By MICHAEL GINGOLD
HUNTERS ON A WHITE FIELD
Starring Ardalan Esmaili, Magnus Krepper and Jens Hultén
Written and directed by Sarah Gyllenstierna
MostAlice Film
Amidst the superior genre titles shown at this month’s Tribeca Film Festival, another fest highlight was the horror-adjacent HUNTERS ON A WHITE FIELD (pictured above). Adapting Mats Wägeus’ novel JAKT PA ETT VITT FÄLT, writer/director Sarah Gyllenstierna employs occasional fright-film visuals as part of her pointed and piercing look at three men letting their machismo get the better of them during a weekend hunting trip.
This is the last such excursion for the host, Henrik (Jens Hultén), since the property they’re using, belonging to his brother, has been sold. He’s clearly a man of the wild, first spotted by the arriving Alex (Magnus Krepper) and Greger (Ardalan Esmaili) running naked through the trees; later, he says that “Through hunting, we merge with the dawn of civilization.” Greger has been on hunts with Henrik many times before, but for Alex, his co-worker and subordinate, this is his first time–his initiation. And it’s clear he’s not entirely comfortable with tapping into his primal side from the misgivings on his face after shooting a duck, and his inability to join Henrik in using a photo of his brother’s new wife as target practice. That’s a signpost of how the movie is going to proceed, as the duo move from tracking and taking down deer to more challenging prey.
HUNTERS ON A WHITE FIELD plumbs the darker sides of the male animal with strong writing and acting and superb craft. Josua Enblom’s cinematography places the trio in a beautiful sylvan setting by day and turns the woods spooky and threatening by night, a dual feeling enhanced by Ola Fløttum’s score. There’s great use of audio, too, or more specifically lack thereof, as the sounds of game and birds and even wind depart, giving the sense that nature itself has abandoned them, or perhaps is turning on them. Either way, there’s a great deal of tension as the dynamic shifts between the men, particularly with Alex, whose growing desire to prove himself to both of the others–his boss and the master of his present domain–overcomes his initial reluctance to take the lives of other living things. Gyllenstierna’s emphasis is more on the threat of violence than the violence itself, and yet HUNTERS ON A WHITE FIELD has an emotional and visceral impact equal to many more explicit genre films.
THE WEEKEND
Starring Uzoamaka Aniunoh, Bucci Franklin and Meg Otanwa
Directed by Daniel Oriahi
Written by Vanessa Kanu and Freddie O. Anyaegbunam Jr.
Trino Motion Pictures
Seeing the work of emerging international filmmakers is a constant appeal of festivals, though Daniel Oriahi, director of THE WEEKEND, is an established member of the Nigerian movie scene whose 2018 thriller SYLVIA became available on Netflix. He opens THE WEEKEND with a bang–or a chop, flash-forwarding to a violent setpiece before jumping back a few days to his protagonists, engaged couple Nikiya (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and Luc (Bucci Franklin). Luc hasn’t seen his relatives in 15 years and isn’t interested in changing that, but long-orphaned Nikiya is anxious for an extended family and talks him into road-tripping out to his parents’ remote estate for their 50th wedding anniversary. It’ll just be for a weekend–how much can go wrong? Well, one indicator occurs before they even arrive, when they run into a local checkpoint that threatens to be their last stop, before they’re let through due to the Chezeta family symbol burned onto Luc’s arm.
Thus there’s already a sense of hovering menace once they reach their destination, though Luc’s mother Omicha (Gloria Anozie-Young), father Meki (Keppy Ekpeyong Bassey) and sister Kama (Meg Otanwa) are happy and welcoming to their long-absent son/brother and his betrothed. As the reunion goes on, however, Luc learns a secret from Kama that puts more pressure on him, and the latter has brought her boyfriend Zeido (James Gardiner), who arrogantly refers to himself as “a man of substance.” It soon becomes clear that he’s also emotionally and perhaps physically abusive to Kama, and Nikiya finds herself in the uncomfortable position of wanting to help Kama while feeling bound to keeping the family peace.
