Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 28, 2005, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Among the dozens of new independent (and a few not-so-independent) features screening at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival have been a number of genre films shown as part of the Midnight section. I caught three of these movies, all of which have more shows scheduled as the fest wraps up, and offer a mixed bag of styles and quality:
Premonition: The second in producer Taka Ichise’s J-Horror Theater line after Masayuki Ochiai’s Infection (also playing at Tribeca, and which I have yet to see), this film from director/co-writer Norio Tsuruta is, from all reports, its predecessor’s polar opposite. Rather than an all-out visceral attack to the system, Premonition is in the quieter horror tradition, more in the mold of the Ringu series (of which Tsuruta helmed the third installment, Ringu Ø), but lacking the ghosts—in particular, the straggly-haired girl spirits—that have become the subgenre’s new clichés.
The source of the terror here is the kyofu shinbun (literally translated, “newspaper of terror”), whose headlines presage horrible events to come. A scrap of this paper is discovered by Hideki Satomi (Hiroshi Mikami), and minutes after reading the obituary of his own daughter, he witnesses her horrible death in an automobile accident. Three years later, he has yet to recover from the incident, but when the kyofu shinbun re-enters his life, he must decide whether to act and prevent its new predictions of tragedy from coming true.
Premonition (which Lions Gate releases to U.S. DVD July 5) is an improvement on Tsuruta’s previous chiller Kakashi, which was all buildup and very little payoff. Here there’s almost too much payoff, as the final reels depart from the somber, realistically oriented approach of the first hour to venture into more fantastical territory, where things make more emotional than logical sense. Holding it all together are the dramatic undertones of the father recovering from one tragedy and finding himself in the position of potentially averting others. While Mikami’s histrionics occasionally go over the top, overall he convinces as a man desperately trying to make sense of the occult forces that have taken over his life, and Tsuruta creates a palpable sense of dread hanging over the proceedings. There are only a couple of actual jolts in Premonition; Tsuruta is more interested in, and is fairly successful at, creating a quiet chill that sticks with you for a little while after the movie is over.
Reeker: Writer/director Dave Payne’s movie starts off with a bang, as a family motoring through the Southwest comes across a sudden deer in the middle of the road. Do they swerve to avoid it and then crash their vehicle? Nope—they plow right into the animal, leaving a bloody mess on the windshield that forces them to pull over, and then…well, I won’t spoil it. The story proper concerns a group of young people on their way to a rave in the desert, who wind up stranded at a roadside diner/motel where everyone seems to have suddenly, and mysteriously, disappeared. It’s not long before they find out why: The area is haunted by the vicious title creature, whose arrivals are presaged by the stench of rotting flesh.
Payne, who has previously helmed actioners and erotic thrillers for Roger Corman as well as Addams Family Reunion, demonstrates a good grasp of the mechanics of straightforward horror in Reeker, making strong use of the isolated motel location (the same one used in Identity). He’s also got a cool creature to work with, created by Monster FX’s Mark Villalobos and Ron Karkoska and sporting an assortment of nasty motorized weapons. What he doesn’t have is a narrative that sustains all the way to end; the movie eventually becomes another kill-’em-off-one-by-one scenario, and the twist ending, while it makes sense in context, will probably be too familiar to seasoned genre viewers. Still, there’s enough good stuff in Reeker to make one want to see Payne tackle another serious fright film.
Long Distance: This inversion of When a Stranger Calls stars a dyed-blonde Monica Keena (Freddy vs. Jason) as Nicole, a young woman who gets a really wrong number. Attempting to call her mom late one night in her Boston apartment, she misdials the area code and winds up reaching the Nevada house of a young woman who has just fallen victim to a serial killer. The psycho *69s her back, and is soon calling her repeatedly with taunts and physical threats. The police and an FBI profiler then get involved, and Nicole learns that the murderer is blazing a trail of victims across the country—one leading inexorably east.
Director Marcus Stern makes his feature debut on Long Distance after 20 years of experience in the theater, and indeed the movie plays very much like a stage piece, given that almost all the action is confined to Nicole’s apartment, the cast is limited and, in the early scenes, Keena seems to be playing to the back rows. She gets her performance under control as the film goes on, and the murder scenes, which depend entirely on voiceover/sound FX and her terrified reactions, deliver the shivers. But everything in between feels second-hand, from the developing relationship between Nicole and the friendly young cop (Ivan Martin) who takes her case to the all-business demeanor of the profiler (Tamala Jones). Like Reeker, this one has a problematic surprise ending, and here it’s not only unsatisfying but doesn’t seem properly set up by what comes before. The final impression is that Long Distance might have worked better as a short subject.
