SXSW 2013 Film Festival Recap: Day One – Upstream Color, Evil Dead

Features, Top Story

Around this time of year thousands of outsiders descend on the city of Austin for all things film, music and interactive media. It is also the week where the denizens of the Texas state capital would like nothing better than to leave the city and avoid the congestion of cars, people and rickshaw transportation.

And yet here I am.

You might be asking yourself why would someone make the yearly trek to a location where its motto is to keep its city weird. I don’t have a clear and definitive answer, but I enjoy the atmosphere regardless. Yes, the infamous 6th Street. The worst is the first day. If you don’t arrive early enough, you are scrambling for parking and willing to pay the fee just so you can free yourself from your metal cocoon. I’m guilty as charged in this respect, paying an exorbitant fee just to leave my car in a parking structure for the next several hours.

Looking to see two opening night films – Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color and Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (yes, a remake of Sam Raimi’s original The Evil Dead, but more on that later) – I had to rush to get my press badge. This year, registration was in a new location and you had to take shuttle buses to get there. All right, it shouldn’t be too bad. Then you realize it is 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said as Jack Slater in Last Action Hero: “Big Mistake!”

Thankfully, I got my stuff a little after five and took a bicycle ride back to the Paramount Theater. Again, I had to pay another high price to get to my destination, but again I didn’t mind, as this is what happens when you don’t plan things out properly. As a plus, the biker, Sara, was very friendly. You just have to love someone who has a sign on her bike that exclaims, “working dat ass,” with the price per trip detailed below. So while she was working her posterior, I was sitting on mine, until it came time to fork over the agreed upon fee. That’s a monetary workout that left me a little bit lighter in the pocketbook.

Needless to say I got to my desired location with plenty of time to spare. But enough about my trials and tribulations on the way to cinematic bliss. On with the show.

My cinematic journey starts with Shane Carruth’s long awaited follow-up to his 2004 release Primer. Upstream Color is a difficult film to explain, as its one sentence synopsis – a man and a woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism  – is vague at best. Much like Terrence Malick’s divisive release, Tree of Life, but without the star power of a Brad Pitt or a Sean Penn or even a Jessica Chastain, Color provokes you aurally and visually, but it doesn’t strike an emotional response. Don’t get me wrong, Color is breathtaking to watch, and it may just have one of the best immersive sound designs I’ve heard in a film period. The problem lies in the story’s unevenness.

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Upstream Color producer Casey Gooden

It begins auspiciously enough with a man cultivating a sensory-altering drug and then using it to brainwash a socialite (Kris, played by Amy Seimetz) in order to procure tens of thousands of dollars. It was at this point that I remarked to myself, this is what Identity Thief should have been. The resulting action sees her jobless and out of her home. The story changes gears with the introduction of Jeff (Carruth), and the two strike up a relationship that is scattershot and tenuous. Jeff also has his own discretions and looks to have also undergone the same form of brainwashing. Throw in a music sampler (Andrew Sensenig) who records a variety of sounds and breeds pigs on the side, plus the dissemination of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and you have a vivid tapestry of the world that Shane Carruth weaves.

Upstream Color is definitely a take it or leave it film, but is by no means difficult to watch. Now digesting its themes is another issue altogether. To me, the biggest key lies in the use of Walden. Thoreau’s social experiment by living a plain life of reduced conditions (a log cabin vs. a home of opulent furnishings, for example) is comparable to the situation that both Kris and Jeff find themselves in, losing jobs and living in motel and hotel rooms. Such a shock to the system allows for greater personal introspection, but at what cost when it comes at the expense of brainwashing?

Perhaps that was Shane Carruth’s intent. Sadly, his flight was delayed and he could not take part in a post-screening Q and A to field such inquires of the Color‘s allegorical nature. Still, he should definitely be commended by providing such a truly unique soundtrack, both in its score and sound mixing. The clacking of stone and the pulsating hum of a transformer is enough to make your hair stand on end. (B)

The headline attraction for the evening was the world premiere of Sony Pictures’ Evil Dead. Carrying the hyperbolic tagline “The most terrifying film you will ever experience,” Fede Alvarez’s feature directorial debut had a lot to live up. Making your Hollywood debut with a remake is not easy. But Alvarez had the backing of the original’s director, Sam Raimi, who could not be at the world premiere because he was too busy worrying about how his little independent movie (read $325 million), Oz, would do with weekend audiences. Also in Alvarez’s corner were producers Robert G. Tapert and Bruce Campbell. Yes, “The Chin” was there to help steer the project, twenty-two years after starring in the original The Evil Dead.

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Evil Dead Q+A with Ain’t It Cool News’ Harry Knowles and the cast and crew

Those not familiar with the original, the story involves five friends heading to a remote cabin. The trip is an intervention to get one of the friends, Mia (Jane Levy), off drugs. That’s right. The goal isn’t to drink or fornicate, but to rehabilitate. As Bruce Campbell put it in the Q and A, “it’s like The Big Chill but with more carnage.” He was definitely on point with that second part. When Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) discovers the Book of the Dead and unwittingly summons up demons living in the woods, well all hell breaks loose. The spirit possess Mia and the friends are slow to realize that her actions were not due to her kicking drug dependency. As a result, possessed Mia gives away the ending in acknowledging in creepy, deranged spirit voice that they were all going to die tonight. Well, thanks for spoiling it Mia! Gosh.

The spoiler notwithstanding, the rest of film is just batshit insane with its depiction of brutality. I winced a few times, I will admit. But I also marveled in wondering how do they do such and such arm dismemberment. Does that make me a sadist? It was almost like a game of Clue, wondering which weapon would be used next. The cabin didn’t have much of an arsenal, just a double-barrel shotgun and electric knife. The real toys were in the woodshed. Nail gun. Chainsaw. Machete. Oh my.

As much as I applaud Fede Alvarez’s direction, and loved Roque Banos’ musical score, I can’t forget about Jane Levy. To think, playing a character in the mold of Emma Stone’s Easy A on ABC’s Suburgatory, here she frolics and plays in the woods covered in blood and grime. She makes the most of her demonic possession (love those glowing yellow eyes), and when her transformation back to the living occurs the audience is fully on her side and ready for her to send her possessor back to hell!

Evil Dead isn’t as much a remake as it is a rebirth to Sam Raimi’s original. I, for one, enjoyed this cinematic offspring and its hidden message that if you do drugs, stuff like this is bound to happen. So just say no! (B)

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Groovy.

Travis Leamons is one of the Inside Pulse Originals and currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Inside Pulse Movies. He's told that the position is his until he's dead or if "The Boss" can find somebody better. I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order!