Where Is Juan Moctezuma?

Juan For The 
History Books

Where Is Juan Moctezuma?
Directed by Alaric S. Rocha 
USA 2025
Blue Bassoon Pictures
Screened at FrightFest Sunday 24th August 2025

Well now, this is the film I was most looking forward to as my final FrightFest of this year’s August edition of the festival. Where Is Juan Moctezuma? is written by, directed by and stars Alaric S. Rocha (as himself). This one throws up some interesting questions too. At the start of the screening, Alan Jones asked people what they thought this was and, I think people mostly assumed it would be a ‘mockumentary’ as opposed to an actual documentary. And then the director came on and, after vocally knocking CGI effects in favour of practical (that’s always going to win him some points with a crowd of movie goers) he went on to explain his intentions that people, because of things like CGI, didn’t really believe half the things they were watching on screen were real anymore and that he wanted to make something which would blur the lines between what is fact and what is fiction.

Now, to be fair, this is pretty much what a mockumentary does anyway but, for this audience member, it also brings into play, especially with subject matter like this, a thing I have lately rechristened as The Tarantino Effect. Which I’ll get to in just a little while.

The mockumentary is about a long disappeared Mexican director who made films due to his obsession with a specific actress and how, after losing said actress when she married the Lucahdore known as The Scorpion, he tried to woo her back with specific kinds of roles in his films before, after a tragedy (of sorts), he disappeared from history altogether... taking with him his final, just finished film, which was to be his big American breakthrough for producer Roger Corman. 

And it’s a mostly fun film... some of the jokes and references work really well and caused me to let slip the odd chuckle or two. Which is good because the film started even later than the rescheduled, advertised time and, for the first five minutes, until the director rushed out of the auditorium to correct the mistake (he was sitting in front of me in the next row down), it was projected in the wrong aspect ratio, causing all the subtitles and character identifiers to be invisible, fallen off the bottom of the screen... so I was in a pretty bad mood for a while there, more concerned with what time the film would end so I could have a shot at catching the last train home. 

I would say that the film was perhaps a trifle long but, again, this is not an unusual thing with this particular sub-genre and I feel this director, as much as any of them, might possibly be accused of carrying on some of the jokes a little too long, truth be told. But it was a fine ride through the darker underbelly of classic mexploitation films (including some footage sourced from other, more famous non-Mexican films). However, don’t get me started on the way some of this footage was integrated into the film or the way, for example, the Saul Bass designed Vertigo poster was stolen and turned green for the poster of one of the fictitious films within the movie. Yes, I realise this was as much a comment on how a real low budget film maker in Mexico might have manipulated the material themselves but... yeah, that one in particular didn’t sit well with me. 

But this brings me to the whole problem with, not just this mockumentary but, the whole sub-genre in particular. So... The Tarantino Effect... to make a shorter explanation of it this time around... is when you have youngsters or less educated adults assuming that, for example, due to the ending of Inglourious Basterds, Hitler was truly machine gunned to death in an exploding cinema, which ended the Second World War. Or, again for example, due to the ending of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Sharon Tate was not murdered by one of Charles Manson’s followers and instead had a long and fruitful acting career. Is it irresponsible to let certain audience members roam around with this impression (I work in a college and, believe me people, this is what the kiddies take away as gospel history)?

So, I found the mix of mexploitation history mixed in with the fiction here... well personally fairly easy to navigate because I know a little, at least, of the history of the genre but, honestly, I worry where the line is drawn for some people who don’t know which parts of the history are reality and which bits are the fiction woven in. I mean, the mexploitation genre is bizarre and somewhat larger than life enough already anyway so, it must be really hard for some people to tell the difference... and assign fiction and fact to the wrong elements. This film deals with fictional director Juan Moctezuma II but, it probably doesn’t help that there was also a real Juan Moctezuma working in the Mexican industry and making these kinds of films there at this time. 

And my other point would be... I was surprised how many important Mexican B-movie directors were also left out of things. I don’t remember hearing René Cardona’s name once, for instance (although I think his picture might have flashed past at one or two points). So I would beg to differ with Alan Jones comments that this film is a crash course through the Mexploitation genre... I really don’t think it is, for those who don't know it. 

All in all though, there was some really nice stuff in Where Is Juan Moctezuma? This included talking heads from various film historians, the likes of Brian Yuzna and, one of my favourite directors, Isaac Ezban, who I really appreciate seeing here. I’m not sure if I would recommend this movie to many of my friends but, fans of mexploitation and, especially, Mexican wrestling, should find much to enjoy in this one. 

Halloween FrightFest 2024

Bull’s Eye

Halloween FrightFest 2024
ODEON Luxe 1st and 2nd November 2024

Well that rolled around quickly again... as the years frequently do when you get to my age. The Halloween edition of this year's FrightFest was held over two days again, the first day starting around 6pm and finishing just after midnight and the second starting at 11pm and finishing around the same time as the first day. So three new movies on the first day and six on the second. As usual, these were all either UK premieres or world premieres of the films in question and some of them are still waiting for distribution deals to be inked out (or whatever the digital equivalent of that is these days). And, also as usual, this is going to be a series of very short capsule reviews (not really even reviews, probably, more quick sketches) of the films in question, just to give a flavour of the tone of the festival (which I’m glad to say was, once again. all over the place... good for them). If I revisit any of these at a later date, I’ll review them properly then.


DAY ONE

Magpie
Directed by Sam Yates
UK/USA
First up was Magpie, starring Daisy Ridley (and based on her story which was written as a screenplay by her husband, Tom Bateman), Shazad Latif and the absolutely brilliant Matilda Lutz (who top-lined Revenge, reviewed here). This is a somewhat dark tale of marital erosion as Ridley plays the housewife looking after one of the kids while her writer husband takes the other kid to work, shooting a major movie. It’s pretty intense and features a lot of close ups of Ridley as we study the emotional turmoil within her (which is a good thing, she’s always worth a watch). It reminded me a just a tad of Polanski’s Repulsion, to be honest. It’s not really a horror movie, more a thriller but it’s got beautiful cinematography and is only let down a little, perhaps, by the obvious twist which I suspect most people will see coming from about a third of the way into the picture. But a pretty good movie, nonetheless. It was nice seeing Ridley and a few others in person too... almost all the screenings had cast and crew intros and Q & A sessions this year. 

Parvulos
Directed by Isaac Ezban
Mexico
Directed by Isaac Ezban, the incredible Mexican genre director behind the likes of The Incident (reviewed by me here) and The Similars, Parvulos was one of the two really stand out films of the festival this year, for me. A post-apocalyptic zombie tale about three brothers (two of them very young) trying to get food to survive after everything has ended while keeping alive two zombies in the basement, for reasons which will be made clear as you get into the narrative. Visually, the colour palette is so knocked back that most of the time it feels like you are watching a monochrome movie, apart from the odd smudge of strong colour deliberately placed here and there. As usual, Ezban pulls no punches and you won’t see every beat coming as the tale develops.  Another outstanding film from this director. 

 

Advent
aka The Krampus Calendar
Directed by Airell Anthony Hayles
UK
This movie has a similar central idea to the far superior French movie The Advent Calendar (reviewed here) and is told in a fake documentary using ‘found footage’ style. Alas, although a couple of the main performances are nice, the film seemed a little badly executed and, I dunno, just felt like it could have used a lot more money pumped into it to make the central idea work better. Kinda cheap and tacky, I thought. I hate typing that because I know these movies are hard to make and there are some nice moments but... it just didn’t work too well for me, I guess.

DAY TWO

The Bitter Taste
Directed by Guido Tölke
Germany
Well this was kinda interesting. A well made action adventure, sc-fi, horror movie that was well shot, had some great performances and went along at a fair lick. It was certainly a rich and diverse movie but, yeah, that’s a double edged sword for this production, I reckon. It felt like everything and the kitchen sink had been thrown into the film to make a very dense narrative which I feel isn’t easy to process in one go. I honestly felt that this story would have been better served as either a serialised comic or a TV mini series. I also thought the score could have been dialled down in the sound mix just a little in a couple of places. However, it was certainly an ambitious project and you have to admire a lot about the end result, even if it doesn’t all jell well in one installment.


