News tips and press releases may be sent
to editor at hollywoodinvestigator.com.
All submissions become property of the Hollywood Investigator and
deemed for publication without compensation unless otherwise
requested. Name and contact information only withheld upon request.
Prospective reporters should research our
Bookstore.
by Thomas
M. Sipos, managing editor [September 29, 2016]
[HollywoodInvestigator.com] For the 13th year in a
row, the Hollywood Investigator is happy to announce the winners of
its Tabloid Witch Awards
horror film contest.
Out of 112 entries, 16 films
took home at least one award. Winning entries came from Australia,
Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the
United States. This is the first year that Asian countries have
taken home awards.
This Japanese film has
brutality, bloodshed, insanity, murder, and dismemberment. Even so, Dark Side of the Light isn't what fans normally think of
as
J-horror. It has no supernatural monsters. It is, however, a
work of cinematic art.
Tomomi (Megumi
Hatachiya) marries Kohei (Shugo Oshinari), thinking she has snagged
a winner. But she soon discovers that he lied about being a
corporate attorney. Kohei is jobless, sponging off his parents.
Kneeling before Tomomi in humiliation, Kohei begs forgiveness and
vows to become a success. Tomomi taunts and mocks Kohei, verbally
abusing him.
Tomomi refuses to have a
baby, citing Kohei's proverty, immaturity, but also that "If I
have a baby, my life will be over." Materialistic and
self-centered, Tomomi shops all day. Kohei suspects Tomomi of
getting her money from lovers. He beats and rapes Tomomi with
increasing regularity. Immune to his begging, Tomomi responds to his
beatings, her arrogance melting into meekness, even pleading for
Kohei when Takumi (Takashi Nagayama), a former boyfriend, tries to
rescue her.
The tables of abuse keep
turning. Tomomi regains power over Kohei by smiling and laughing
during his rapes. Kohei is creeped out and withdraws. When he
threatens to leave, Tomomi is outraged rather than relieved. This
can't end well, and it doesn't. Dark Side of the Light could as easily be called
The Making of a Psycho.
Westerners regard
Japanese culture as more traditional, their women more submissive.
But Dark Side of the Light reveals modern Japan as highly materialistic, its male/female
dynamics similar in its light and dark sides. The film explores
women who desire high-status men, and the men who lie about their
status. Women who love their abusers and despise the Nice Guys.
Even Nice Guys have dark
sides, as the film reveals. When the sensitive Takumi comes to
rescue Tomomi, she taunts him. She accuses him (rightly, we suspect)
of wanting a reward for his services. Of expecting her to fall into
his arms and sleeping with him. She sneers at him, saying that
without Kohei, Takumi is just a salaryman and a loser. She tosses
money at him, telling him to buy a girl. Whereupon the "nice guy"
Takumi nearly strangles Tomomi. Unfazed, she laughs at his wimpy
inability to carry through.
Dark
Side of the Light is meticulously directed, balancing long moments of
serenity with quietly building tension and sudden (sometimes
unexpected) outbursts of violence. The beatings are raw, extended,
and uncomfortable to watch. Hatachiya appears taller than
Nagoya (is it because she's staged closer to the camera?), allowing
Tomomi to tower over "nice guy" Takumi while she taunts him --
reaffirming the notion that women prefer abusive tall men
(like Kohei) to shorter "nice guys."
The film makes good use
of such contrasts. The apartment's orderly set decor and muted
lighting contrast well with the physical chaos and emotional turmoil
occurring within its walls. The framing is likewise solid and well
balanced.
Dark
Side of the Light offers much food for thought. Both Tomomi and Kohei were
abused when young. Does this lessen their moral culpability?
Both contemptuously toss money at Takumi. How morally culpable is
society -- women in particular -- for abusing low-status men?
Takumi confesses everything to Tomomi's sister, Emi. Why? Does he
now hope for a reward from Emi? We last see Tomomi in a state of
bliss. Is she still insane? Or have her savage acts been
therapeutic for her, leading to liberation and empowerment?
Dark
Side of the Light is a memorable film, leaving many questions lingering in
the mind.
