Test Screening

 

Screen And
Screen Again

Test Screening
Directed by Clark Baker
USA 2024
Parallax Ventures
World Premiere FrightFest 2024 screening

Okay, so this year marks the 25th anniversary of one of London’s most beloved film festivals, FrightFest and, my first screening this year (of four... I can’t really afford a weekend pass and don’t understand the complicated booking process involved with those anyway) is Clark Baker’s Test Screening which, well it looked to be right up my street when I read the programme guide synopsis but, I have to say I was a little underwhelmed with it, to be honest.

One of the reasons I thought I’d be into this one is because it uses a preview screening at a cinema as its delivery method of the horror content into the story. And if that sounds like a typically 1980s horror movie kind of plot, well that’s fine because the film is set in 1982 which, as most genre enthusiasts will tell you, was a really good year for movie releases at the cinema. Some of which flopped on their original releases but have now paid dividends (and had sequels ands reboots) as they finally reached their audiences in the ensuing decade. So, yeah, great genre movies such as John Carpenter’s The Thing (reviewed by me here) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (reviewed by me here) all get more than one shout out and so, in terms of running the checklist, it’s the perfect movie for people of my age and a little older. However, one of the bigger influences on this (I suspect) put the dampeners on it for me... along with some other things.

So Test Screening tells the story of four friends played by Chloë Kerwin, Drew Scheid, Rain Spencer and Johnny Berchtold, three of whom go to the test screening of a new movie in their home town. A town which has been cut off from the rest of the world by the government, via the only bridge in and out of it, under the guise of road repairs. Now, Kerwin’s character Penny, who is in love with Spencer’s character Mia, doesn’t go because her priest father won’t let her attend an unrated movie they know nothing about. But the others go... and like the rest of the people there, fall under the thrall of some bizarre test signals which changes their DNA and turns them into far sinister beings... apart from Drew Scheid’s Reels (the local projectionist), who has an epileptic fit triggered by the screening and survives the experience unaffected by ‘the sinister wave’. Before long, the town is being taken over almost body-snatcher style and it’s up to Penny and Reels to try and find a solution to the problem or, you know, even just escape from both the results of this experiment and the government agents who are running it.

And... it’s got a strong first half an hour, I reckon. One of the things that surprised me about it is that it takes itself very seriously and so the various characters and their families are really well built up as believable entities. It’s very slow paced in this way and it certainly takes time to do the things a lot of other films wouldn’t. Penny is especially well drawn and I have to say that Chloë Kerwin’s performance is easily the best thing about this movie. Well, that and the pulsing, electronic scoring which is deliberately evocative of those early John Carpenter films.

Alas, once things do start happening it falls quite quickly into the ‘seen it all before and can easily predict the final shot of the movie’ category. Now, sometimes that kind of element can be done quite well and works in spite of the familiarity with the content but, in this case for me (and possibly some other people... I’ve not seen this many walk outs at a FrightFest screening before), it just got fairly dull after what was an especially good set up. I think the problem for me was that this film was so obviously influenced by Brian Yuzna’s 1989 movie Society, which I saw back in the day and found equally dull and unoriginal (perhaps because it wasn’t on the level of the gloopy horror paperbacks we were all reading in the 70s and 80s) and so this particular influence really didn’t hit the mark for me. And, yeah, that final shot/reveal at the end of the movie is surely something any genre fan will be able to predict before it happens so... not such a great denouement either, I reckon.

That being said, Test Screening is well acted by pretty much everyone in it and it’s competently and professionally put together. It could easily play well with a bunch of similar horrors on a themed all nighter, I think.. and hold its head up high doing so. I suspect it’s just me (and possibly some walk out people) who found it a little on the dull side and  had a slightly harder time with it. So it wil be interesting to see if this gets a cinema release (and physical media release, for that matter) at some point soon. I hope it does well because the director can obviously handle himself well.