Goth Chick News: Kicking the Apocalypse’s Ass
Though she has been in the biz since she was six years old, we only really got a chance to fall in love with Chloë Grace Moretz in 2010, when she was all of thirteen and played the little purple-wigged assassin in Kick Ass.
From that point forward it sure seemed as though either someone was giving Moretz awesome advice on what roles to take on, or her own quirky tastes in characters was leading her to some juicy parts. Either way, and if the movie was a hit or not, Moretz’s performances always left an indelible impression; whether it was her reworking of blood-drenched Carrie or the vampire Abby in Let Me In.
So imagine the anticipation when last week we were gifted with the first trailer for The 5th Wave and found the now 21-year-old Miss Moretz continuing her tradition of headstrong, revenge-dishing, ass-kickery.
The 5th Wave began as a 2013 young adult science fiction novel by Rick Yancey; the first installment in a trilogy. Critics have compared the book favorably to The Hunger Games and noted that it “should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires.”
Okay, let’s hope the heck not. But moving on…
The story follows 16-year-old Cassie Sullivan as she tries to survive in a world devastated by the waves of alien invasion that have already decimated the population and knocked humankind back to the Stone Age.
First, they wiped out the power. Then, an earthquake hit, causing worldwide devastation. Third, a massive epidemic, spreading across the globe. And for the fourth wave, the alien invaders responsible for all this chaos finally descended to Earth — with the ability to inhabit human bodies. So the question is: What is the fifth wave going to look like?
With my Fantasia coverage done for another year, I thought I’d write a final post looking back over what I saw to try to make sense of it all. And to talk about why I’ve done what I’ve done.
Concluding my discussion of films I saw courtesy of the Fantasia screening room, I’ll be writing today about three movies: a drama with elements of horror called They Look Like People, the horror-comedy called Nina Forever, and one of the purest horror movies I’ve ever seen, Nathan Ambrosioni’s Hostile. I’ll begin with They Look Like People, written and directed by Perry Blackshear. It’s about two men, one of whom, Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), appears to be falling into insanity; he believes aliens are giving him messages. He happens to cross paths with his old friend Christian (Evan Dumouchel). They’ve both recently had long-term relationships fall apart — Wyatt’s fiancée in fact cheated on him and then broke up with him. Christian offers Wyatt a place to stay, and Wyatt accepts.
By this point I’ve discussed all the movies I saw in theatres at the Fantasia film festival, but there remain a half-dozen more that I saw courtesy of the Fantasia screening room. I’m going to write about them over two posts, for ease of reading. And then I’ll have a coda wrapping up my Fantasia coverage with thoughts on what I saw, and the value of the festival. For now: reviews of the psychological romance comedy Poison Berry in My Brain, the metafictional satire Anima State, and the suspense movie The Interior. All of them, one way or another, directly to do with what happens inside the head.
Tuesday, August 4, was my last day at the Fantasia Festival. It was the official closing day of Fantasia; they’d added a few screenings on Wednesday, but nothing that looked compelling to me. I have some more films to write about after this, thanks to the festival’s screening room. But since I’ll be writing here about the last three movies I saw in a theatre at the 2015 Fantasia Festival, in this post I want to make a point of acknowledging the crowds.