SXSW 2019 Horror: LITTLE MONSTERS, TALES FROM THE LODGE And TONE-DEAF

Any film festival I attend, I try to seek out genre films. I love horror, science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, action – I’ll take it over long-winded navel-gazing dramas any day. Last year, SXSW gave me some of my favorite genre films of the year, Sorry to Bother You, Prospect and Fast Color. This year, the festival programmed fewer sci-fi films, but more horror. I caught Us (read Kevin Lee’s and Hazem Fahmy’s reviews), which was a-may-zing, and totally worth standing in line for 2.5 hours for. It’s by far my favorite film I saw at SXSW 2019.

I finally saw Little Monsters, which I intended to see at Sundance but missed, and I also saw Tales From The Lodge and Tone-Deaf. Let’s get to the part where I review things.

Little Monsters (Abe Forsythe)

Little Monsters is almost more of a comedy than a horror, despite the zombies and jump scares. Written and directed by Abe Forsythe, it features the typical dry, witty, and to me, very funny Australian humor. The story goes like this: Dave, a washed-up musician in his early 30s (Alexander England) is kicked out of his relationship and home when his girlfriend is sick and tired of him being a lazy man-child. He moves in with his sister (Nadia Townsend), who’s a single mom to Max (Charlie Whitley).

When Dave drops Max off at school, he meets Max’s teacher, the enchanting Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o). When a school trip comes up and the parent who was supposed to join Miss Caroline on the trip to guide the children, Dave jumps on the opportunity to spend more time with her. However, it turns out there’s an American military base close to the camp, and for some reason, the Americans were doing zombie experiments, and a terrible outbreak ensues. The camp is soon overrun by zombies, and Miss Caroline does everything she can to protect the children, and Dave has to grow up and help her.

Josh Gad, who plays a cynical American kids entertainer that is also stuck at the camp during the breakout, offers many of the film’s most hilarious moments. Lupita Nyong’o absolutely shines as Miss Caroline – she is sweet and funny, as well as a complete bad-ass, providing some of the most satisfying zombie fight scenes I’ve seen in recent years – I am genuinely delighted with her film choices lately! While direction of the adults was great, Forsythe is to be particularly commended on an amazing job directing the children – Charlie Whitley was completely convincing in his asthma attack (one of the most frightening scenes of the film) and the rest of the children were both endearing and hilarious.

All praise coming the way of Little Monsters is well deserved – it is terrifically shot, the music is great (including the recurring punny use of Taylor Swift songs) and it features cute kids and zombies. If only more horror comedies could be like this!

Tales From The Lodge (Abigail Blackmore)

Another horror-comedy, but after Little Monsters, this felt decidedly stale. From British rather than Australian ground, Tales from the Lodge is a portmanteau horror-comedy.

After the suicide of a friend, three couples gather at a cabin in the woods to spend a day together and spread their friend’s ashes in the lake that he died in. Over the span of this day and night, they remember their friend’s life, with fittingly morbid humor. On top of that, each of them tell a scary story, which makes up the portmanteau – a vignette is interposed for each of the stories.

Most of the stories are quite fun, even if they have very little to do with the main story. They make up some of the more creepy and funny elements of Tales from the Lodge, as well as the stronger visuals. Particularly strong was the story told by Joe (Mackenzie Crook), who needs a heart replacement; his story is a surrealist portrayal of his fear. Interestingly, it was revealed in the credits that each of the vignettes was directed by its central character, and while that’s admirable, it may have contributed to the film’s uneven nature.

The film’s suffers from some obvious plot holes. At one point, one of the couples has sex in a room that has no door, while other characters are still in the adjoining room? And the other characters don’t even acknowledge it when they walk back into the room, so we are supposed to believe they weren’t, realistically, a very intimate part of their intercourse? Furthermore, the end twist was very much a “are they really going there? Ah, crap, they’re really going there” kind of twist. One of the characters should have seen that twist coming for obvious reasons, but he was as surprised as the rest of them.

Tales From The Lodge left a bitter aftertaste for me – spoilers ahead: in its conclusion, the film sadly reduces a transgender person’s choice to transition to extreme pettiness and violence, perpetuating a harmful stereotype. With a stronger script and more awareness, this portmanteau might have been fun – but alas.

Tone-Deaf (Richard Bates Jr.)

Tone-Deaf’s premise is pretty fun, and it’s what piqued my interest. A millennial girl, Olive (Amanda Crews) breaks up with her boyfriend and is fired from her job, and decides to rent a room in a giant mansion in the Californian country-side to unwind. Here, she clashes with a Trump-voting grumpy old white man, Harvey (Robert Patrick), who is disillusioned with hat wearing millennials and their self-absorbed antics. He knows he’s getting old and he’s starting to have memory issues, so he decides he’s going to itch the one itch he never could itch: he’s going to kill a bunch of people – some he kills randomly, and for some, he goes to extreme lengths to plan out.

While this could have been a great observation of generational differences, or differences between city and country people, it relies overly much on Patrick‘s monologues, which are directed at the viewer – assuming the viewers are millennials – to make its point. Admittedly, the monologues are pretty great, mostly due to Patrick‘s dedicated, scene chewing delivery. Crews’ character Olive and her millennial stereotypes of friends were a bit on the nose, lacking depth – they felt more like what a 30+ man imagines millennial girls are like among each other. I appreciated the ending and the slightly unusual savior in the story, but it was predictable and therefore felt deflated.

What the film essentially comes down to is that Olive has continuously been told that she’s a great piano player, while everyone but she can hear that she’s horrible (hence, “tone-deaf”), and one of the plot points is that she’s finally told that she’s terrible (poor girl). However, I’d rather have called the film “tonally uneven” – the script felt all over the place, unsure of whether this was supposed to be a horror-comedy, a house invasion horror, a serial killer thriller, or even a supernatural horror, with some of the most annoying moments being the flashbacks at the piano with a ghost/zombie-like appearance, the jump scare mostly being caused by the sudden, absolutley deafening screeching music. I’m still not sure how to describe this movie when it comes down to it.

Tone-Deaf was one of my most anticipated films, but sadly, to me, it was a let-down. But it’s possible I just really don’t connect to millennial girls (although I guess I am one), or old angry white American men.