The After Dark Horrorfest: 2007
by Brian Tallerico

STUDIO: Lionsgate
RELEASE DATE: March 18th, 2008

In 2006, the After Dark Horrorfest, which billed itself as "8 Films to Die For", launched for hardcore horror fans tired of the mediocrity of Hollywood horror or just looking for something new. With low-budget horror movies being produced on an almost-daily basis and film festivals and straight-to-DVD shelves filled with indie gems, the prospect of collecting eight of these unseen beauties and giving them a wider audience had fans drooling. The first year was a mixed bag of hits and misses with only a couple of films that really worked (The Hamiltons, The Abandoned), but a general sense that even the failures were trying a little harder than your average direct-to-video title. The second wave of titles were released in theaters at the end of 2007 and hit DVD this week.

After probably being a little singed by some of the lesser titles from year one, you might be wondering if the sophomore class fared any better. Sadly, the answer is a resounding no. If this keeps up, the junior year will be unwatchable and there probably won't be a senior session. Only one of the second wave of titles is really worth your time. After that, there are a couple of reasonably diverting titles that would have fit well in the first year, but there are also at least two (and arguably four) titles that are FAR worse than anything from Horrorfest 1. In fact, they're worse than most of the straight-to-video movies released recently. With so many great indie horror movies in the last year - Hatchet, Fido, Severance, Them, and more - the After Dark Horrorfest will have to try MUCH harder to compete in the crowded market. Luckily, you horror fans have the genre junkies at The Deadbolt to weed through what's worth your time, what you might want to save for a rainy night, and what you should leave buried in a bargain bin. We watched them all, so you don't have to. Ranked in order of quality with the warning that anything below the first three isn't really worth your time:

1. BORDERLAND
STARRING: Rider Strong, Brian Presley, Jake Muxworthy, Damian Alcazar, and Sean Astin
WRITTEN BY: Eric Poppen & Zev Berman
DIRECTED BY: Zev Berman
FEATURES:
"Rituales de Sangre" - The True Story of the Cult Murder Investigation
Audio Commentary with Director Zev Berman, actor Brian Presley, director of photography Scott Kevan, and producer Lauren Moews
"Inside Zev's Head: A Filmmaker's Diary"
"Miss Horrorfest Contest Webisodes"

Yet another cautionary tale about why you should never leave the safety of your own home, Borderland is one of the more surprisingly effective films in the genre over the last few years, much less the After Dark Horrorfest. "The Tijuana Chainsaw Massacre" or "Last Casa on the Left" starts like any other of the recent torture porn films like Wolf Creek or Turistas. To be honest, after watching the gruesome torture sequence that opens Borderland, I was preparing the puke bucket for another torture porn nightmare. Having suffered through recent junk like what's happened to the Saw franchise, The Hills Have Eyes 2, Captivity, and more, the idea of sitting through another jugular-slicing nightmare "based on a true story" made my stomach churn. But Borderland proves that there's still no justice in the way horror movies get released. While so many awful torture porn movies have been widely released, the best of these recent films was relegated to the Horrorfest. More reminiscent of Last House on the Left or the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Borderland is shockingly effective. It's one of the best ADH movies of either year and "wins" 2007 by a landslide.

Borderland is based loosely on a true story of the murder of a student just across the line in Mexico. It turns out that a poor student who had gone to Mexico to party was kidnapped and used as human sacrifice by a power-mad drug dealer. Co-writer/director Zev Berman uses that set-up to tell the story of three young men who head to the land where tequila flows like water before going off to the demanding colleges and professional careers that life demands of them. They end up at a strip club, where one of them falls for the bartender and another hires a prostitute but can't perform when she realizes she's just a poor teenage mother. After a night of hanging with their new gal pals and doing some drugs, one of the three men decides to head home alone. Bad idea. He's kidnapped by a crazy cabal of homicidal lunatics who believe that human sacrifice will give them power and his two friends are left in a town where most people don't speak English to try and convince someone to come to his rescue.

The reason Borderland works is simple - it takes itself seriously by not falling into too many of the genre cliches. There are no random kills - so many of these movies introduce characters just to get another notch on their death count - or ridiculous action sequences. In fact, that brutal opening feels out of place by the end, as if the producers made the filmmakers add it to make sure the first reel had some blood. Don't get me wrong. Borderland gets VERY ugly - those with easily-turned stomachs should move on - but there's something darker and dirtier about it than so many of the recent torture porn flicks and that's what makes it work. What starts as another entry in the "been there, gored that" series of films we've endured lately ends up proving that there might be life in the gore genre yet, down Mexico way.

2. MULBERRY STREET
STARRING: Nick Damaci, Kim Blair, Ron Brice, Bo Corre, Tim House, and Larry Fleischman
WRITTEN BY: Nick Damaci & Jim Mickle
DIRECTED BY: Jim Mickle
FEATURES:
Storyboards
Deleted Scenes
Outtakes
Early Director Sketches
Behind the Scenes - The Rats
Makeup Test
Visual Effects Test
"Miss Horrorfest Contest Webisodes

I always thought that "The Rat" by The Walkmen would be playing when the world ended. It might sound like a useless aside, but if you know that great song (and if you call yourself a rock fan, you should), you'll recognize that any movie that uses it well automatically has a leg up on the competition. And when you notice that the song is called "The Rat" and that Mulberry Street is an apocalyptic tale about rodents that turn their bite victims into zombies, it starts to dawn on you that this little movie has more going for it behind-the-camera than most horror movies, especially when compared to its often-lazy After Dark brethren. Like the first third of The Signal, Mulberry Street is about the moments right before and right after all the zombie sh*t hits the fan, choosing a small a group of very inner-city dwellers (the kind who have to deal with rats on a daily basis) to tell an intimate story about a worldwide catastrophe.

The story goes that writer/star Nick Damaci wrote a multi-million dollar screenplay about the end of the world brought on by the arrival of were-rats. No kidding. You get bit, you turn into a very hungry rat with a taste for human flesh. Understandably, Damaci had some trouble getting that idea past the pitch stage of development, so he pared his script down to the essentials and basically made an urban zombie movie more along the lines of Romero's early work or Cronenberg's stuff from the '70s with co-writer and director Jim Mickle. It's hard to say for sure, but having to change his vision to something that wouldn't use CGI or awful rat-person makeup probably made Mulberry Street a much stronger film. Mulberry Street is about very ordinary people (and the casting of natural, non-Hollywood actors is brilliant) put it a very horrible situation. It's "day one" of 28 Days Later and, for the most part, it works.

When Mickle focuses on atmosphere and claustrophobia, Mulberry Street is as effective as anything in this year's Horrorfest. The film falters a bit when the plot forces itself into action, as Mickle shoots on steadicam and mistakes chaos for horror. The camera gets jostled and tossed around Cloverfield-style a few too many times in the final act and the end scenes don't have the power that they should. The conclusion feels abrupt, but, then again, it fits with the natural mold of the style. When the rats do go viral and the zombie war starts, the end probably will come quickly. Call it realism.

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