Alien Country
Directed by Boston McConnaughey
USA
Directed by Boston McConnaughey and starring his wife Renny Grames and K.C. Clyde, this one is a comedy ‘aliens in the desert town’ movie as a bunch of people are thrown together trying to stop an alien invasion force consisting mostly of big, insect like predators. This was pretty entertaining, had some good jokes and some nice visuals. Can’t fault this one... would play well as part of an all-nighter with your mates with liberal doses of alcohol on a Saturday night.

The Draft!
aka Setan Alas!
Directed by Yusron Fuadi
Indonesia
Five students go to a remote location from which they can’t escape while they slowly get picked off by a killer. I won’t reveal too much about this because they don’t want spoilers going out ahead of its release but this didn’t quite make it for me. When I noticed a large, seeming ‘continuity error’ involving a suddenly appearing bunch of tea cups early in the picture, I got kinda interested because I knew it must be there deliberately. Unfortunately, the film tips its hand too early on in the process and, again without giving too much away, sometimes a joke can go on forever and lose its power completely. Not a good one for me.


Time Travel Is Dangerous
Directed by Chris Reading
UK
This is another one which didn’t really work for me. A ‘fun comedy’ with two leads who get next to last billing because they’re shop owners and not actresses and are essentially playing themselves (and doing a very good job of it) this one has a huge support by British comedy A listers. About two ‘retro store’ ladies who go back in time to get brand new historical artefacts to sell, it kinda falls flat and dull fairly early on, I think. I know I’m not alone in thinking (the guy sitting next to me reacted similarly) that it just went on too long and, to paraphrase him, fun should not be this much hard work. Would have made a great short film though... which apparently it was at some stage.


Catch A Killer
Directed by Teddy Grennan
USA
This was a kind of fun one for fans of American horror and also slasher movies, with lots of references which are actually built into the DNA of the thing and which an ex-police inspector uses to try and catch the killer. It’s a bit obvious (really no surprises here) but it’s a solid, consistent movie which is rather well made and lands its ending nicely. Not a bad little thriller... very entertaining.


Animale
Directed by Emma Benestan
France
Animale was the other outstanding movie of the festival. Absolutely brilliant with a knockout performance by Oulaya Amamra as Nejma, the film’s central protagonist who wants to work with bulls. Now, it was the last film of the festival and I was exhausted and sleepy but this one transported me, dream-like, to another level. I definitely need to research and pay more attention to both the lead actress and director. A real high to end this year’s festival with.

FrightFest Halloween Edition 2018

Abra Cadaver

FrightFest Halloween Edition 2018
Horror Marathon Saturday 3rd
(and technically 4th) November 2018
Mini reviews for the movies Reborn, Deep Clean, Parallel, Mara, Peripheral, The Unthinkable,
The Predicament and Abrakadabra

It’s been a while since I’ve done an ‘all nighter’ (or in this case, an ‘all dayer’) as in sitting in a cinema for more or less back to back movies for a substantial period of time. I’ve only done this twice before, in fact. Once at The Empire Leicester Square (which is now no longer called The Empire but everyone knows it as such) back in 1989 with the debut of Star Trek V - The Final Frontier, preceded by the four previous movies with an absolutely brilliant audience and a laser show before each film. That one must have run for about 12-13 hours. Then again, in 2005, I did a slightly shorter but certainly wonderful all nighter put on by Celestial Pictures at the Curzon Soho which was four Shaw Brothers movies back to back - The Monkey Goes West, The Mighty Peking Man, Oily Maniac and The Super Infra Man... which must have gone on for 8 - 9 hours.