* Best Dramatic Horror Short: The Thin Place
The Thin Place hooks its audience without delay, without resorting to
such easy or lazy devices as shocks, violence, or gore. Maddy
(Kelsey Blackwell) tells mom (Lindsey Shope) that "It happened
again last night." A thing abducts her every night for
two minutes so that "it can take my place." During those two
minutes Maddy disappears from our world, finding herself ...
someplace else.
Blackwell's tense demeanor, the
sparsely efficient script, the visual and aural incongruities
(Maddy's strange tale told amid a bright, sunny day; foreboding
music playing alongside cheerfully chirping birds) -- all these
elements slowly coalesce and build up into the same skin-crawling
creepiness as the diner scene in
Mulholland Drive. The one where Dan relates his recurrent nightmare to Herb. In both
these films the calm, matter-of-fact discussion of the
frightening incident heightens, rather than dampens, the incident's
terror.
Starting strong,
The Thin Place continues to deliver with creative set decor, staging, and framing. We see apparently
ordinary items that maybe shouldn't there. Someone rocking in
a chair, at the edge of the frame. A family member we haven't
seen before? Ghost-like sheets over something, reflected in a
glass cabinet. Perhaps just some covered up lamps? Things
that, upon first glance, might or might not be innocent.
Other items are more blatantly
supernatural and hostile. Dark ghostly figures. Crudely written
notes. A small redly lit room. Maddy had described "a thin red
room." Her description is unsettling. What is a thin room?
Rooms are normally described as narrow, not thin. Was
she taken to a narrow room -- or to some strange other dimension?
While The Thin
Place shows us some things, it leaves much to the imagination
and draws much of its impact from that choice. Regrettably, it
leaves more to the imagination than I'd have liked. But considering
its low budget (the IMDb has it at $1,000), one can't expect
elaborate special effects.
More importantly,
The Thin Place is simply the scariest film we've seen this
year -- feature or short. This is especially admirable
considering that some Tabloid Witch Award winning shorts had much
bigger budgets and more experienced technicians behind the camera.
This year saw a cycle of short,
supernatural horror films that could be described as the "alone
at night, at home and in bed, amid scary apparitions" subgenre.
We've seen similar "quiet horror" films in past years, but nowhere
near this year's level. The Thin Place belongs to
that subgenre, but also rises above it, with the most original
premise and most substantive story. Some other contenders were more
slickly produced, but had "thinner" stories, offering little more
than someone scared at night in a spooky bedroom until the final
shock! (Although, despite its originality, The Thin Place's silently grinning ghosts do seem
inspired by
Insidious.)
So what is a thin place? The film
never says. A Google search reveals that, in Celtic lore, the phrase
refers to a place "where the natural and supernatural worlds come
together at their narrowest, with only a thin veil between them."
It's unclear if this is what the filmmakers had in mind.
The Thin Place was directed by Alexander Mattingly, from a script by Joe
Hemphill.
* Best Comedic Horror Short:
The Monster
The Monster is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, but
neither is it straight horror. It's a tale that's gently humorous,
whimsical, romantic ... and bloody savage. It's about a real-life
monster (Richard Glover) who's found work playing monsters in horror
movies. Born (created?) during the Victorian era, he's trying to
adapt to our modern world.
Despite his ugly
features, the monster has a romantic soul. He pines for Madeleine
(Helen George), a scream queen on his current film. He hopes that,
as in Beauty
and the Beast, Madeleine will see beyond his hideous face. But
will she also overlook his wimpy nature? The boys on set like to
bully the monster by burying axes in his head -- all in good sport,
as he cannot die.
Storywise,
The Monster is similar to
Shadow of the Vampire, in which a real-life vampire is
hired to perform in a vampire movie. But whereas Shadow
is dark and poignant and tragic, The Monster is more light-hearted. Its monster is too
tender and silly to make for a truly scary film. Yet he has his
moments....
As with last year's
Best Comedic Horror Short winner, Unlucky Girl, The Monster is
horror comedy with heart. Like last year's "unlucky" zombie girl,
this monster engages our sympathies despite his misshapen head.
While this is due to a well-written script and Glover's professional
performance, the film also boasts slickly professional production
values.
Written and directed
by Britain's Bob Pipe, The Monster has a
website.
* Best Animated Horror Short: Sitophobia
Step inside a box of donuts and
encounter a Halloween haunted house full of monsters -- traditional
and modern -- as performed by donuts. Jason, Jigsaw,
and Freddy
Krueger (see below) and others are among the perverse pasteries
and threatening treats.
