The film has a 73% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Scott Tobias, writing for NPR said this in his review, “For a first time director, Perkins shows remarkable confidence in building his unsettling premise on enigmas and ellipses, essentially deferring the answers to all questions until the final act.  When the twists finally arrive, they’re not surprising in and of themselves-the signs are not hidden well enough in plain sight-but the shocks sting hard, like a coiled snake that’s been waiting patiently in the underbrush.”

Hereditary is a 2018 American supernatural psychological horror drama film written and directed by Ari Aster, in his feature directorial debut.  It stars Toni Collette, Alex Wolf, Milly Shapiro and Gabriel Byrne as a family haunted after the death of their secretive grandmother.  It premiered on Jan. 21, 2018 in the Midnight Section at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.  It was acclaimed by critics, with Collette’s performance receiving particular praise, and was a commercial success, making over $79 mil on a $10 mil budget to become A24’s highest-grossing film worldwide.  It holds an 89% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Matt Zoeller Seitz, writing for Rogerebert.com gave the film 4/4 stars saying this in his review, “Creepy beyond belief, Hereditary is one of those movies you shouldn’t describe in detail because if you do, it will not only ruin surprises but make the listener wonder if you saw the film or dreamed it.  The movie sustains a throb of dread throughout its first 90 minutes, and it’s final 30 are off-the-rails in the best way.  At times, Aster’s film seems to be attacking rationality itself, scraping and scratching and tearing at the thought structures and language we’ve developed over the millennia in order to live in the world with the ultimate goal of plunging us backwards in time so that we reconnect with the superstitious cave-mind that looked up at the sky when it started to rain and wondered what the tribe had done to anger the gods.”