As The Green Knight has become a symbol of the rout of French distribution, many films have not been released in our cinemas. Often minimized or even embroidered, a genre has suffered considerably. Yet large enough to produce true contemporary masterpieces, horror cinema has paid the costs of a sordid year for French exploitation. However, both films were presented during the online edition of the last Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival.
Bad Dreams (Com e True) by Anthony Scott Burns
Presented out of competition at the 2021 Gérardmer Film Festival, Anthony Scott Burns ' second film will not have been released on the big screen. A sinister fate as the Canadian, officiating on several departments of the film, plunges us into a sensory and visual experience cut for dark rooms.
Halfway between horror and science fiction, Bad Dreams immerses us in the nightmares of a young high school student, Julia Sarah Stone in a mesmerizing role, accepting to be the object of study of a scientific institute analyzing dreams. Embracing adolescence with contemporary themes, Anthony Scott Burns chooses to inscribe his story in a certain modernity wrapped in a retro-futuristic artistic direction. The filmmaker pushes all the cursors to the maximum with a brilliant mastery relying in particular on a soundtrack both graceful and disturbing, composed by the synthpop duo Electric Youth and himself under the pseudonym Pilotpriest. A fascinating universe whose genesis lasted many years, a long process of creation that is felt in Bad Dreams as artistic experimentation seems to respond to ingeniously elaborated intentions. Indeed, the film will prove to be a curious cinematographic alloy as it progresses, composed of references of the genre and very original visual and sound compositions, the director relying in particular on nightmarish sequences entirely made in 3D animation. Unjustly eclipsed last July for its VOD release, we can only recommend this film. Part of a genre often abused but also reserving its share of daring and sensory films, Bad Dreams is certainly one of them.
The Dark and the Wicked by Bryan Bertino
You probably know Bryan Bertino from his first movie The Strangers. Written when it was still a film electro, Bertino was finally approached to direct it accepting the heavy task of directing it with very little means. Finally, earning nearly ten times its budget with its international distribution, The Strangers became a cult film in the USA.
Today, the Texan, above all a producer, has lost none of his auteur sensibility, although he has made films with relative ambitions in recent years. He proves it with The Dark and the Wicked, deploying an aesthetic while filming a harsh and worn Texas, the filmmaker takes his friends of American horror cinema to bounce back. His fourth film will prove to be a long and terrifying initiatory journey about loneliness and isolation in deep America. Taking up the archetype of the American vengeful devil, Bryan Bertino takes us to a necrotic drama tinged with agonizing silences and images of pure psychological terror. The Dark and the Wicked, before being a film attacking deep fears, is a film about isolation when death comes. To film evil, a deep-rooted notion of American cinema, the director uses authentic and deeply personal imagery and atmosphere. Beyond the meticulous work brought to the plastic aspect, it is impossible not to praise a bewildering sound identity and an impeccable cast, Marin Ireland in the lead. In many ways, The Dark and the Wicked stands out as one of the best horror movies of recent years. A film to discover exclusively on the Shadowz platform since June 18.