Brad Uyeda's stop-motion animation
(specifically, claymation) is skillfully executed. His creatures are
colorful and lively. Horror buffs will have fun trying to see who
can identify the most monsters.
Uyeda also challenges himself, and
will delight viewers, by alternating the colors hues and lighting
setups. Some scenes occur at night, whereas one daytime scene has a
sun passing overhead, its moving rays and shifting shadows
interacting with the donut on the ground. Sitophobia is also well supported by Samantha Foster's
playfully spooky music score.
One dictionary
defines sitophobia as "A morbid or insane dread of eating. An
aversion to food." (Yes, we too had to look it up.)
Do you have a
police officer friend who can stand to shed a few pounds? Sitophobia will make a great gift
* Best Avant-Garde Horror Short: The Eve
Boasting beautiful color photography
and animation, The Eve tells its story in fragments. Actually, there is
no clear story, but the fragments do suggest some of what's going
on. There is a young boy who, perhaps, doesn't know that he's
adopted. Although he might sense something amiss. Or have learned of
it at some later date. It's possible we're seeing flashbacks of
fragmented memories, false memories, and fantasies.
Did Santa really come over to speak
to him one Christmas Eve, or was it someone else, or no one else?
The explosion at the toy store surely didn't happen, but what does
it symbolize? Emotional trauma upon learning something
uncomfortable, or its denial?
According to filmmaker Luca Machnich,
"The film gives the opportunity to explore in an international film
language the purity and fantasy of a child's world violated by the
cynicism of the world of adults, and to narrate it through the
dilated times of dream and imagination in the setting of a Christmas
that has nothing joyful and mystical and where the waiting for
another future, symbolized by the bell tower, is the leading
character of the story."
And it's also pretty. Machnich's The Eve comes to us from
Italy.
* Best Horror Music Video:
Afflicted
Directed by Patrick Kendall and
performed by One-Eyed Doll from their Wiches
album, "Afflicted" is a visually resplendent music video. Brimming
with rich primary colors, stunning visual ghost effects, and
hauntingly beautiful
wintry scenes, this production boasts the slick production
values of a major studio, big budget, Hollywood production.
There's a story in there as well, set
during the Salem with trials. Some of the visuals seem inspired by
Francis Coppola's Bram
Stoker's Dracula and Jack
Nicholson's Joker. One suspects Kendall hopes to direct
Hollywood studio features some day. His music video already looks
like one.
Because of the extremely
competitive nature of the Tabloid Witch -- so many films to
consider! -- winning an Honorable Mention is indeed cause for pride.
Some of these films were great, just not as great as the winning
films. Some had some weak spots, but still contained creative
aspects that made them interesting or worth a look.
The Honorable Mention
prizes -- as with the "Best ... Film" prizes, are awarded to a
film's writer and director.
* The Fisherman,
aka El pescador
Wong
(Andrew Ng) is a poor fisherman whose ratty boat will be repossessed
unless he lands a big catch. His landlord (Wong lives on the boat)
mocks him. Sailors on spiffier vessels jeer at him. So a big catch
will not only earn money for Wong, it will win him respect. And so,
daring to Dream Big like his father taught him, Wong leaves Hong
Kong's harbor for open sea -- and a
close encounter with a not-so-friendly visitor from the stars.
The
Tabloid Witch doesn't get enough horror/sci-fi entries, and very few
alien abduction or invasion films. (Most years, none at all.) A good
one is always welcome. The Fisherman has an outstanding performance by Ng,
creepy night-for-night photography on lonely open waters, and a
hideous alien brought to life by Luis Tinoco's first-rate visual
effects.
This
Spanish-Hong Kong co-production, written and directed by Alejandro Suarez Lozano, has a
website.
* Vicious
Lydia (Rachel Winters) finds her front door open late one night. She searches, but finds
no intruder inside. Trying to sleep, Lydia sees dark shapes come
alive in her bedroom. She has nightmares and has more visions.