This year, I enjoyed the sense of communal spirit on the five FrightFest films I saw at the August Bank Holiday weekend event so much that I returned to The Empire Leicester Square (or Cineworld as it insists it is at the moment) for a FrightFest marathon which ran for around 14 hours - the most I’ve ever done back to back, to date. This was also partially inspired by the fact that I really wanted to see three of the movies they were screening and tickets were £15 each which... when the day pass was only £45 for this venue and with a couple of free DVDs thrown in to boot... seemed like the best way of doing this. I was a little bit worried I might get too tired but, no, my love of film kept me wide awake for most of it (although the first two films had me slightly sleepy, for some reason).

Now, I thought that since I saw so many films yesterday, it would be too much for me to remember everything about each film and I usually try to write a review while one is still fresh in my mind before seeing the next film. It’s hard to do that with 8 back to back movies so, hopefully my regular readers won’t think I’m cheating at this too much if I do one of those combined capsule review collections encompassing the day because... well, I just think this will be both a better use of my time and will also help capture the flavour of the event in a more concise format, so to speak.

Reborn
USA Directed by Julian Richards
Festival print.
So first up was Reborn, a fairly ridiculous tale about a somewhat washed up Hollywood B-movie actress called Lena O'Neill, played by somewhat less than washed up Hollywood genre actress Barbara Crampton. This tells the story of a past that comes back to haunt her at just the wrong time, when her agent played by legendary actress Rae Dawn Chong (curiously disassociated with the movie and completely uncredited if you try and find her included in the listings on the IMDB at the moment) is trying to get her to read for an audition with great director Peter Bogdanovich (who makes a lovely cameo appearance at the end of the movie).

The past that comes back to haunt her is her left for dead stillborn baby Tess, played by Kayleigh Gilbert, who is somehow brought back to life by some dodgy and unexplained electricity, is raised by the pervert morgue assistant who whisks her away with him and who, by the time of her 16th birthday, can somehow manipulate electrical current, just like Electro in the Spider-Man comics I used to read in the early 1970s... and use her powers to kill people who get in the way of her reunion with her mother.

The film is... nicely performed but doesn’t hold well together as a story, it has to be said. There’s a lot of leaps of faith and when a couple of seemingly unrelated deaths cause Detective Marc Fox, played by Michael Paré, to somehow make the unbelievably correct conclusion that someone is using ‘powers of electrokinesis’ then that just about kills what little credibility the picture had. Sure, I understand it’s trying to parody, somewhat, the kinds of films Barbara Crampton used to headline in the 1980s (some posters of which are, bizarrely, on display in her teaching workshop for aspiring actors) but it either didn’t take it far enough or maybe didn’t reign it in enough. The audience did give a big, collective chuckle when the electrokinesis stuff came up out of the blue, that’s for sure.

Also, there were a fair few mistakes on display in the film. Such as a shot towards the end when the detective pulls his car into the front drive of Lena’s house next to her parked car, which has its hazard lights on, for some reason. However, when we get the close up of the shot, the lights on her car are definitely off. Also, when we are told one of the characters is 16 and was ‘stillborn’ in the year 2000 (dating this film as being set in 2016), why are we then confronted by a tombstone which dates her as living from November 2002 - November 2018? This makes no sense. This wasn’t my favourite movie of this year’s FrightFest, that’s for sure. 

Deep Clean
UK Short Directed by Matt Harlock
Festival print
Next up was a short movie called Deep Clean. This was an interesting concept about what really goes on in those builder's tents when roadworks are being done... aka, plugging up interdimensional portals where hostile, alien, plastic baby mannequins are trying to take over your body. It was a nice idea and I can see why the creators are trying to develop it into some kind of TV or web series but I felt the execution on the all important, alien horror scenes was a little drab, to be honest.

Parallel
Canada Directed by Isaac Ezban
Festival Print
Parallel was next and I was really looking forward to it as it’s by Isaac Ezban, the director of The Incident (which I absolutely loved and reviewed here) and The Similars (which I still haven’t gotten around to watching yet but, don’t worry, due to the kind actions of a film friend, it’s ‘in the pile’). This is his first English language film and it wasn’t actually written by him this time. This kinda shows, actually, because it’s not nearly as strong as The Incident, although the concept is sound and it has some great performances. It’s the old cliché portal to parallel universes plot again but, this time, the group of people who completely luck into this ‘never once explained’ device try and use it for monetary gain by comparing what works well in one slightly different version of their reality and using it to progress themselves in their own reality.

