Tonight: All Things Horror screen "The Commune" at the Somerville Theatre
Tonight's
"Women in Horror" showcase at the Somerville Theatre will present works
from celebrated female filmmakers who know how to prey on audiences'
primal fears. The
program will spotlight the horror chops of some of the genre's
up-and-coming female talents by presenting one feature film and four
shorts-each written and directed by a female horror auteur. The night
of woman-made horror flicks serves as the June installment of local
indie horror collective All Things Horror's monthly film series at the
Somerville Theatre.
Headlining the night is "The Commune," a
feature-length psychological thriller written and directed by Elizabeth
Fies. The film focuses on soon-to-be 16-year-old Jenny Cross, who has
to split her time between divorced parents. The movie unfolds over
Jenny's summer at the rural commune where her father resides, and where
he seems to have brainwashed its hippie residents and taken up the
mantle of their Charles Manson-like cult leader. Jenny soon learns that
her creepy new housemates have a more elaborate plan for her than she
could have expected.
"The Commune" follows Jenny's macabre
sojourn in this cloistered "world of adults gone mad," and theatrical
trailer hints at a memorable shock at the film's end. Internet horror
fanatics to have lovingly pegged "The Commune" as a throwback to the
1970s horror flick in the tradition of Nicholas Roeg's "Don't Look
Now," noting that Fies achieves an ominous mood throughout, allowing
tension to build toward the climax instead of throwing bodyparts
around in every scene. "The Commune" is Fies's debut film, and in an interview with Planet Terror, she says she drew on influences from "The Wicker Man," "Twin Peaks," and "Chinatown" in bringing it to the screen.
Alongside "The Commune," All Things Horror will screen four shorts,
which they've called on their website "some of our strongest films to
date." Monica Puller's humorous "Gimme!" follows an anthropomorphic
doll's quest to murder three girls on Halloween night. Izabel Grondin's
"Fantasy" aims to unsettle audiences with a dark tale of two strangers
with a shared affinity for an offbeat sexual fetish. And rounding out
the night of chills are two shorts by Maude Michaud: "Hollywood Skin"
sees a young girl go to desperate lengths to make herself physically
attractive enough to be an actress, and "Snuff" touches on the theme of
female empowerment when a snuff-film director gets a heavy dose of his own perverted medicine.
Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Square, Somerville | Tonight @ 7 pm | $5 | allthingshorroronline.com or somervilletheatreonline.com
--Andrew Cominelli