Fantastic Fest 2009

Uh. There's amateur documentary and then there's just amateurs. Unfortunately for me, Cropsey fell into the latter category. My largest gripe is that the documentary as a whole seemed to lack focus. It was little more than a news report, giving the facts, the stories, and the personalities cursory glances with little follow-through. In the end, it was little more than a collection of true-crime urban legends that sprang up around the disappearances. It would have been awesome if they had picked one aspect of the investigation and really dug into the community and the personalities involved. The most focus seemed to be on the film-maker's attempts to get into see the man himself, and the volunteer efforts to find the bodies of the missing children. The latter, I think would have made a good focus, especially if they had focused on the communities more, and not tried to do everything at once. Another gripe was that the film-makers, either by accident or by intention, ended up Blair Witching themselves, choosing to go to one of the abandoned buildings where there was reputed cult activity... at night. So we could hear them stumble around in the dark. And sound scared. Normally I wouldn't care, but the majority of their other trips out to the ruins managed to happen in reasonable daylight so this felt... cheap and staged. Overall, it's far from the best documentary I've seen at FF in these last few years.

This is a very fun film. It's firmly in the old school superhero vein, complete with secret identities, scrappy teams of back-up personalities, street urchins, and a scrappy leading lady – oddly enough not perpetually in peril. She was undoubtedly one of the best things about the movie, hands down. Unfortunately, because it is such a cut-and dried superhero movie, there's not a lot to say that hasn't been said. There are heavy Spiderman and Batman influences, with a splash of the Shadow\ for atmosphere and design. And speaking of that design... The sets and costumes in this film were beautiful, easily one of the best designed productions I've seen. The textures, the ornamentation, and the style were vintage late 40's and wonderful to look at. Also notable was the design of the slums. Every prop “scrounged” piece of wood and watery walk-way looked straight out of a comic book. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

Pretty much everything you'd like in a slapstick zombie flick. The hook that sets it apart somewhat is that the zobmie-making virus only affects women. So when a group of friends head out to a small town for a stag weekend, they find themselves surrounded. What I liked is that the zombies had personalities. The salon girl was still trying to cut things, the lonely fat girl was still looking for a good man (for dinner), and the ex-girlfriend still wanted a piece of her ex (for breakfast). It made for some really awesome comedic moments. The actors playing the men are great, they had a real sense of camaraderie, like they'd known each other for years – important in a flick that's so heavily dependent on their interactions. They're also dumb as posts, which is entertaining. The whole movie actually works nicely as a satire on the age-old Men v Women argument, which is what the writer/director was going for. Kudos!