Mid­night in Austin: four world pre­mieres at SXSW 2023

While oth­er fes­ti­vals offer tra­di­tion, pres­tige and respectabil­i­ty, SXSW is just ​‘out there’ for the cool kids in Austin, Texas. Here are four genre titles which had their world pre­mière at this year’s festival.[/dropcap]

On 31^st Octo­ber, 1977, in New York – a year after the wife of Jack Del­roy (David Dast­malchi­an) died of can­cer – the TV host is mak­ing a last-ditch effort to get his syn­di­cat­ed late-hours talk show Night Owls back in the rat­ings. It is a Hal­loween spe­cial, with a guest line-up includ­ing a psy­chic (Fayssal Bazzi), a stage hyp­no­tist turned para­nor­mal debunker (Ian Bliss), and a para­psy­chol­o­gist (Lau­ra Gor­don) with her strange, sup­pos­ed­ly pos­sessed young sub­ject (Ingrid Torel­li). As Jack finds his grief and ambi­tion in uneasy alliance, and as pan­de­mo­ni­um breaks out live on air, ques­tions are raised as to whether what unfolds is illu­sion, real­i­ty, col­lec­tive mes­merism, cor­po­rate con­trol, or a per­son­al break­down viewed from the inside.

That ambi­gu­i­ty is key to a film which fore­grounds debates about the veridi­cal­i­ty of what we are see­ing, and which intro­duces enough nar­ra­tive lay­ers to con­found every­thing (while con­jur­ing enti­ties that ​“thrive on con­fu­sion”). For­mat­ted in a 4:3 frame to emu­late stan­dard-def­i­n­i­tion TV, pur­port­ing to be com­piled from ​“what went to air that night as well as pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased behind-the-scenes footage”, and real­is­ing on-screen dev­il­ry through Sev­en­ties-appro­pri­ate SFX, this fea­ture from Aus­tralian writers/​directors/​brothers Cameron and Col­in Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres, Scare Cam­paign) is found footage rem­i­nis­cent of Les­ley Manning’s Ghost­watch, Damien LeVeck’s The Cleans­ing Hour and Cris­t­ian Ponce’s His­to­ry of the Occult. For here, the medi­um (in every sense) is the mes­sage, and view­ers risk com­ing under its bale­ful influence.

The Wrath of Becky

Three years ago, then 13-year-old Becky (Lulu Wil­son) – in Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s 2020 film that shared her name – took out a quar­tet of home-invad­ing Neo-Nazis. Now she is back in a sequel from Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, con­stant­ly train­ing for a sec­ond round that she knows is com­ing as much as we do. Even before the real action starts, the orphaned teen fan­ta­sis­es about mur­der­ing any­one who caus­es her minor irri­ta­tion, which is to say that this angry anti-hero­ine has long since bro­ken bad, and keeps us on side only in the spe­cial hatred that she reserves for the far right.

Her prayers for vio­lence will be answered in the form of ​‘The Noble­men’, white suprema­cists plot­ting to trig­ger an insur­rec­tion with the assas­si­na­tion of a female His­pan­ic Sen­a­tor. En route to this coup, three new mem­bers (Matt Angel, Michael Sirow, Aaron Dal­la Vil­la) make the mis­take of killing Becky’s only friend and abduct­ing her beloved dog, which sets Becky on a path of vengeance that is part John Wick, part Home Alone – except this time she is bring­ing the may­hem to their home turf, at the farm­house of ex-mil­i­tary Noble­men leader Dar­ryl (Seann William Scott).

Small in cast and scale, and clear­ly set­ting up a sec­ond sequel where Becky’s rogue brand of sociopa­thy will become more legit­imised (and inevitably more adult, in denial of the story’s orig­i­nal USP), this feels a bit of a filler – but Becky’s need for teen kicks deliv­ers enough delin­quent destruc­tion of Nazis to bring bloody satisfaction.

New York fash­ion design­er Han­nah (Hadley Robin­son) is under pres­sure. Stressed by her über-suc­cess­ful par­ents, has­sled by her insane­ly demand­ing boss (Desmin Borges) and still car­ry­ing trau­ma from her trou­bled teens, she is already dri­ving away her boyfriend Kaelin (Bran­don Mychal Smith) and BFF Esther (Kausar Mohammed), when she births a rapid­ly grow­ing and trans­form­ing crea­ture – the ​‘appendage’ of the title – which embod­ies all her anx­i­eties and sets about under­min­ing every aspect of her life. Dis­cov­er­ing a small com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple with the same prob­lem, Han­nah starts tak­ing tips from the more expe­ri­enced Clau­dia (Emi­ly Hamp­shire) on how best to live with her repressed – but now unleashed – dark side.

Expand­ing this from her 2021 short of the same title, writer/​director Anna Zlokovic at first riffs on Frank Henenlotter’s Bas­ket Case, Bob­by Miller’s The Cleanse and Cody Calahan’s Let Her Out, with a mon­strous sto­ry of returned van­ish­ing twins who play Hydes to their hosts’ Jekylls. There­after Zlokovic goes full body snatch­er, in a twisty tale of a vul­ner­a­ble woman’s ago­nis­ing jour­ney towards per­son­al whole­ness. So while this fea­ture debut is cer­tain­ly body hor­ror, it is also a psy­cho­log­i­cal alle­go­ry, drama­tis­ing Hannah’s ther­a­peu­tic path to both emo­tion­al bal­ance and accom­mo­da­tion of her worst qual­i­ties along­side the best.

On the evening of 27^th Decem­ber, 1945, three old friends – Mjr. Archibald Stan­ton (Jere­my Holm), Mjr. Paul DiFran­co (Ezra Buzzing­ton) and expe­ri­enced inter­roga­tor Mar­la Sheri­dan (Anne Ram­say) – along with Marla’s civil­ian hus­band Bob (Ron E. Rains) – have a reunion in a Brook­lyn brown­stone. They are there to con­sole anoth­er close friend, Lt. Col. Clive Hock­stat­ter (Lar­ry Fes­senden), whose wife Susan recent­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide when every­one, ​‘Hock’ includ­ed, dis­missed her con­vic­tion that their Ger­man neigh­bour (Kristi­na Klebe) was a spy.

Des­per­ate to make amends with Susan, Hock pro­pos­es a séance – yet all these mem­bers of America’s Great­est Gen­er­a­tion are haunt­ed by their own ques­tion­able con­duct in the war which has just end­ed, but which is not, despite repeat­ed asser­tions to the con­trary, ever real­ly ​‘over’ for those who made it to the oth­er side. ​“All you real­ly need is a mir­ror,” says Hock of the séance. Indeed the ghosts raised at the table are reflec­tions of these char­ac­ters’ inner­most con­sciences, as they become locked not just into the par­lour room, but into their own dam­aged sense of right­eous­ness and integrity.

Mean­while, a US flag hangs promi­nent­ly on the wall to dri­ve home that the hypocrisies, eva­sions, prej­u­dices and guilt on dis­play are nation­al as well as per­son­al. For in this lat­est fea­ture from writer/​director Ted Geoghe­gan (We Are Still Here, Mohawk), these five – and an unex­pect­ed guest or two – are con­tend­ing over one long dark night of the soul with deeds that can nev­er be undone. Here, (post)war is hell, even if the future must be built on it.