There are some lovely moments and a nice lot of ‘moral dilemma’ issues are raised but ultimately it felt like a throwback to 1980s Americana. It starts off strong with a set up showing just what lengths a person will go to in order to replace someone in one of the parallel dimensions and, to an extent, this informs the ending which shows that this film could easily be franchised or turned into a successful TV show. However, it never really lives up to its pre-credits sequence and I just felt the director could have done something a little more original with this. It’s not really a horror movie but there is a nice sequence in the movie when we see the effect of what happens when you cross over when the mirror portal changes state into a physical glass object when you’re halfway through the jump. So, yeah, a nice gory moment where half a person’s face and body slide down the front of the mirror and the internal organs all pile up onto it. Parallel is an okay film but, for me, not quite as standout as the next movie in the day. 

Mara
UK Directed by Clive Tonge
Festival print
Mara is a British film which seems to be set in the US as a criminal psychologist, Kate (played by Bond girl Olga Kurylenko), gets involved in a series of murders involving both herself and others who have been suffering from the very common condition of sleep paralysis... only this version has many of them being systematically targeted, haunted and eventually killed by an ages old sleep demon called Mara. This is based on a real folklore myth from various cultures and I personally came across the intrusion/confusion of incidents of sleep paralysis when I was looking at alien abduction stories a couple of decades ago. The film is absolutely brilliant (if a little obvious at times) and easily stands up against a lot of the big budget US horrors we are getting these days from the likes of Blumhouse Pictures.

The writer/director, (who was very nervous at the festival but needn’t have been because his movie was one of the two standout films of the day), cannily builds in a set of horror rules for the benefit of both the characters and the audience, as he introduces us to the ‘four stages’ of Mara’s modus operandi which gives us a kind of countdown for each character and the order in which we know they will be killed off, overlapping different timelines for different people but, because of these rules, making it so it’s very easy to keep track of things. The film also utilises sound design in a very unsettling and knowing manner, such as the ticking of the swinging arm of the Chinese cat Kurylenko’s character has in her apartment and using this and other sound effects (including a nice musical score which I’m hoping may get some kind of CD release) to build tension by stopping or starting the sound in various scenes. Nice stuff and I hope this movie gets the theatrical release it deserves.

Peripheral
UK Directed by Paul Hyett
Festival print
Next up was Peripheral, directed by Paul Hyett who helmed Howl (which I reviewed here). This stars Hannah Arterton (little sister to Gemma) as Bobbi Johnson, an inflammatory and successful writer who is in hiding in her flat and trying to write her second novel. This is all set in said flat and involves her becoming somehow symbiotically bonded with a new piece of hardware/software writing kit which is sent by her horrible agent and which is constantly getting upgraded while she has to deal with all the distractions this brings... along with dealing with her drug dealer ex-boyfriend and a psycho follower who knows where she lives and who sends video tapes of herself slowly self mutilating until Bobbi agrees to phone her. The film get s darker as it goes on and the performances, especially Arterton’s, are all excellent. It’s basically another metaphor for the creative process (something which seems to be doing the rounds again at the moment in modern cinema) but I didn’t enjoy it as much as Parallel or Mara and some of the ideas such as the main protagonist's fingers, hands and toes slowly turning blacker seemed a bit muddled (even when the director tried to explain that one in the Q & A). I’m glad I saw it though.

The Unthinkable
(aka Den blomstertid nu kommer)
Sweden Directed by Victor Danell (as Crazy Pictures)
Festival print
And then came the absolutely best film of the day. The Unthinkable, aka Den blomstertid nu kommer, which google tells me translates as The Flower Time Now Comes, is a story about a terrorist or possibly opposing country’s military, invasion of Sweden. It takes the form of a mystery but it felt like what would happen if someone had asked the late, great Polish director Kieslowski to make a military/civilian action flick. The thing is, it’s all done through a lens which is all about the main protagonist Alex, played by Christoffer Nordenrot, his unrequited love for childhood sweetheart Anna (played by Lisa Henni), his subsequent career as a much loved progressive pop music artist and his turbulent and destructive relationship with his violently tempered father Bjorn, played by Jesper Barkselius, who managed to make both his wife and then his son desert him.

