Sinister quartet hits the right spots
XX
(out of 4) Horror anthology starring Natalie Brown, Melanie Lynskey, Breeda Wool and Christina Kirk. Directed by Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin and Karyn Kusama. Opens Friday at Carlton Cinema. 81 minutes. 14A
XX marks the spot for this femaleled horror anthology, now arriving in Toronto following its enthusiastic world premiere at last month’s Sundance Film Festival.
Afirst of its kind in a male-dominated genre, these four short films are signed, sealed and delivered as a form of empowerment. They’re written by women, directed by women and star women in key roles.
Toronto’s Jovanka Vuckovic, an award-winning filmmaker whose first short The Captured Bird was executive produced by horrormeister Guillermo del Toro, wrote and directed The Box.
It’s the first and best of XX’s quartet of terrors, which are each about 20 minutes long.
Filmed in Toronto, which stands in for New York, The Box begins aboard acrowded subway train where a frazzled mother (Natalie Brown) is taking her young son and daughter home for supper after an exhausting day of fun.
They sit next to an odd little man holding a large box, brightly wrapped in red paper, who offers a peek inside to the curious son. What happens next needs to be seen, not described, but it’s not out of place to mention that a scene from Night of the Living Dead will pop up on the family’s TV screen later that night. The other shorts are: The Birthday Party by Annie Clark, alias rock star St. Vincent, making her darkly satirical directorial debut. Set to St. Vincent’s mad electropop, it combines a stressed-out mom (Melanie Lynskey), an impending children’s party and an inconveniently dead husband;
Don’t Fall by Roxanne Benjamin, who made her directing debut with the male-dominated 2015 horror anthology Southbound. She contributes a college kids versus creature shocker that unleashes hell after a desert camper (Breeda Wool) discovers strange stone markings;
Her Only Living Son by Karyn Kusama ( The Invitation), who updates Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen with a story about a single mom (Christina Kirk) on the lam from Satan with a son who’s turning out to be a real devil as he near adulthood.
The four shorts are connected by wonderfully sinister stop-motion animated sequences involving a creepy doll, directed by Mexico’s Sofia Carrillo, who has obviously seen a Tim Burton film or two.
She’s by rights the fifth director of this anthology, the unifying force behind its disparate sights and frights.
Is there something about the XX shorts that makes them particularly female?
Only, perhaps, in that three of the four films involve a mother or maternal figure attempting to shield children from advancing terror.
As with male-directed horror films, there’s no shortage of blood, gore, screams, jump scares and things that go bump in the night — although with a 14A Ontario rating, XX is certainly not XXX material.