The vampire genre wakes to exciting new life with Clif Prowse and Derek Lee's AFFLICTED; Q&A with these two multi-talented filmmakers

As dead-in-the-water as so many new zombie movies prove, the vampire genre hasn't exactly broken much new ground of late, either. Which makes AFFLICTED, the knock-your-socks-off new film from the Canadian duo Clif Prowse (below, left) and Derek Lee (below, right), all the more noteworthy and exciting.

This exceedingly smart combo of hand-held DIY movie-making and the horror genre proves both shockingly "real" -- this is a brilliant use of "home movies" to create a world of horror and wonder -- and a simply splendid handling of DIY to bypass a big budget and still produce the shock and awe genre fans demand.

Not being a filmmaker myself, TrustMovies doesn't quite understand the technical details of how the pair managed this so well. But they surely have. Beginning with a wonderful planned vacation to be taken by these two best friends, the pair then guides us through the paces of the early stage of that vacation -- with a little surprise tossed into the mix (Derek has a health problem) and then suddenly shifts into a whole new mode when one of our heroes is attacked and left for dead.

Except he's still alive. So he and his partner -- and we -- begin a journey that we've been on many times previous. The magic of this movie is due to how new the filmmakers' journey seems, while still adhering closely to the necessary genre conventions. And the "hand-held" nature of the whole adventure just makes it all the more immediate and scary.

There are times here when your heart will race and you breath will stop because you are so with what's going on that it will seem like you're watching the first movie of your life all over again. The filmmakers keep a nice balance, too, between storytelling, special effects, and effective pacing. Best of all, they save some of their really good stuff for the last so that the finale does not disappoint. In fact, it takes on a whole new idea for the Vampire genre -- one that I think might make an entire movie unto itself (spoiler just ahead): What if vampires chose their victims with an eye toward creating a better world?

In dividing up the work, Mr Lee gets the lead role, and he gives it all he's got (which is plenty). Mr. Prowse, as the "best friend," hangs back and provides support (up to a point). Both men are credited with direction and screenplay, and in the short Q&A below, they seem to answer easily together and for each other.

Although this is one of the few genre films to which I'd welcome a sequel, it seems the guys (see below) want to move on to other things. Well, at least they've given us one hell of go-round here. Afflicted -- another interesting movie from CBS Films, a distributor whose choice of material seems to be getting smarter and better, film by film -- opens this Friday, April 4, in various cities. The film will also be simultaneously available via VOD, and this is a movie that'll look just fine on your living room widescreen TV (that's the way we watched it, in fact.)

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Because the interview below contains a heavy spoiler, I'd suggest seeing the film first -- always a good idea -- before reading any more about it (here or elsewhere). In the short phone interview below, TrustMovies appears in boldface, while Prowse (shown below) and Lee (further below) are in standard typeface.

You're Canadians? 

Yep – from Vancouver.

How did the idea of this film first hit you. And which one of you?

We were making short films for about 10 years and decided it was time to make a feature. Initially, it was way too much money for what we wanted to do. So we had to scale down and go back the drawing board and think, "How could we actually do this?"

We thought about different genres: zombies, and some other ones, then we said, How about a vampire documentary? Yes! We knew vampires are so fantasy-based and yet so part of pop culture, so we thought, if we could tell our story through a reality lens, how great would that be?! Something like this might normally cost $5 to $10 million. We knew that Chronicle had cost $15, million. Ours cost, in Canadian dollars, $318,000. We first got a $200,000 grant from the government. so we had to raise $118,000 ourselves.

I’m really impressed with how well the hand-held, Blair Witchiness works with this genre -- making the special effects that much more special because they're so jumpy and odd and unexpected. Did you realize this going into it? And isn't it so much cheaper to create special effects in this manner? 

We figured that this would work well, combining these genres.

As to the cheapness part, we knew we had to be very sparse when we showed stuff on camera. What got us so excited about this movie was to tell a vampire story through a lens of reality, where the very texture of the image is telling your brain, this is real life. So Derek -- running so fast, and lifting the car and all that -- feels like a supernatural event. Yet it is shown in a way that just seems real.

That’s what happens to all of us when we watch a film, but until this one (even considering how effective Chronicle often was), we haven’t gotten it in such a “real-seeming” way. 

My one disappointment: Aren't pedophiles getting awfully tired and over-used as the villains du jour? For the sequel, will you please rid the world of more important problems. Like Republicans. Or maybe climate-change deniers and politicians who want to gut Social Security and food stamps. Please: get brave and current. Or, since you’re Canadians, go after the mayor of Toronto. You can do it! (The guys laugh.)

It’s funny, as a moral choice for the character, we needed to make it an easy choice. So we probably did go the too-easy route. But Cliff and I have talked about the philosophy of who a vampire might choose to kill to keep himself alive. So we did have discussions over this.

How did you decide which character would get killed and which would be the vampire hero?

We always knew that Derek would be the vampire, but he needed to have a foil. "Oh, perfect for Cliff!" That’s how it worked out.

If you don’t do a sequel, what’s next for you? 