It’s a beautiful and moving tale and takes a full half to three quarters of an hour just setting up the back story of the characters. As a consequence, when the mystery of the invasion swings into place a decade or so later, you have a real emotional stake in the each and every one of the characters (even some of the minor ones) and you really feel every loss and moment of self sacrifice and redemption. This is an epic movie in every sense, something any director should be proud to have on their CV and it’s so moving that it brought tears to my eyes by the end of the movie. Also, the few jump scares of the day were provided in this film as various unexpected bullet hits and other action moments are handled in such a way that the director manages to never telegraph each new act of antagonism. That being said, I have no idea why this movie was playing at FrightFest but I’m really glad it did because it’s definitely one of this year’s best movies as far as i’m concerned. I’m hoping this will get a general release in this country next year at some point because, frankly, people need to experience the artistry of this film.

The Predicament
New Zealand
Short Film Directed by Steven Baker
Festival print
Then we had a 15 minute short film called The Predicament which was about 14 minutes too long. This has a nice central premise of three people... a woman, her partner and their irritating third wheel of a friend... who get trapped in a car with no keys and have to stay in it for many hours as zombies are trying to get at them. Even when it turns out one of the characters has an ulterior motive and kinda caused The Predicament to happen, it just feels too long for the content and I have to say that it was pleasant but I lost interest fairly quickly, I’m afraid.

Abrakadabra
Argentina/New Zealand
Directed by Luciano and Nicolás Onetti
Festival print
Last up was a brand new giallo which looks and feels like it’s been shot in the 1970s. Indeed I appreciated the authenticity of the direction and performance style a great deal. It’s like the writers and directors were not trying to imitate the style of the films made by the great giallo masters such as Mario Bava, Dario Argento or Sergio Martino but, instead, going for the look, feels and sound of one of the lesser interesting gialli of the early 1970s time period. And I appreciated a lot of the brilliant, old school flourishes, the blown out colour on old 70s looking stock and the lightning in a bottle moments of purely authentic giallo tomfoolery. It even had a very Cipriani sounding score and at one point, although this seemed to be completely unmentioned on the end credits from what I could see, a cue used as source for a scene which was lifted straight from Piero Umiliani’s score for one of my all time favourite gialli, Mario Bava’s Five Dolls For An August Moon (which I reviewed here).

For all that, though, I had a hard time with this film and felt that it suffered from the same problem that Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof half of Grindhouse suffered from, in that it was too close to the kind of film it was trying to be (rather than the post-modernistic stew which I might find more entertaining at this point) and, in this case, it just felt like I was watching a very dull, sluggish and sleep inducing example of the genre with, admittedly, the odd dash or brilliance in terms of the mise en scène. This, along with Reborn, was one of only two films where I was kinda hoping it would end soon and was clock watching down on it. However, I did enjoy parts of it and overall it contributed to what was a pretty decent and certainly varied day of cinema watching.

All in all, then, FrightFest was worth the struggle of getting home from central London in the small hours of a Saturday (although the city was completely packed with people still as I was leaving the cinema) and I thoroughly enjoyed the community feeling of being in a room full of horror film afficionados who were there for a good time. The scares were very light on these, I’d have to admit but, in some cases here that really didn’t matter and the artistry of the cast and crew made up for it on a lot of these projects. Among the world premieres here we were even shown three exclusive clips from the new Soskia Sisters 'reimagining' of David Cronenberg's Rabid... which makes me feel a little more comfortable with going to see it. This is something I would definitely do again and so I’m kinda hoping I have the financial resources to sort out a similar expedition next Halloween. Definitely one of my more memorable outings this year and watch out to see if some of these films will be hitting the cinema next year. in this country. Fingers crossed.