Like The Thin
Place (and so many of 2016's entries), Vicious belongs to the burgeoning "alone at night, at
home and in bed, amid scary apparitions" subgenre. Vicious has a thinner story and less developed characters
than does The Thin Place, which is both
its weakness and strength. Vicious is a more surreal, more sensory kind of horror. A
"purer" horror. We know nothing of Lydia, other than that this
thing long ago terrorized her sister. Low on dramatic details, Vicious
is high on sounds and shadows, shocks and frights.
We see little of
Vicious's creature. Just shapes and silhouettes of a tall,
thin, clawed thing. It might be an alien. Or a demon. We
don't see enough to know. Just enough to spark our
imagination, with enough left out to leave space for our
imagination. We catch a glimpse, then fill in our own blanks.
Vicious is superior on every technical and artistic level -- lighting,
acting, visual and sound effects. No less importantly, all these
elements work in unison, coalescing aesthetically into creating that
creepy atmosphere so necessary to this type of minimalist horror.
Not a story to be understood, but a nightmare that is experienced.
Writer/director Oliver Park's
Vicious comes from the United Kingdom. Park has a website.
* The
Marshalls
The
beautiful stop-motion animation in Adeena Charlotte Grubb's The
Marshalls evokes the films of Tim
Burton -- stylistically, thematically, and in its emotional
tone. A portrait of gothic family values, The Marshalls is sentimental yet morbid, tender yet
gruesome. Daniel Beja's ethereal music likewise seems inspired by Danny
Elfman's compositions for Burton.
This is the first year that two
animated shorts took home awards. Sitophobia narrowly beat out The
Marshalls for Best Animated Short, partially due its superior
originality. While Grubb and Beja did a great job capturing the
aesthetic sensibility of Burton and Elfman, Uyeda and Foster offered
their own.
But the greater flaw is that Grubb did
not animate her characters' mouths and eyes. The eyes blink, but no
more. Static orbs, lacking eyebrows. Mouths stay closed, lips
unmoving. No smiles, frowns, yawns, or grimaces. The deadpan faces
hindered my emotional engagement with the characters, lessening my
empathy for them -- a lack I never felt with The
Nightmare Before Christmas or The
Corpse Bride.
Grubb is a talented animator. The
pizza steams. The water pours. (None of it real, of course.) The
lighting is beautiful, atmospheric, and appropriately scaled to the
set's small size. Grubb obviously has the ability to animate mouths
and eyes, so I assume the expressionless faces were a creative
choice on her part. An aesthetic mistake, because lessening my
empathy for the Marshalls also weakened the emotional impact of the
film's final shocking scene.
None of this is to diminish
The Marshalls's strong points. This is a dark and lovely
piece of goth art, evidencing much talent by its creator. Grubb has
a website.
*
Stained
Ever take a dump, and
then discover that you've run out of toilet paper? Don't you hate
when that happens? That's what happens to Harris (Mike Shephard). So
he pulls up his pants without wiping -- whereupon a huge, steaming
pile of excrement (Chris Spyrides) rushes out from the ether to
haunt the hapless Harris.
What is this
angry shitstorm? Harris's guilty conscience? Some universal fecal
spirit? A pagan poo god? Or something else?
Surprisingly, it all
makes sense in the end. But not until we've had a good laugh at
Harris's expense, enjoying his misery as he rushes out into public
with his stained pants, desperately seeking a fresh roll of
toilet paper to clean up his mess. Compounding Harris's agonies, the
fecal spirit will not be appeased with anything less than
"extra-absorbent, four-ply" toilet paper, so foul is Harris's
stain.
Directed by Phil Haine, from a script by Mark A.C. Brown, this English film has a website.
* It Wasn't Me, aka Yo no he sido
Whenever David (twins
Juan and Raul Del Pozo)
is punished for doing something bad, he claims he didn't do it.
Another boy did it. A boy who looks just like him. Nobody believes
him, of course. They think David is psychologically disturbed. Until
the night his babysitter (Elena Furiase) discovers the truth.
It Wasn't Me is a neat little horror film. The story
opens with a strong hook, moves at a brisk pace, and offers a good
share of jolts and frights along the way. The slower scenes are
effectively used to build suspense. The script contains no fat or
padding. A subtle dramatic setup results in a shocking surprise
ending. Supporting the script is a talented cast and high production
values.
Doppelganger films are relatively rare. The
Man Who Haunted Himself might be the best known.
