Permanent Midnight: SXSW's Midnighters Lineup is About to Turn Austin Into Ground Zero: Darkness

Permanent Midnight is a weekly Complex Pop Culture column where senior staff writer, and resident genre fiction fanatic, Matt Barone will put the spotlight on the best new indie horror/sci-fi/weirdo cinema, twisted novels, and other below-the-radar oddities.

Once again, it’s my personal favorite time of the year: SXSW time. More specifically, the SXSW Film Festival, a loose, party-oriented celebration of independent cinema, with an emphasis on the bold, weird, and unconventional. This will be my third time heading to the stateside mecca for film enthusiasts, Austin, Texas, where the beer is cheap, the barbecue is tremendous, and the movie theaters aren’t AMC, Regal, or mega-corporate.

Keeping the spirit of this column’s title, SXSW’s Midnighters program is the main attraction for me. Every night around 12:00 a.m., multiple new horror/sci-fi/thriller movies are unveiled by do-it-yourself filmmakers in venues like the Alamo Drafthouse, where a fully stocked beer and food menu turns screenings into darkly lit parties. In past years, the Midnighters section exposed me to some of the best genre films of the last few years, like You’re Next and The Lords of Salem, and this year’s lineup has the potential to keep that streak alive.

Before relocating to Austin for the next week, I hopped on the phone with SXSW producer and senior programmer Jarod Neece, who’s been with the festival since 2002 and has overseen the Midnighters section dating back to ’06. For the 2014 fest, he and his colleagues received a whopping 6,600 submissions from hungry filmmakers, 1,300 or so of which were narrative features. From that 13K-deep pile, Neece whittled it down to 10 Midnighters inclusions, featuring new flicks by the minds behind impressive new-millennium horror favorites like Inside, The Pact, The Last Exorcism, Lovely Molly, and the aforementioned You’re Next.

Here, Neece breaks down each of this year’s Midnighters selections. Pay attention—you’re about to be introduced to the future of genre movies.

As told to Matt Barone (@MBarone)

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Director: Daniel Stamm
Stars: Mark Webber, Rutina Wesley, Devon Graye, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Richard Burgi, Tom Bower, Ron Perlman
Official synopsis: A cryptic phone call sets off a dangerous game of risks for Elliot, a down-on-his luck salesman. The game promises increasing rewards for completing 13 tasks, each more sinister than the last.

Jarod Neece says: We played Daniel Stamm’s first film, A Necessary Death, back in the day, and we accepted his follow-up, The Last Exorcism, when it was actually called Cotton. But then it got bought and the film’s plans changed and we couldn’t show it anymore, but it went on to do amazing things because it’s a great film. So being able to play Daniel Stamm’s new film is really cool. We’ve been tracking it for a long time. We always wait to see what Sundance announces for their midnight lineup and then we move from there. We wait to see what they’ll take and which films go off the table for us, and 13 Sinswasn’t one of them, fortunately.

13 Sins is very similar to Cheap Thrills from last year. It’s a remake of this Thai film from 2006 called 13: Game of Death, and it’s not dissimilar to the original. It’s really vibrant and slightly more macabre. Ron Perlman is great in it, too, and it’s great to see Daniel Stamm evolve as a filmmaker. This one’s less horror and more of a fun, suspenseful thriller.

Director: Nicholas McCarthy
Stars: Naya Rivera, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ashley Rickards, Wyatt Russell, Ava Acres
Official synopsis: When ambitious young real estate agent Leigh (Moreno) is asked to sell a house with a checkered past, she crosses paths with a disturbed girl (Rickards) whom she learns is the runaway daughter of the couple selling the property. When Leigh tries to intervene and help her, she becomes entangled with a supernatural force that soon pulls Leigh's artist sister Vera (Rivera) into its web - and has sinister plans for both of them.