The Incident (El Incidente)

The Incidental Tourist

The Incident (El Incidente)
2014 Mexico
Directed by Isaac Ezban
Seen at the 2015 Raindance Film Festival - 
first UK performance

You know, I rarely see the Raindance Film Festival advertised with the same amount of corporate enthusiasm that the London Film Festival operates under but, every year, it takes place a week or two before the LFF and, every year, I try and see one or two movies premiering there... time permitting.

This year I saw only one movie for my ‘Raindance Experience’, which was director Isaac Ezban’s first feature film The Incident (El Incidente) but, I think I can say with some certainty, it’ll definitely be placing very highly in my end of year best movies round up. It might even come in as my number one film of the year to be honest with you.... but I really don’t want to rule out the possibility that I may see an even better film at some point over the next three months so... we’ll see how that goes.

As usual with festivals such as Raindance and the London Film Festival, I made my choices of which films to go see based on a film fulfilling at least one of the following three criteria... 1. An intriguing premise, 2. Loads of female nudity and 3. Less chance of a future UK cinema release or, if there is going to be one, certainly not for some months. Well, there are no large passages of female nudity in this movie but in terms of the first and third of the criteria... well it certainly fulfils those in abundance.

The initial set up is quite stealthily amazing and, after a brief prologue set around a 'just married' couple arriving at their honeymoon hotel, we start off following the story of two brothers and a policeman who turns up at their door and takes them prisoner for an unspecified crime. The three of them are in a multi-story building and, when the two brothers make a run for it down the long, series of staircases typical of these kinds of high rise flats, the cop wounds one of the fleeing brothers in the leg. As the three are arguing and trying to violently negotiate the situation on the staircase, they hear a weird kind of explosion and... The Incident properly begins. The brothers and the cop suddenly find themselves caught in a recursive occlusion. That is to say, the nine floors of the building keep cycling around to the same floors. When one of the party runs either up or down, they soon catch up the others again from the opposite direction. When a bunch of keys is dropped down the middle of the stairwell... it soon drops down again from above. They are completely trapped on an infinite staircase with a snack machine that constantly and magically replenishes itself each day and, when one of the brothers dies from the lack of medical attention for the bullet wound, we leave the action for a bit with a brilliant piece of camera work which I’ll come back to in a little while.

We are then shown another lengthy set up with a family - mother, boyfriend, boy and girl - driving on a country road. When the girl suffers from an asthma attack and her medical inhaler is accidentally broken, she needs urgent attention fast but... then there’s that weird exploding sound again and... boom: the family are also ensnared in the same way as the first set of characters... on the same road no matter which direction they travel in and with a magically replenishing gas station that has no medical supplies to save the girls life. The girl soon dies and we cut back to the other characters...

It’s 35 years later and we see the aged versions of the characters still on the stairwell, living a slightly crazy life full of near madness, strange religious worship and... well it all gets very surreal. When we next see the family on the country road, a similar 35 years has passed in which they are the only souls around... eking out a strange form of survival, the grown up boy living separately from his parental guardians. And the film goes on from there, running each ‘story’ in parallel until it... well it does reach a conclusion and that conclusion is... equally surreal but certainly a very satisfying end game to this set up. However, I really don’t want to spoil that for you here.

The cast are all excellent, as you would expect from a small scale project shot in just four weeks (although I believe it was quite a gruelling shoot). That is to say, they’re all really great at delivering their charcter's conviction convincingly with the way they interact with each other and their repetitive environment. It really grounds the film and helps the audience suspend any disbelief of the simple beauty of the premise. The writing is a gift to them too and, luckily for the audience on this screening, the writer/director Ezban was on hand to discuss the film and answer questions about it.

Something  he said was a huge influence on him was the TV shows of the late 1950s and early 1960s such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and, you can certainly see that in the final product although one big difference, to my mind, is that this film doesn’t have a twist ending to it like a lot of those old 1950s science fiction short stories had (obviously an influence on both of these shows). Instead, it has its own organic ending which is a progression of the central narrative hook, rather than a glib answer to it. Certainly, Isaac Ezban does tend to wear his influences on his sleeve with this movie, in that Philip K. Dick’s novel Time Out Of Joint features prominently in the visual narrative of the movie. However, the way the fantasy content is delivered is much more rooted in surrealism, it seemed to me, and one can almost imagine the influence of a director like Luis Buñuel on Ezban’s work and, certainly to my mind, the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky seem particularly pertinent to the style and attitudes displayed in The Incident. 