The Broken is simply the best. Those features aside,
doppelgangers have mostly appeared in brief works. A monster best
suited to TV episodes, horror anthologies, and short films like It Wasn't Me.
Also known as
Yo no he sido (this film comes from Spain), It Wasn't Me has no great themes or heart-rending human poignancy. It's just
an extremely well made, entertaining, scary little frightmare. The
world could use more of those
* Dead Sunrise
Dead Sunrise is a rough, choppily edited, aesthetically
uneven zombie film. But also an affecting film, in a 1970s indie
grindhouse kind of way. Watching it, I felt as I did when I first
saw
Don't Look in the Basement, or
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, or
Deathdream, oh so many years ago. Dead Sunrise filled me with a sense of ... more than
anything else ... nostalgia.
The story is
ridiculous but, wisely, played straight, without falling into the
easy trap of dark humor. A group of nondescript young adults finds a
research lab in the woods, teeming with zombie children.
These zombie kids then attack the adults.
Now, these adults
have no business being together. Their friendship makes no sense.
Three girls and two guys -- one of whom has a wife and child at
home. In fact, it was the wife who insisted that he go off camping
with this one guy and three women, "his friends," because the
wife needed some time alone. He didn't want to, but she insisted. Go
figure.
The five friends
drive off, partying on the way to the camp grounds. They're not a
terribly interesting bunch, doing the usual drinking and crude sex
jokes, but the road trip is enlivened by a montage interlude put to
classical music. It's an odd interlude, artsy and out of place, and reminiscent of
a similar montage in the bizarre and artsy
Eliza's Horoscope.
We're a third into Dead Sunrise before this group encounters their first
zombie. That's when things get interesting. The sun rises and hordes
of small children baring teeth attack our heroes.
Unexpectedly,
director Michal Imielski actually makes these zombie kids plausibly
threatening. He achieves this with a matter-of-fact, documentary
style presentation of the bizarre, decent acting, and great gore
effects. Dead Sunrise also benefits from a mostly good music soundtrack, featuring
many genres. The beautiful classical scores are especially
effective, creating powerful emotional contrasts with the gruesome
visuals. (The heavy metal is mostly just annoying.)
Overall,
Dead Sunrise is an odd mix of grindhouse gore and haunting
beauty, lowbrow humor and pretentious artistry, cheap sentimentality
and searingly honest agony.
Papa is not as scary as The Thin Place or Vicious, but it's another of the "alone at night, at
home and in bed, amid scary apparitions" short films entered
this year. (There were many others.) Yes, Papa has its share of shocks, but they're not especially
original. Nothing you haven't seen before in any number of
J-horror films. Papa's strength lies not in its scares, but from its
characters and story, its thought-provoking themes and poignant
emotional punch.
We begin with a father and daughter,
alone at night in the little girl's bedroom. They talk before going
to sleep, together in the girl's bed. That might set off some
warning bells. But don't judge too quickly. Filmmaker Joshua Ojeda sets up several red
herrings and false starts, teasing our emotions, before his
supernatural tales comes to a surprising, and surprisingly
heartfelt, twist ending.
For those keeping score of nationalities, the American Ojeda shot Papa
while at a Vancouver film school, so his film might qualify as an
American-Canadian co-production.
* Additional
Winners
A recurring word for this year's
winners was memorable. Two important criteria for winning are
mastery of craft, and that the craft be practiced in a way that
aesthetically supports a film's story, characters, and themes.
But because many entrants met those criteria, what often
distinguished the winners was that their work stood out from
the pack. There was something about their work that left a mark in
our minds, so that we remembered them long after seeing the film.
Something original, or distinctive, or emotionally moving that
raised them above the crowd.
As
the abused Tomomi, Megumi Hatachiya is coldly materialistic and
lovingly supportive, an arrogant harridan and a begging supplicant.
Her terror breaks into laughter, her fear into smiles. Her shifting
facade creeps out her husband -- and leaves us wondering what's
happening inside her head.
Yet even when her sanity
seems dubious, Tomomi displays surprising insights into human
character, and an awareness of how to use her insights as emotional
weapons.
Megumi Hatachiya's
performance is raw, memorable, and thought-provoking. She wins for
Best Actress.