Jarod Neece says: We think Home is even better than Nicholas McCarthy’s first film, The Pact. There’s not a lot of special effects in any of our Midnighters films, but for Home that’ll be even more impressive once you see the film. It also has this great score and this amazing opening sequence that sets the tone.

The one thing that we kept coming back to with Home is its atmosphere—it really has this early 2000s Japanese horror feel, comparable to films like Ringu, the movie that The Ring remade. It’s a really scary film. There’s a Satanic vibe to it, with demons, so that should be a nice hook for people, too.

Director: Leigh Janiak
Stars: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway, Ben Huber, Hanna Brown
Official synopsis: Young newlyweds Paul (Harry Treadaway) and Bea (Rose Leslie) travel to remote lake country for their honeymoon where the promise of private romance awaits them. Shortly after arriving, Paul finds Bea wandering and disoriented in the middle of the night. As she becomes more distant and her behavior increasingly peculiar, Paul begins to suspect something more sinister than sleepwalking took place in the woods.

Jarod Neece says: That’s the one that took us the most by surprise. Leigh Janiak is a female filmmaker, which is awesome. It’s great to have a female in the midnight section; we’ve played female directors’ films in the midnight section before, but we haven’t in the last couple of years. She just came out of nowhere. She’s a recent NYU grad, a first-time filmmaker, and it’s really strong filmmaking.

It’s this slow-burn thriller that has some twists. It’s minimal, with just a few people. The cast, for anyone who watches a lot of television, will be familiar, though. The female lead is Rose Leslie, who plays Ygritte on Game of Thrones and who’s been on Downton Abbey; the male lead, Harry Treadaway, is in the new Showtime series Penny Dreadful, playing Dr. Frankenstein.

Their performances are great, and the direction is amazing. I scheduled Honeymoon’s premiere on opening night because it’s a slow-paced film and people won’t be too tired yet. [Laughs.] You want to keep people awake at midnight. Honeymoon builds this really cool tension. The whole time you’re watching it, you’re thinking, there’s no way she’s going to figure out how to end this movies, but then the ending comes and it’s so good! The film’s a real discovery for us.

Director: Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo
Stars: Anne Marivin, Béatrice Dalle, Francis Renaud, Fabien Jegoudez, Nicolas Giraud, Chloé Coulloud, Théo Fernandez, Zacharie Chasseriaud, Damien Ferdel, Sidwell Weber
Official synopsis: Youngsters, Victor, Dan and Tom skip school to wander around an abandoned movie set. They stumble upon a horrific vision: a woman in chains is dragged through the field by a man wearing a clown mask. The masked man catches a glimpse of the boys, who scramble to run away. But before they can escape, they see something hidden for years, something they were not meant to see. Terrified of having been seen by the masked man, the boys try to alert the police. Unfortunately, their past record of unruly behaviour discredits them and the police do not follow up on their tipoff. That night someone breaks into their homes, seeking to eliminate them, one after another. They are going to meet Klarence...

Jarod Neece says: This was the one we knew that people would freak out over. Most people didn’t even know that the guys who made Inside and Livide were making another movie, and they’ve become these really popular and beloved cult horror figures since Inside blew people away on the 2007 film festival circuit.

Among the Living is super creepy. If you want to compare it to their first two films, it’s hard because it’s really different from Inside and Livide. It’s a really entertaining film in which tons of awful shit happens. The kid actors are really solid, and… It’s hard to explain this one without giving too much away. [Laughs.] The story has a lot of curveballs, but, most importantly, it’s super creepy.

It has the most insanity and randomness out of all this year’s Midnighters films. I’m excited for an audience to see it. I watched it at home on my TV, and this one will really play well on the big screen with the energetic Alamo Drafthouse audience.

Director: Adam Wingard
Stars: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Leland Orser, Lance Reddick, Sheila Kelley, Brendan Meyer, Chase Williamson
Official synopsis: David is the perfect guest. Friendly and helpful, this young soldier arrives on the doorstep of the Peterson family, claiming to be a good friend of their beloved son who died in action. The Petersons welcome David into their home and into their lives, but when people start mysteriously dying in town, their teenage daughter Anna starts wondering if David is responsible.

