FFF White Nights Reviews - February 2025

The Fantasy Filmfest White Nights, a mini-festival which took place this past weekend, was both a lovely launch of Film February as well as a warm-up for the upcoming Berlinale (February 13-23) followed by the Final Girls Berlin Filmfest (March 5-9). So as to not exhaust myself and my finances early on, I only did two films per day, totaling four films; Above the Knee, Presence, MadS and Street Trash - I liked them all, although I have little critiques, comments and opinions I want to dump here.

It is noteworthy that three out of four (horror) films I saw rely on narrative or technical methods that are experimental in nature. Now of course, I'm referring to my personal selection and not the entirety of the festival, and I may have been unconsciously drawn towards a certain kind of film, but I can assure that it wasn't apparent in their description, at least not necessarily for all of them. The thing is, it's awesome that more and more filmmakers dare breaking through the crusted old formula of horror fiction, and it's great.

That said, I'm pretty happy with my selection, although I wish I had seen the Taiwanese horror comedy Dead Talents Society too, the reviews are great for that one. Before going over to my reviews, a last word of appreciation for the organizers, I literally live for FFF and other film events I keep on talking about, it was wonderful as always.

The movies are in order from my least favorite to my winner of the festival, which is at the bottom of the page. As always, the movie titles are linked to their respective imdb pages for further info.

MadS

The doubtless most experimental film of White Nights is also the one movie that most tired me out. Shot in a single take - one tiresome, frantic, turbulent shoot - MadS starts off with teenager Romain at his dealer's home testing a new drug before heading off for his birthday party while his parents are out of town. He picks up a seemingly injured woman, but it turns out that she's a subject of some kind of government experiment, and she passes on to Romain whatever Zombie virus she carries.

By the way, I'm writing this as casually as I do, not because I want to spoil your watch, but because the film doesn't offer much in terms of content/plot. You're not loosing anything by me revealing what this movie is about, that's what I'm saying.

The focal point then moves from carrier to carrier; Romain to two further people who were at the party, and their slow and gradual descent into Zombiehood, and a town gradually surrendering to a state of emergency.

MadS being a very intense, loud, and fast-paced picture was the least of the issues I had with this film. I'm absolutely aware and I understand the difficulties of this particular filming technique and especially the challenges it poses for the actors. Nevertheless it's torturous for the viewer to subject themselves to two hours of shaky pictures and histrionic acting, and wondering what the point is in all of this, because it would be nice to have a point. Still, I do appreciate anyone trying to break out of conformity and to find original ways of telling a story. Only if the story told weren't so thin.   

Street Trash

Life on the streets in South Africa is rough, even rougher than anywhere else, when the Mayor of an unnamed city decides to get rid of homeless people and launches a military program in which a weapon specifically for this purpose is developed. Believe me, you haven't seen anything like this weapon and you don't want to either.

A group of homeless misfits decide to take things into their own hands.

As every good indie pulp movie should, Street Trash, which is loosely based on its 1987 counterpart of the same title, Ryan Kruger's picture too relies on excellent special effects, bad taste and yuck factor galore, not much substance but a lot of heart, and way too much juvenile humor.

Above the Knee

Amir has intrusive thoughts about his left leg rotting off, and an obsessive need to cut it off before it spreads to his body. He finds peace in the thought of getting rid of that leg and thinks about it most of the time, so that gradually his professional life and his relationship with his girlfriend suffer from his psychological state. He needs to explore this feeling and stumbles upon a woman who has similar thoughts of wanting to be blind. They start a sort of secret friendship, after all, they may be the only people around who understand each other. All of this is based on a very unhealthy foundation, and all which Amir is trying to suppress slowly starts imploding.

 

I had previously mentioned that this is the second film by director Viljar Bøe I have seen, the first one being his dog-shocker GOOD BOY. The impression I gained from his second work is very similar to what I felt seeing his first; there is some merit in there, but unfortunately the full potential isn't completely tapped.

 

Considering the condition treated in the film is very much real, the rather unbiased and open-minded, even sympathetic approach is praiseworthy, but I personally think that in a horror movie Bøe could have let loose a bit and gone to more extremes instead of solely exploring the social aspect. Nevertheless, an ace psychological film, I will continue to follow the director's work.

And, finally, the winner is:

Presence 👏👏👏👏👏

Let me start by saying that the FFF organizers apparently had some difficulty adding Presence to the festival program due to the distributors, and I'm really glad that it was possible in the end, because I loved this movie so much. 

The concept is quite conventional, even trite; a family of four move into a house which is a real bargain (and it's beautiful). The daughter has a pain in her past, her best friend has committed suicide, and because of that she's the first person who senses and is open to the presence in the house. When supernatural things start happening her remaining family too accepts there's something going on in this house and try to go to the bottom of it, and it is, in the end, something painful they couldn't have guessed.

I again assure you it's not a spoiler when I say that this movie is shot from the point of view of the Presence. And I fucking loved it! As we don't know neither the motivation nor the intent of the Presence, the whole movie is a constant mental effort to try and find out, which in turn glues the audience to the screen. It was not a scary movie, I have to say, since we are the element of horror it's even less scary than conventional ghost stories, but there's a certain voyeuristic captivation in this movie which fascinates.

As much as bad camera work irritates me, good visuals impress me all the more. Soderbergh's camera people know their trade and don't cease to impress in Presence. Like a kind of hypnotic dance do the circular camera motions enchant and engross the viewer. That motion was used to give a semblance of a floating, of a ghost flying around, as well as give an all-around vision of the house, which is kind of a character of its own. Sublime.

Loved this and I will go running to rewatch it in the regular cinemas when it will be released (not the least because I found a very bad seat, all seats were sold out, and everything looked kind of flat).

So, this was this year's White Nights, the next Fantasy Filmfest will be in May. Have mercy on me, FFF, I really want to go on a bigger vacation some time this year, but how am I supposed to do that when I spend all my money on film festivals?

To be continued with Berlinale goodies!