Disturbing British genre films to be seen during IMAGINE:
25th Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival
April 15 to 26, 2009 – Pathé Tuschinski
www.imaginefilmfestival.nl
Including MUM & DAD (UK: Steven Sheil, 2008), EDEN LAKE (UK: James Watkins, 2008), DONKEY PUNCH (UK: Olly Blackburn, 2008), THE CHILDREN (UK: Tom Shankland, 2008) and CHEMICAL WEDDING (UK: Julian Doyle, 2008).
IMAGINE identified a new wave of unsettling British genre films and gathered the most talked-about titles in a separate program segment: Anarchy in the UK.
It portrays Great Britain as a country where everyday situations turn into nightmares and civilization is a wafer-thin veneer that is easily burned away.
After the famous Hammer Studio, home to Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, closed its doors in the late 1970s, British genre film never quite recovered, apart from occasional exceptions. But in recent years, there seems to be a turning point. Perhaps inspired by the success of Neil Marshall's groundbreaking THE DESCENT from 2005, a growing group of British filmmakers are enthusiastically tackling unsettling themes.
However different they may be from one another, these films shatter the reassuring image of England we know from TV: a land of idyllic cottages, eccentric pub-goers, and murders with a high—read: cozy—Agatha Christie factor. In the pitch-black horror comedy MUM & DAD, a Polish cleaning lady falls into the hands of a crazy working-class family. In the nerve-wracking thriller EDEN LAKE, a yuppie couple is terrorized by teenage thugs. In DONKEY PUNCH, the morality of 'the youth of today' is mercilessly dissected, and in THE CHILDREN, sweethearts turn against their parents without any direct provocation. The outlier is CHEMICAL WEDDING, a curious blend of fantasy and science fiction that sees black magician Aleister Crowly reincarnate in the body of a university professor.
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