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.

The third movie of the evening was easily the best. (Which perhaps says good things about the remaining six movies. …I just realized that I will have watched a dozen movies in ten days before this thing is over. Even after taking into account that I let a couple of months slip by before last weekend, that is downright unnatural.) Unrest is a medical school movie. Since med students in movies only have to take one class, it’s easy to guess that the site of the mysterious horrificness will be the gross anatomy lab. And sure enough, once the scalpels start flyin’, people start dyin’. (I made that up myself.) And only a petite blonde girl holds the key to putting the vengeful spirit to rest, which would be fine if she didn’t also have to balance an incredulous professor, a newly blossoming love interest, the groaningly unlikely placement of her living quarters in an abandoned hospital wing, and being a petite blonde girl in a horror movie.

Six bodies. At least four cadavers, some of which were actually cadavers. Six cadaver breasts. No actual breasts, which I blame on the camera-person being attracted to men. Bone saw fu. Formaldehyde fu. Pen to the neck. Feet roll. Arms roll. Drive-in academy award nominations to the dead vengeful spirit chick, for doing most of her acting without a ribcage and for not twitching a muscle even when it is explained over her naked cadaver that she’s had children because her nipples have darkened from breast feeding, and to the petite blonde heroine chick and her boyfriend for spending their second date diving for corpses in a formaldehyde dunk-tank. Three stars.

“Ah,” you say, “but you told us it was a double feature, and now a day later there’s still only one movie mentioned.” (See how I pretend I have daily readers? It’s downright adorable is what it is.) Well, you’re right about that. As it happens, I saw a second movie, which had not quite as much irritating pun potential, but still more than is preferable. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is, on the face of it, a seriously pointless movie. It’s a prequel to the remake of a movie that itself had two sequels. Mind you, the remake was very good as remakes go, though it simply couldn’t live up to that original film, which was filled with non-stop tension that only old-school grainy filmstock can provide, as well as (I’m pretty sure) the single most annoying wheelchaired character in the history of film. It’s possible the latter part isn’t a selling point for everyone, but I like it when my movies are superlative in some way. Of course, Chainsaw is superlative in more than one way, so that’s good too.

Anyhow, that was the face of it. The reality of it is… well, there’s a 15 or 20 minute short subject film in which most of the beginning is explored, true to their words. Then it turns into ‘Let’s kill some pretty hippies and/or bikers!’ for the next hour; while that’s what one should expect from a movie in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, it does seem like a pretty thin premise on which to hang a prequel. And they’re not even naked hippies. What is the Vietnam era coming to, these days? Anyhow, after the hour, there’s a little bit more with the prequel bait, and I’m have to say that they finally managed to get an iconic moment in there. Although I’ll admit to watching anything with the word ‘chainsaw’ in the title, I’m still willing to say with authority that as sequels and prequels go, this one at least falls above the 50 percent mark, and if you’re only including horror movies, it easily gets a passing grade after the curve. After all, it was merely not very pointful; it was still competently plotted and filmed.