By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The Chilean-Argentinean multistory fright feature will have its world premiere next month.
APPS, directed by Lucio A. Rojas, Sandra Arriagada, José Miguel Zúñiga, Camilo León and Samot Márquez, will be unveiled at the 25th edition of South Korea’s prestigious BIFAN fest. The stories revolve around the Internet and its potential for terror, and the cast includes Tutú Vidaurre, Clara Kovacic, Fernanda Finterbusch, León Arriagada, Nestor Cantillana, Nicolás Durán and Ignacia Uribe. Rojas, also one of the executive producers, says “It was possible to finish APPS in this pandemic year and a half. It was pretty hard due to restrictive conditions, but we were able to pull through. Five stories were built, each unique and different from the others–all entertaining, fresh and of great technical quality, including spectacular special effects. This is an anthology informed by several inspirations, by quality films and also by current technological trends.
“All of the segments are indebted to their own influences,” he continues. “In my case, ‘Edén’ is a mix between folk horror and survival film. It’s as if you took the girls from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and, after kidnapping them, you used them as part of a dark ancestral ritual. This movie’s inherent freedom allowed us to play with different subgenres.”
Zúñiga, who created the project, explains, “My story is called ‘Manada’ and it shows how the ambition for money can lead four young people to commit an atrocity and transmit it through the Internet. What they do not know is that everything in life comes back and they will get a dose of their own medicine; girl power will take its revenge. The film’s aesthetic is inspired by movies from the ’80s; there is even a tribute to the film THE SHINING.”
Arriagada, the first female Chilean director to present a feature at a fantasy film festival, says, “With ‘OnFire’ I wanted to put into practice a subgenre that I have always loved, and that I have seen in many Asian productions, which is social satire with black comedy/slapstick. A sarcastic point of view toward irresponsible parenting and children’s minds when that happens. And of course a sweet revenge through its protagonist’s pyrokinesis, the power of internal rage. Rage is comedy.”
León says of his segment, “In ‘Frequency’ I wanted to talk about loneliness, an often overlooked concept that can bring illness, fear, physical and psychological damage and even death. In addition, I wanted to interpret loneliness as something suffocating, which locks you in a perceptual world where death is not the liberation of this same concept.”
