The latest edition of the Tribeca Film Festival comes to a close in New York City, leaving behind another strong year for new releases, retrospectives, and genre events.
Tribeca 2024 featured the new release of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s ultra-dark The Devil’s Bath, the raucous slasher AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead, the sticky sci-fi horror comedy The A-Frame, and the dusty neo-noir horror A Desert, to name a few of this year’s genre offerings. But the festival’s genre offerings don’t stop at the midnight programming, a section dedicated to horror and high-energy genre cinema.
Director: Roberto Minervini
Writer: Roberto Minervini
Stars: Duncan Vezain, Jeremiah Knupp, René W. Solomon
Below is a roundup of brief reflections and short reviews of Tribeca’s narrative films that either delve into horror or crash into it in surprising ways.
Director Thordur Palsson, who co-wrote the script with Jamie Hannigan (“The Woman in the Wall”), blends 19th-century survival thrills with atmospheric supernatural chills set in an Icelandic fishing village. Palsson immerses viewers in a seemingly continuous story, where especially harsh winter conditions have left the handful of residents in a state of extreme desperation and without a leader. When a strange foreign ship sinks off the coast, it forces the town to make an impossible choice, and widow Eva (Odessa Young, Assassination Nation) is the one who ultimately decides whether to save the ship’s crew or survive the brutal season. The townspeople are wracked with guilt over their choice, but when strange fates begin to befall them, they wonder if the folkloric Draugr have come to haunt them.
The stunning Icelandic landscapes and unforgiving winter conditions infuse The Damned with a rich abundance of atmosphere and production value. It goes far in a spare film that doles out character details sporadically in order to build paranoia in the group’s ranks. Supporting actors like “Game of Thrones” actor Rory McCann and Joe Cole (“Gangs of London”) bring the right level of fear and despair, but the narrative structure makes it hard to find rooting interest here. Palsson employs restraint with the folkloric elements, opting instead to lean into the ambiguities of superstition. While that means it builds to a fitting final moments, the impact is light.
The desire for peace, quiet and sleep transforms into a tension-filled nightmare in Restless, the feature debut from writer-director Jed Hart. Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal), a woman who no longer has children, loves her quiet, mundane routine. So much so that she doesn’t take it well when a new neighbor, Deano (Aston McAuley), breaks her peace with constant partying. Early attempts to turn down the volume are met with open hostility, and the more Nicky loses patience, the worse things get. The more tensions rise between the neighbors, the more Nicky and Deano seem destined for a confrontation that will end in violence.
Hart captures Nicky's psychological state to a palpable degree. Sleep deprivation and gaslighting produce nail-biting suspense that only grows more unnerving as Deano's cruelty escalates. Marshal wins viewers' interest with ease, not only because of Nicky's serious personality, but as a cowardly guy who is easy to relate to and makes him a perfect audience stand-in for this familiar scenario. Hart injects plenty of psychological kinks and nightmare sequences to further heighten the suspense, but there's a dark sense of humor throughout. It's an intense thriller grafted onto a mundane comedy with inventive results. In other words, Nicky finds the perfect solution to his relentless nightmare, one that ends Restless with a perfect punchline; but don't expect this noir-tinged thriller to veer too far into grittier territory. This is a cozy thriller set in the suburbs with an atypical protagonist.
It may not veer too far into the genre, but the tension-building exercise and playful sense of humor make it equally engaging.
A journey through grief transforms into a psychedelic, psychotropic trip through alternate realities in director/co-writer Yannis Veslemes' surreal, genre-defying film. Three Greek brothers (Aris Balis, Panos Papadopoulos, and Julio Katsis) build and experiment with a unique time machine in hopes of bringing their mother back from the dead.
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