Jarod Neece says: I was searching for Adam Wingard’s email the other day, and I came across something really interesting. Back in 2005, 2006, we did this thing called SXSWclick, around the time when YouTube was really taking off. It was this online short film festival we did in the summer, to keep us busy since we didn’t have much going on. We wanted to get really quality online films. Through my old emails, I found that Adam Wingard was one of the 2007 finalists for that, but he had never told me about that. But we love Adam, [his screenwriting partner] Simon Barrett, and those guys—showing their film You’re Next here last year was a real treat for us.

The Guest is a crazy and wild film. The lead guy, Dan Stevens, was a lead on Downton Abbey recently, and he’s great in this. He has this really strong, unique charisma, like a young Tom Cruise but in a Terminator-like role. The film definitely gets surreal at times, and it builds to this explosive, bloody-as-hell finale. It’s not as much of a horror film as their past stuff—it’s more of an action-thriller.

Usually I can take a couple things from Sundance, but this year I wasn’t able to take too much from it. So the fact that The Guest is the one I took from Sundance’s midnight section says a lot about it, I think. It’s really special.

Director: Adrian Garcia Bogliano
Stars: Nick Damici, Ethan Embry, Lance Guest, Erin Cummings, Rutanya Alda, Tina Louise, Caitlin O'Heaney, Karen Lynn Gorney, Dana Ashbrook, Tom Noonan
Official synopsis: Crescent Bay is not the ideal place to spend one's golden years, especially since the once-idyllic retirement community has been beset by a series of deadly animal attacks from the ominous forest surrounding it. When grizzled war veteran Ambrose McKinley (Nick Damici) is forced into moving there by his yuppie son Will (Ethan Embry), the residents immediately take offense to Ambrose's abrasive personality. But that take-no-prisoners attitude may be just what Ambrose needs to survive as it becomes clear that the attacks are being caused by creatures that are neither animal nor man, and that the tight-knit community of Crescent Bay is hiding something truly sinister in its midst...

Jarod Neece says: This is Adrian’s first English-language film; he most recently directed the great, bizarre Here Comes the Devil. There are two monster movies in this year’s program, and this is one of them. Late Phases is about old dudes fighting werewolves, and that’s awesome. [Laughs.] There was another film that came out a couple years ago called Cockneys vs. Zombies that has a similar premise to this one, with elderly people getting attacked by things and then they have to fight them. There’s a lot of cool practical effects in it. It has that old-school monster movie structure, but with a cool dark-comedy vibe.

Plus, there haven’t been too many good werewolf movies lately. Horror has been in need of one, and I think this is the one. We don’t typically see too many monster movie submissions, because there’s that barrier where indie filmmakers aren’t able to pull the monsters off properly, due to limited resources.

Director: Mike Flanagan
Stars: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane, James Lafferty, Katee Sackhoff
Official synopsis: Ten years ago tragedy struck, leaving the lives of siblings Tim and Kaylie forever changed when Tim was convicted of the murder of their parents. Now in his 20s, Tim is released from protective custody and wants to move on with his life, but Kaylie is convinced that their deaths were caused by a malevolent supernatural force unleashed through the Lasser Glass, an antique mirror in their childhood home. Determined to prove Tim's innocence, Kaylie locates the mirror, only to learn similar deaths have befallen previous owners. With the mysterious entity back in their hands, they find their hold on reality shattered by terrifying hallucinations and realize that their nightmare is beginning again.

Jarod Neece says: Oculus premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness last September, and when I saw it there, it completely blew my mind. It has a little bit of special effects, but it’s still this minimal concept that, on paper, doesn’t sound like it should work.

It’s about this haunted mirror, essentially, and when you read that plot description, it does sound a little goofy. But, somehow, they pulled it off, but not only did they pull it off—they absolutely nailed it and made one of the most impressive and creepiest horror movies in recent years.

