HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Another Kind (2013)

Our sponsor today...well, yesterday, since I’m a day behind...is one of my Domicile of Dread Patreons, a woman who I bonded with over Ranking Roger and I still suspect might be a blood sister who was separated from me through time and space by nefarious means, Angie Bulkeley!  Angie represents Horizons For Homeless Children, a Massachusetts-based organization that provides support, education and services to homeless kids and their families!

Angie chose a film from 2013 I had not heard of prior to her recommending it, Another Kind.

Patrick (Patrick Woodall) is a self-important hipster doofus who bullies his hipster doofus girlfriend Jamie (Jamie Law) and hipster doofus friend Nate (Nate Miller) and his girlfriend Laura (Laura Ramedei) into embarking on a weekend-long snowshoe hike around the Catskills.  Patrick doesn’t have to worry about the fact he hadn’t planned things out or didn’t bring a map; he’s got the best equipment.  But then Jamie takes off to a hotel--back in New York City, apparently--and then they get lost, and then strange lights start appearing in the sky, then Patrick ends up in a coma with a weird wound under his hipster doofus sherpa cap, and...well, let’s just say I was surprised that the closing credits didn’t reveal that the film’s real title was Another Cloverfield.

You know, I could just run you off a list of things this film did that you shouldn’t be allowed to do anymore in low budget ‘indie’ horror films.  You shouldn’t start with a big shock sequence, then followed with a title telling us we’re going back ‘___ hours earlier’. You shouldn’t give your characters the same first name as the actors to ‘increase veracity.’ You shouldn’t make all your characters annoying--except maybe one, who you know the director is going to assume we will assume will be the final girl when she’s not.  You shouldn’t have someone taking our cast into the woods not bother with something as basic as maps, and you shouldn’t have the rest of the cast go any further with him...especially since they outnumber that lead doofus three to one.  You shouldn’t have your cast’s cell phone work except, you know, when it’s convenient for it not to.  You shouldn’t drop little crumbs of weirdness without thinking how to draw those crumbs into a semi-logical whole.  You shouldn’t do found footage style shots even though the film is a conventional narrative.  Most importantly, you shouldn’t let your last survivor be one of those hipster doofuses (doofi?) that you hated and never explain what happened to the one character you didn’t hate.

Just like The Raven earlier, this film is a microcosm of what people thought would go over with the public at the time, only this time it’s low budget hipster horror instead of big budget blockbuster horror...and this one is better.  I mean, yes it annoyed the crap out of me to the point where I checked out very early, but at least it seemed sincere.  This felt like a story that director Jonathan Biltstein wanted to tell, not a story that he thought people would eat up...it’s just that I suspect he was influenced by the state of low budget filmmaking at the time.  You can see those echoes of found footage--we all seem to forget how hard it was to kill that cinematic fad back then--prompting Biltstein to make so many of the mistakes he makes.  As such, it emphasizes how little there is brought to the table in this story that’s not new; I did not make that Cloverfield joke lightly, folks.

Still, I think the film could have been salvaged if the actors rose above the material, but they can’t give the nuance needed to indicate to me they weren’t just jerks.  Laura Ramadei almost manages to do this, and Nate Miller tries in the final act, but they can’t get their characters out from under the shadow their first few scenes cast over them.  Jamie Law’s character is underwritten to the extreme.  I know this is not Biltstein’s fault, but the fact that Patrick Woodall looks uncomfortably like notorious alt-rock asshole David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven made it hard to even consider seeing things from his super-privleged point of view.

But at least the film isn’t bloated at an hour and sixteen minutes, and I got a thrill from recognizing that the footage in the first act was definitely shot on the New York State Thruway (I used to go to that rest stop when my family would drive up to Albany to see my grandmother!).  I can’t recommend this, but it’s far from the worst offender on this year’s Halloween Horrorfest Menu.

Our sponsor tomorrow/today is a man I’ve known for about thirty years and his wife, who together are one of the Power Couples of Comics, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner!  Jimmy and Amanda have chosen a film from this year directed by Jay Baruschel, Random Acts of Violence!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest.  Right now it looks like it’ll wrap up November 2nd....but I’m open to going longer if you want.  Just choose one of four options:
 
1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

(Psst...and don’t forget tomorrow to check out the Two True Freaks Network tomorrow to check out a special Halloween Treat from the Ocadecagonagon Theater Group, Public Domain Comics Theater: Monster of The Bayous!)