My Fantasia Festival, Days 12 through 14: Cybernatural, The House at the End of Time, and Time Lapse
I didn’t see any films at Fantasia on Monday, July 28, and then on the 29th I saw two. One was Guardians of the Galaxy, which I’ve already written about. The next was a distinctive but disappointing horror film called Cybernatural. Disappointment here is perhaps relative; Cybernatural’s been one of the most talked-about films at the festival, so far as I can judge, and as a result my expectations were high. And honesty compels me to note that I’m not a big fan of horror movies as such, though I’d like to think I enjoy good horror when there’s a good story.
Certainly, the first film I’d see on Wednesday the 30th was a horror movie that erased the disappointment of the night before. The film that did the trick was Venezuela’s first-ever commercial genre film, The House at the End of Time (La casa del fin de los tiempos), which I followed with an American thriller called Time Lapse. It all made for an interesting mix of films.
Cybernatural was directed by Leo Gabriadze from a script by Nelson Greaves. Like Open Windows, it’s a movie that takes place entirely on a computer screen. In this case, the screen belongs to a teenaged girl named Blaire (Shelley Hennig), who at the start of the film is involved in a Skype chat with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm). Things are about to get heated when suddenly more friends join, other kids at their school. But there’s somebody else with them, an anonymous presence on their group video chat. And their computers have started to act strange. It seems that exactly a year ago one of their former classmates committed suicide, after someone in the group posted a humiliating video of her online. Now she’s back for revenge.