We don’t get attached too much from Toronto because the films can either get bought or open in theaters before SXSW begins, but I’m thrilled that we’re hosting the U.S. premiere of Oculus.

Director: Jerome Sable
Stars: Alie MacDonald, Douglas Smith, Minnie Driver, Meat Loaf
Official synopsis: Starry-eyed teenager Camilla Swanson wants to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a Broadway diva, but she's stuck working in the kitchen of a snobby performing arts camp. Determined to change her destiny, she sneaks in to audition for the summer showcase and lands a lead role in the play, but just as rehearsals begin, blood starts to spill, and Camilla soon finds herself terrified by the horror of musical theatre.

Jarod Neece says: Jerome Sable’s short film The Legend of Beaver Dam is the best short film ever, I think. It’s definitely the best horror/musical short film ever. Stage Fright is, for people who know the short, the natural, logical extension of that while being really different. Jerome is from Quebec but lives in Toronto, and this is his feature film debut.

For me, this was an easy pick for Midnighters because it’s a musical horror film—what else is out there that’s anything like it? I don’t see any films like this. The horror stuff works great; the musical stuff works great. It’s really random, with Meatloaf in a co-starring role and nods to things like The Phantom of the Opera, and it’s a slasher film underneath all of that. It’s a great crowd-experience movie.

Director: Dennis Widmyer, Kevin Kolsch
Stars: Alexandra Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Fabianne Therese, Noah Segan, Shane Coffey, Natalie Castillo, Pat Healy, Marc Senter, Maria Olsen, Lou Dezseran
Official synopsis: Determined to make it as an actress in Hollywood, Sarah Walker spends her days working a dead-end job, enduring petty friendships and going on countless casting calls in hopes of catching her big break. After a series of strange auditions, Sarah lands the leading role in a new film from a mysterious production company. But with this opportunity comes bizarre ramifications that will transform her both mentally and physically into something beautiful... and all together terrifying.

Jarod Neece says: Starry Eyes is a really beautiful film, with this really cool Los Angeles aesthetic. It has a really cool, great lead performance from this new actress, Alexandra Essoe. The story is a take on celebrity and what people will do to achieve that. It builds this weird, creepy tension, and it’s constantly asking, ‘What will this woman do to get famous?’ There’s Satanic cults involved, and it gets really bloody in the end. The third act is super strong and builds up to this cool, visceral ending.

Director: Eduardo Sánchez
Stars: Chris Osborn, Dora Madison Burge, Roger Edwards, Denise Williamson, Samuel Davis, Brian Steele
Official synopsis: When brothers Brian and Matt Tover secretly sneak out to their Uncle's long abandoned cabin in East Texas for a party weekend with their friends, they find themselves stalked by the legendary Sasquatch. Cut off from the world, and knowing help isn't coming, the kids must try to make it out of the woods alive while hunted by a creature that's smarter, stronger, and more terrifying than they would have ever believed exists.

Jarod Neece says: This is our other monster movie, in addition to Late Phases. It’s definitely one of the best Bigfoot films ever made. [Laughs.] It was shot right around Austin, too, so it has that local charm going for it. There’s some really cool visual effects, a blend of practical and digital effects.

It’s a found-footage movie, but, thankfully, it’s a well-made and interesting one. We see so many found-footage movies as submissions, and most of them aren’t very good and are really derivative, and way too many of them take place in the woods and want to be the next Blair Witch Project but only steal from that film. People have iPhones so they think they can shoot a found-footage movie, and in the woods you don’t need any permits, so it’s that much easier for them.

We see a lot of ghost hunters stories set in the woods. Exists, though, was directed by one of Blair Witch’s directors, Ed Sanchez, so it has that authenticity and credibility. I saw a rough cut of Exists last year but it just wasn’t ready; they went back and did more work on it, and now it’s in a really good place.