In pursuit of the surrealist connection, I thought I’d noticed another book in the hands of one of the characters on screen for, literally two seconds and, when the film was over and the' Q and A' started up, I asked the director to confirm what I thought I’d seen and the book in question was, indeed, André Breton’s surrealist book Nadja. However, the placing of the book turns out to be more serendipitous than outright intent in its inclusion here. The director explained that the leading actress Nailea Norvind brought it along to the shoot to show him and, since it seemed to fit in with the atmosphere of the film, he included it in the shoot. Which is interesting but I’m certainly not ruling out the long, shadowy hand of surrealism informing the style of the narrative structure and, even though the director names quite a lot of science fiction influences (Lost, Inception etc) I’m sure he would also be the first to admit he has a surrealist bent.

He certainly knows how to create tension, that’s for sure. There’s a fair amount of camera movement in this film, not least because with something that is a linear continuation looping back on itself, you have to constantly explore the limits of these paradoxical parameters and the film is truly inventive with the way things are cut together. One very intense scene at the end of the first staircase section, for example, is just amazing. The surviving brother takes possession of the policeman’s gun and is threatening to end his brother’s killer’s life with a harsh gunshot that the viewer really doesn’t want to see this up close and “in your face”. However, just as you feel the life ending shot is about to ring out in a jarring, visual blood-splosion, the camera viewpoint takes off and starts quickly climbing the stairs. However, rather than bring relief, this stair climb actually increases the tension because the director has already conditioned you to know that you will catch up with the two again as you loop back round and are rushing up to meet them again... probably just as the gun goes off. Then the director does something even more clever and transitions out of the stairwell climb completely before we catch up with the conclusion of that scene, using it as a point to start off the next parallel story. When we rejoin the two on the staircase, 35 years will have passed in terms of chronology within the fiction.

And there’s also a lot of really great stuff in this film besides the directing and camerawork. The production design, some of it CGI (although there’s no way I would’ve known that without the director revealing it in the Q and A) is absolutely fantastic and the prominent mix of Edy Lan’s Schumann inspired score is just gobsmacking. That score really helps drive the movie along. The story is such that you never really care in the end, just what or why the incident is happening, although there are some ground rules laid out by one (or is it two) of the dying characters and it all starts tying into the opening honeymoon at some point... but the journey to get there and the way in which things are alluded to does make some kind of sense, or at least helps balance a kind of internal logic to the surrealistic mechanics of the movie. I didn’t feel in any way cheated by the end of the film... just inspired.

I’m also watching out for the director’s next movie, The Similars, which just previewed at a festival in the US. In it there’s supposed to be a little scene, possibly after the end credits, which is a reference to this movie and shows just what ‘caused’ the starnge explosion in The Incident in the first place... and I’m really looking forward to trying to catch up with this at some point, maybe in next year’s Raindance festival if the director returns there.

I’d also like to own a copy of this movie to watch again but I was briefly talking to the producer after the screening and he revealed that, as yet, they have no British distribution company to release this movie over here... although he did say it should be getting a high definition release in the US at some point. That’s okay, I’m all multi-regioned up so any subtitled release would be fine for me but I really think this movie needs to be seen in this country because, frankly, I think this writer/director’s vision is really interesting and, certainly, somewhat addictive. It deserves a wider release and I wish some company like Eureka Masters Of Cinema or Arrow Films would pick up the distributions rights over here... it’s a truly superb piece of cinematic art, quite frankly.

If you get an opportunity to see The Incident at some point, especially on a big screen, make sure you grasp it and manage to see it. A director with a definitively distinct voice whose work needs to be celebrated and made accessible to a larger audience. In the meantime, there’s seems to be a subtitled trailer for the movie on you tube right here if you want to check it out.