Oriahi and scriptwriters Vanessa Kanu and Freddie O. Anyaegbunam Jr., working from a story by Egbemawei Dimiyei Sammy, build some decent tension from this MEET THE PARENTS-gone-worse scenario. The acting is solid all around, with Gardiner making a vividly vile impression as Zeido, and Aniunoh and Franklin elicit Nikiya and Luc’s love and support of each other as well as their mutual and separate apprehension as the family celebration gives way to suspicion and indications of unpleasant secrets. Then, midway through the film, one of the subplots suddenly goes in a shocking and bloody direction, and THE WEEKEND is wrenched from domestic psychodrama to full-on horror.
While this turn is effectively jolting, the switch to serious fright is also the moment where the movie as a whole begins losing its grip. The story development becomes prolonged, sometimes artificially so (when Luc realizes how bad their circumstances have become, he insists he and Nikiya have to leave…the next day, instead of right away), and awkward dialogue and staging keep getting in the way of the terror the filmmakers are attempting to sustain. Most crucially, the sense of relatability built up by the slightly exaggerated, highly charged family issues in the first hour or so gets lost amidst the contrived, gruesome melodrama that follows. And while the use of regional customs and traditions here and there does make parts of THE WEEKEND distinctive, the scary stuff often falls back on familiar tropes–and not always the right ones.
#AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD
Starring Jade Pettyjohn, Jennifer Ens and Ali Fumiko Whitney
Directed by Marcus Dunstan
Written by Josh Sims and Jessica Sarah Flaum
Cineverse
The hashtag in the title tells you everything you need to know about #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD, which tries to update not so much the classic slashers of the ’80s but the later-’90s strain exemplified by I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. Strenuous in its appeal to the modern youth market and tie-ins with current pop culture (this is the first horror movie I’ve seen with a MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON name-drop), it’s aggressively stylized and scored, to diminishing returns. There’s plenty of blood shed on screen, but not much meat to what goes on around it.
An energetic prologue sets up the backstory of a Coachella-esque music festival called Karmapalooza that, in 2004, was the site of seven murders inspired by those Deadly Sins. Faux news footage, clips from a film inspired by the crimes (directed by “Juan Gulager,” wink wink), etc. set up the inevitability of the fest’s revival 20 years later sparking a new round of slayings. There’s also an early montage involving a girl named Colette (Jojo Siwa) that will give the movie’s game away ahead of time for those viewers familiar enough with this type of murderama to put the pieces together. We’re then introduced to an assortment of influencers, horndogs, stoners, etc. who live their lives on their devices, and whose van breaks down on the way to Karmapalooza ’24. Fortunately, they’re able to grab a last-minute booking at an Airbnb, a beautiful, well-appointed house in the woods that also comes with a locked room, a large assortment of carving knives in the kitchen and a collection of Seven Deadly Sins glasses. Clearly, someone’s been expecting them–someone who possesses great knowledge and skill with video equipment and a large budget for lethal home improvements.
With the exception of designated nice girl Sarah (Jade Pettyjohn), none of the libidinous, party-hearty characters are terribly sympathetic, but then caring about them doesn’t seem to be the point. We’re evidently supposed to get into a spirit of nasty fun as they’re punished for both present bad behavior and past misdeeds (via death traps with which director Marcus Dunstan harks back to his SAW-sequel scripting days), but the writing isn’t clever enough to engage us. The tone lurches from attempted commentary/satire on social media to ghastly gore to odd comic moments, like a HAROLD & KUMAR-esque scene in which a stoner encounters a squirrel that says, “I’m trippin’ balls.” There’s a lot going on in #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD, but little that makes an impact, and since it’s difficult to become invested with the people or the action, there’s too much time as it all unfolds to consider how much better and sharper BODIES BODIES BODIES and THE BLACKENING did this kind of thing in the last couple of years.
