NYC Horror Film Recap: 'Must Love Death" (feature) & "The Ressurection of Officer Rollins" (short)

Well, I’m back from the NYC Horror Film Festival and I could not have had any better of a time. I watched close to 25 short films and features over the six screenings I attended. Everyone involved with this festival deserves major kudos as their enthusiasm and energy never seemed to wane throughout the proceedings. The only thing that bummed me out a little bit is the thought of how hard an event of this magnitude would be to pull off in Boston. Whether it’s the lack of suitable venues or the difficulty to get folks to come together and bust ass to put together an event with this scope, I just can’t see this area pulling it off. Thankfully, NYC is only a few hours drive away. Also, somehow I managed to spend parts of Wednesday through Saturday in NY and pay only $5 for parking, with no tickets. The gods were smiling indeed. Over the next few days I’ll spotlight some of my personal favorite films from each program I attended. The following two films were all I was able to catch during Thursday’s screenings due to traffic, but luckily both were fantastic.

“The Ressurection of Officer Rollins” spotlights a paramedic team transporting the title character to the morgue, as they failed to revive him. In a short amount of time, the film shows the affection and camaraderie the duo share with one another, highlighted by the driver belting along to air Supply’s All Out of Love. Of course, as he’s singing along, he fails to notice that the cop has come back from the dead and is trying to eat his partner in the back. The ensuing melee in the back of the ambulance with the resurrected zombie (Derrick Mears aka Jason in the Friday the 13th remake) is pretty hysterical, with an added bonus of seeing the brain eater receive electrical paddles to the side of the head. The end scene left me a bit perplexed, but did have some comical moments where the two friends share an existential conversation over the meaning of life. It also leads to the driver exclaiming “You’ve got a mouth full of demon juice and you’re giving me shit for enjoying a delicious snack cake?” when his nutritional choices are being questioned.

“Must Love Death” was the feature film of the program. While I’m usually no fan of either genre, director Andreas Schaap’s movie marks the perfect blend of romantic comedy and torture porn. The end result is a film that easily fits right into my top ten of the year.

Norman (Sami Loris) is a sad sack everyman that has had his heartbroken one too many times. Deciding that he doesn’t want to live anymore, but lacking the intestinal fortitude to commit suicide on his own, he finds a like minded group of people. He agrees to meet up with them at a remote wooded cabin, where the group plans to commit suicide together.

Or so he thinks.

In reality, Norman’s fallen prey to a pretty sick group of folks hell bent on torturing Norman to their hearts content. Soon after meeting the group, Norman finds himself duped, tied to a weight bench and awaiting all sorts of bodily harm and disfigurement at the hands of the trio. It says a lot when the sensible one in the bunch argues she had signed up to make a snuff film not torture a helpless dude. Sean and Gary, the other conspirators, are simply sadists. Gary is borderline mentally retarded, and his sole concern seems to me making sure his guests don’t track mud on his floor. As Sean, Jeff Burell (Pandorum) brings a real sense of manic malevolence to his performance and I found myself reminded of Robert Carlyle’s breakout role of Bigby in Trainspotting. Sean obsessively films the mayhem for his own personal reality show: “Torture or Not Torture”.

The romantic comedy elements of the film are shown in flashbacks throughout the story, until the two storylines converge in the end. The love story between Norman and Jennifer (Manon Kahle) begin like so many great love stories do-she accidentally runs him over with her car. Awkward sparks then begin to fly between Norman and the cute diner waitress as they try to get a romance off the ground. The film does a nice job of hitting the typical beats of a lighthearted rom/com. Scenes involving Jennifer interacting with her zany waitress coworker and the grizzled old diner regular who orders ell soup every day could have been lifted from the Nora Ephron book of screenplays. Norman and Jennifer share some nerdily romantic moments when she takes him on a tour of her uncle’s sci-fi television show set, but she breaks his heart by forgetting to dump her douche bag actor boyfriend before pursuing Norman. There’s also a great sound track spotlighting blues and indie twee that fits these moments perfectly. Schaap knows how to tweak the rom/com conventions without them ever overwhelming the horror elements of his story. Will the two ever find their way back to one another or will Norman end up buried in a shallow ditch in the backwoods with his limbs hacked off and tossed into Hefty bags?

It’s a fair question to ask because the film does an amazing job of cutting back from the light romantic bits with some serious hardcore gore that your average French horror film maker would be jealous of. I find one of the things in film that gets my stomach upset is the sight of someone bound and helpless and completely at the mercy of their captors. The majority of the second act finds Norman tied up and tormented. Sean and Gary casually break each of his fingers as a warm up. Like a Weeble Wobble, Norman is burned, cut, impaled to the arms of a chair among other drastic devices, but the man won’t stay down. There’s a brutal and swift shotgun death. The most uncomfortable scene involves a white trash Britney lookalike having her ankle slowly pulverized by a vice. It’s slow and uncomfortable and gruesome to watch, and I believe I may have yelled myself when watching.

Kudos has to be given to the cast of this film. Each of them gave a bang up performance. Loris has a Paul Rudd-like everyman quality about him that made him instantly likeable. He managed to make his struggles with depression both sad and comical. He shared a great chemistry with Kahle that had me rooting for a happy outcome as opposed to an evisceration. You can see why Jennifer falls for Norman, especially as she struggles to accept what an asshole her current boyfriend really is. Burell nearly steals the film as the main villain. The scenes of him stalking Norman through the woods are scary as hell as the guy just exudes craziness from every pore. The best way I can describe him as a more toned down and rural version of the American businessman in Hostel. Plus, he has the best moustache committed on film since the heyday of porn in the 70's. The dimwitted character of Gary gives the gruesome sequences some much needed levity that keep the proceedings from devolving into what I like to call “hitting sacks of meat with a hammer” aesthetic that most torture scenes devolve into. Even when copious amounts of blood are dripping onto his otherwise pristine floor, all the lumbering hulk can think of is how the stains will come out.

I have the feeling this feature will make the festival rounds while hoping to get picked up. Definitely keep your eyes peeled for this movie as it really does make for a perfect blend of romance, horror and humor. I’m glad this played the opening night as it set the stage for some great films to follow. Check out the redband trailer below: