Fantastic Fest 2009

Director Jordan Barker and Producers Julio Caro, Cary Jones and Paul Papile Live in Person!

Each year, as a member of the programming team for Fantastic Fest, I go to the film markets in Berlin and Cannes, where I spend weeks of full days going from theater to theater looking for prospective festival gold. In addition to this, we watch submissions from all corners of the globe, day in and day out. In the course of this rigorous selection process I watch dozens - many dozens - of thrillers. Many of them are well made, well acted, well paced... and utterly the same. There is very little thrill in thrillers when you see as many as I do and you realize that it is very rare to find something fresh in the genre.

The premise of the unexpectedly elegant suspense-ride DURESS is that a cold-blooded killer has singled out a mild-mannered, recently widowed father and is forcing him, under threat of harm to his young daughter, to participate in gruesome activities that are clearly a way of life for our villain. Tension builds slowly as we watch as the father fail to act or take a stand. I was swept along on an unrelenting tide of frustration as the indecisive widow sinks him deeper and more helplessly into the clutches of the ruthless killer - a man most definitely on a mission. Typically this type of frustration does not turn out well - I leave the theater condemning the laziness of a script which condemns a character to stupidity and poor decision-making with no reason except to further the plot. DURESS, however, cleverly avoids these traps and pays off the ever-increasing tension with a distinctly unexpected finale. (Karrie League)