We’re looking to do something different next time. Yes, we want to do something more cinematic, that delivers what we have always loved about movies: the chance to use music, dolly shots, and cast actors whom we can direct -- instead of ourselves. We’ve got in mind what we call an action film in a horror world. And it’s also a love story which could be fun. We get to play with everything we love – from the music to the camera to a great story and cast….

Well, good luck with whatever you do, and I wish you great success with this excellent first-full-length feature!

Streaming Surprise: Mike Flanagan's ABSENTIA is one truly creepy movie!

If you can stream Netflix, then you'll already know that the amount of choices you have simply boggles your mind -- and your decision-making processes. Let me help you out here. If you enjoy the occasional scary movie, do not let last year's ABSENTIA -- about a missing husband of seven years, the wife who is still putting up missing-person signage to locate him, her problematic sister, and the cop who's in love with the wife -- get by you. There's a reason it has won all those fright-festival awards (see poster above): This extraordinarily creepy movie is a real find.

Writer/director Mike Flanagan (shown at left) understands how to put together a movie on a very low budget, with the scares coming slowly and rather quietly at first. Set in one of those nondes-cript Los Angeles neigh-borhoods -- not exactly low-end, but not quite what you'd call "nice," either -- that has a fairly long tunnel connecting two outside areas (these pedestrian tunnels used to be fairly common in parts of L.A.), the movie boasts a cast of decent actors who all look very much like real people. Katie Parker (shown on the poster, above) has a lovely face; the rest -- including Courtney Bell, below, who plays the wife, simply look like quite ordinary folk. Certain players, in fact, who appear not-quite-normal (for instance, Morgan Peter Brown, who is shown at bottom), look a little more bizarre than would your everyday Hollywood actor -- for reasons that slowly become clear as  the movie proceeds.

Until we saw Absentia, just the other evening, I would have called The Pact the creepiest movie in a long while. Not anymore, for this one outdoes even Nicholas McCarthy's scary movie. Mr. Flanagan understand how to creep us out in a number of simple but effective ways -- from how to shoot that tunnel (below), together with its occasional occupant, to making a simple shower curtain scare the bejesus out of us by having something simultaneously going on at either of its two ends.

The theme here is "missing persons" -- and how, where and why they disappear. A few decades ago, the only-middling scare movie Wolfen gave us the New York City version of this. Absentia offers the L.A. explanation, and it's the winner, hands-down. The film is handled with less gore than subtlety, and while the special effects are kept to a bare minimum, the scares are definitely not.

To say any more would simply help spoil things, so those of you who can stream Netflix, click here. The rest of you, try to find this movie elsewhere. Available now on DVD and from iTunes, Absentia, distributed by Phase 4 Films, has a running time of 87 minutes.

It's Father's Day, so off to Vincenzo Natali's SPLICE we go!

Designed as the perfect, ironic fix for Father's Day (or even better, Mother's Day), as well as a great monster movie, Frankenstein film, and lesson on the do's and do not's of parenting, SPLICE is all of these and more -- a scary journey into transgressive behavior of many sorts, from the ethical to the sexual to the corporate.  So much better than the usual Hollywood horror show, though it bears the Warner Bros logo, it is a mostly Canadian production (remember Last Night?), and this, more than anything, I suspect, accounts for its being a tad too good for the megaplex crowd.  (Though I must say that the small audience with whom we saw it today at New York City's AMC Empire 25, seemed very appreciative.)

Directed and co-written (with Doug Taylor and Antoinette Terry Bryant) by Vincenzo Natali, at left, who earlier gave us Cube, Cypher and the charming "Quartier de la Madeleine" vampire segment of  Paris, je t'aime, Splice proves his most mainstream movie to date, in which he sacrifices neither intelligence nor style.  His pacing is terrific (the film runs 104 minutes but seems considerably shorter), his use of humor proves spare but pointed, his movie referencing is underplayed enough not to seem self-congratulatory, while his sex scenes employ a particularly disturbing combination of heat and danger. My daughter, who treated me to the film for Father's Day pronounced it better than she had expected, "more a real movie than just a horror film."

While the screenplay telescopes events, the life of its more-or-less "heroine," Dren, seems telescoped, too, so there is both art and justice in this approach. Natali has cornered a cast that is probably better than necessary to bring this all off, which only adds to the pleasure ahead.  Because Splice, as does much of the best science fiction, deals in questions of ethics and morals, needs and desires, its characters in particular must seem true and believable, and so this casting pays off quite well. 

Sarah Polley (above, left) brings an effective combination of intelligence, neediness, anger and pain to her role of the female half of a crack team of scientists.  She's maturing as an actress and a woman, and here, for the first time that I recall, there is little left of the girlish demeanor we used to see. Adrien Brody (above, right), via his usual intensity and nerdy sex appeal, while tamping down his sometimes-tendency toward Nic Cage-like craziness, plays Polley's other half.  They make a fine team. And, in the very interesting role of Dren is an actress new to me,  Delphine Chanéac (shown below).  She can't speak, but, boy, can she communicate.  Though helped by some small but spectacular special effects, Ms Chanéac is memorable indeed.

Splice -- which should strike a number of familiar chords in the minds and hearts of many parents -- probably won't remain in theaters much longer.  But if you have a fairly large, hi-def TV, the film should prove nearly as scary and every bit as thought-provoking and fun on your home screen.