Just ’dance
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL I Sex, drugs and serial murder at this year’s indie fest…
PARADISE HILLS
Probably the most ambitious of films on show from first-time directors, Alice Waddington’s debut is an immaculately conceived girl power sci-fi, starring Emma Roberts as Uma, a rebellious young woman sent to Paradise Hills, a weirdly stylish island finishing school run by the spooky Duchess (Milla Jovovich). There, she meets a group of other female ‘misfits’, all of whom have been sent there to curb their individuality. It may sound like The Stepford Wives all over again, but a cute modern twist saves the day, while the last act takes an unexpected turn into gothic fairytale territory.
ANIMALS
What if Withnail and I had both been women? That is the question asked by Sophie Hyde’s funny and often riotously misbehaved comedy, based on the novel of the same name by British writer Emma Jane Unsworth. Holliday Grainger (My Cousin Rachel, Cinderella) and Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development’s Maeby) star as Laura and Tyler, two Dublin girls whose friendship starts to buckle when Laura decides its time to settle down and give up the booze, one-night stands and industrial quantities of MDMA. Overly polite Park City audiences demurred at its debauchery, which can only be a good thing.
EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL, AND VILE
The arrest and trial of serial killer Ted Bundy is the subject of Joe Berlinger’s meticulous true-crime story, which somehow caused ripples at the festival for casting the handsome, charming Zac Efron as a handsome, charming murderer. Berlinger steers clear of Bundy’s horrific crimes, instead documenting his delusions of innocence, and in particular his long-standing relationship with a single mother (Lily Collins), whose final prison visit is the film’s framing device. Efron gives a career-best performance: expect awards.
WOUNDS
Babak Anvari’s follow-up to Under The Shadow is another exercise in atmospheric terror; a psychological creep-out with Lovercraftian overtones. Armie Hammer stars as New Orleans bartender Will, who discovers a mysterious phone on the night of a vicious brawl. The phone begins buzzing with increasingly strange messages that lead to a picture folder containing images of severed heads. Before long, Will and his partner Carrie (Dakota Johnson) become obsessed by the phone’s dark secrets, building to a freaky, cockroach-infested climax reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome.