The one thing cooler than seeing a fun movie on opening day with a like-minded crowd is having the theater to yourself. You can speak amongst yourselves at volume, spread out, and otherwise enjoy the experience as if you were at home, but with the improved theater experience. (Well, okay, some theaters and some homes result in home being better. But this is rare, so let’s assume it’s the other thing.) In fact, both of the movies I saw on Monday night were in empty theaters. I’ve had maybe one other empty theater experience in my life, so this was quite a surprise. Naturally, then, I didn’t have anyone with me to really enjoy it.

I’ve missed only a couple of horror movies so far this year, and considering how revitalized the genre has been lately, I feel pretty good about that. In this case, Sarah Michelle Gellar is involved, and except for the Grudge claptrap, I’ve seen all her horror. So that much more incentive. Speaking of whom, am I the only person excited about Alice, for which there inexplicably was no preview? It occurs to me, though, that I’m drifting a little afield of the topic at hand, considering I’m already two paragraphs in. Pleasant I don’t have a word limit, then, innit?

The Return is the story of Joanna Mills’ return home after a long absence. Not very scary, eh? Except, why did she leave home in the first place? Tell me that! Oh, right. That’s my job. So, there was an auto accident when she was a little girl, and then a creepy guy was stalking her at a county fair. And then… well, next thing you know, she’s a successful travelling salesman in her twenties who has been avoiding her father and the rural area outside Austin where she grew up for years and years now. And even she can’t exactly explain why, to herself or anyone else. One thing about it, though: you can’t say she was wrong, after the titular return leaves her seeing a second face in the mirror and remembering a town she’s never been to.

I expected a fairly lame horror movie that I’d get to giggle at a lot and then promptly forget about by the time I get around to seeing Turistas next week. (And, ooo, Black Christmas.) Instead, I got a thoughtful, moody, and once or twice downright scary ghost story, with equal parts atonement and revenge. I should point out that the competition guy from her job made no sense whatsoever. But ten minutes of subplot out of an otherwise surprisingly good movie, I can forgive that. Meanwhile, that house (in case I failed to mention, there’s a spooky house in the mix) reminded me a lot of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre house, though I couldn’t specify whether I mean from the original or the remakes. Also, it was fun watching a movie be set in and around Austin, since I know so much of that area and could recognize things. It must be the same way for people from Vancouver and basically every other movie ever. (Not the people from LA, though, they’re too above-it-all to admit to enjoying stuff like that.)

And lo, it was evening and morning, the third day. Film festivals, I just want to say, despite being awesome and filled up with good energy and generally making me feel like I’m cool for being there, are a huge ass pain when it comes to organizing and providing thoughts. ‘Cause seriously. I’ve still got three movies to go, and I feel like I’ve been doing nothing else but reviewing stuff for almost an Age of Man. But ignore the complaints, because it was awesome and filled with good energy. I drank way too much soda over the course of the weekend, though.

Anyway, the first movie of the third night was Wicked Little Things, a pretty straight vengeful spirit story. It seems that a greedy mine-owner ordered some dynamite set off under unsafe conditions, resulting in the deaths of a couple of dozen child laborers. Ultimately, the mine was closed down and the land mostly abandoned for decades, except for some of the miner families who had nowhere else to go. Enter recently widowed Karen Tunny and her two daughters, moving into her husband’s childhood home after finding an old deed buried among his personal papers. Unfortunately for our blonde and reasonably petite heroine, the zombified spirits of the dead children (with heroic effort, I am foregoing a minor miner pun here) have been more active than ever lately; the owner of the mine and surrounding lands has decided to develop it into a ski resort, and nevermind how they’d wander the mountain and killing strangers in previous years, the true object of their revenge has them working overtime this week.

No breasts. Seven bodies. Shovel to the brainpan. Pick fu. Passover fu. Pig devouring. Drive-in academy award nominations to the plumber for saying that it would only take a day to replace the broken pipes, because “I’m going to be out of here before sundown!”, to the kooky neighbor for saying, “You can thank me later [for smearing a jar of my blood all over your front door]”, and to the greedy mine heir for having the asshole equivalent of perfect pitch. Lessons learned: 1) If your youngest daughter asks if her “imaginary” friend who lured her down to the abandoned mine can play in her room, instead of saying ‘yes’, consider saying ‘only if I get to meet her first’. 2) If a mountain is known around town for swarming with zombie children, consider choosing a different mountain for Makeout Ridge. Three and half stars.

Each night of the festival had a movie that was more of an artistic mood piece than a schlocky bloodfest. And that’s okay, because there are different kinds of horror, and each should be celebrated in its own way. The second night’s Reincarnation was The Abandoned, whose horror tropes were a mix of decay, inescapable claustrophobia, and Eastern European legends; but one of the types that has not readily made it across to America like vampires and werewolves have. (Although werewolves were already here; but that’s beside the point.)

Our heroine (who although blond, is not petite) isn’t having her best life ever. She was brought to America as an infant in the 1960s, her Russian name relegated to the middle so her adoptive parents could give her a name they were more comfortable with. Now she’s divorced, with a teenage daughter who has about as much respect for her as teenage daughters in the full flower of rebellion ever have for their mothers. As her forty-second birthday approaches, Milla has an urge to reconnect with the motherland, either prompting or prompted by (I forget which) correspondence with local officials from the region of her birth, who provide her with the necessary information about the Russian family who found her and her twin as infants. Well, found is a strong word; in point of fact, their mother drove up in a wrecked pickup and died in the family’s yard, leaving the squalling infants in the seat beside her to whoever might come along and take care of them. So, okay, I admit this is convoluted and I’m not doing the best job of explaining it, but the movie did fine at the same task, so good on them.

Here’s the thing, though. In horror movies, it’s always better if the past stays buried. Even from the first moments of Milla’s arrival in Russia, it’s clear that something isn’t right. The wrongness continues to grow and grow as she gets closer to the house from which her dying mother fled all those years ago, and before she knows it, she and her twin (who arrived at the same time, although they had never before met and were summoned in different ways, and obviously that isn’t a good sign) are trapped by the house to try to survive the fate that something, or someone, has in store for them. Being the moodish introspective kind of movie, the drive-in totals really don’t work here. (Plus I’m starting to feel a little plagiaristic, whether it’s been that kind of weekend or not.) But it was certainly good, as well as genuinely scary.