As
Wong the fisherman, Andrew Ng conveys a stoic dignity when Wong is
jeered at by boorish young louts. He endures poverty and misfortune
with quiet humility, beneath which we detect pride and a
determination to succeed. When he can endure no more failure, we
share his grief and exasperation as he prepares for suicide.
Then the alien attacks -- and Ng infuses Wong with a newfound
courage and resolve to survive and defeat this enemy from the stars.
Ng has created a character who is memorable not for any colorful
character traits, but simply for the powerful emotions he stirs in
our own hearts.
Andrew Ng wins for Best Actor.
In
Creatures of Whitechapel Carlee Baker portrays the quirkiest,
most original and off-kilter Igor since Bela
Lugosi created the role in Son of
Frankenstein (the famous lab assistant is not in the
book). An Igor who also doubles as Jack
the Ripper.
With a pretty face, bad
teeth, and hoarse voice, Baker slouches, grunts, and snorts her way
through the streets of London, drooling over harlots before slicing
out their organs for her master's experiment. She has created a
distinctive and memorable reinterpretation of the classic character.
Carlee Baker wins
for Best Supporting Actress.
They
say there are no small parts, but how does an actor perform the role
of shit? A huge steaming pile of poo. (Yes, Stained's visual effects show the feces to be steaming
even as it walks and talks.)
Chris Spyrides performs
shit with gusto. A terrible turd who is loud, obnoxious, giddy, and
offensive. He stalks and harasses the hapless Harris, the stench
that won't go away, shouting gleefully in Harris's face, perversely
enjoying Harris's discomfort.
Another distinctive,
entertaining, hilarious, and, yes, memorable performance.
Chris Spyrides wins for Best Supporting Actor.
Frances Stein's hard, stark shadows and
nondiegetic colored lights were pretty and did much to enhance its
story's mood and atmosphere. Likewise Dark Side of the Light's more subdued shadows, and Nocturne's pastel hues, set
the right tone for their stories.
But
Day 1's use of colors not only set the story's mood but also
supported its content, the ever changing hues and color saturations
paralleling the shifting dramatic and emotional events on screen.
Jose Carlos
Gomez wins for Best Cinematography.
Vicious is a mostly "silent" film, in that there is
little dialog. Just a woman alone at night in her house. Without
lots of chattering characters to fill the void, sound effects assume
a greater burden in telling and supporting the "story." Sounds
create much of the film's atmosphere, tension, and suspense.
The nondiegetic sounds
are eerie, unnerving, and frightening (especially the metallic
reverberations heralding the arrival of something horrible).
Yet Matthew Walker (of Red Panda Audio) avoids the lazy trap of
relying too heavily on incessant loudness in an attempt to
merely startle audiences. His soundtrack neatly balances periods of
silence with softly creepy effects and sudden jarring noises. Sounds
that tease and tingle and terrify audiences, while appropriately
interacting with, and aesthetically supporting, the events on
screen.
The Best Sound
Design award goes to Matthew Walker.
Frances Stein uses nonlinear editing, not as
a flashy gimmick, but to great effect in telling its tale of mad
science. The sequence of events is carefully arranged to hook
viewers at a point of high drama and mystery. Events then flash
backward and forward, the puzzle pieces forming several potential
pictures before the real one emerges.
The final revelation is
surprising, yet also logical. We see how everything comes together
-- and had to come together -- in the specific way that it
does.
Steve Hudgins & P.J. Woodside win
for Best Editing.
Period pieces are especially challenging on a low budget. Yet
despite being a student film, Creatures of Whitechapel nicely recreates London during
the year of the Ripper
murders -- 1888. All the usual settings are present -- the
snotty gentleman's dining club, the sordid East
End streets, the mad scientist's lab.
All
of it in vibrant colors, with a dash of
steampunk. It's like watching an old Hammer
film.
Jonathan Martin & Daniel
Whiting
win for
Best Production Design.
Dead
Sunrise had some nicely grisly gore effects, but it was the usual
zombie gore. The ghosts in The Thin Place resembled those from
Insidious. The ghoul in Mr. Dentonn was ghastly. The creature in
Vicious was creepy. Admirable make-up work, all four films.
But Virginia Popova
broke new ground with her "fecal man" in Stained (with feces). We don't know if he's a ghost, a
guilty conscience, or some sort of universal fecal spirit -- but he
is original, and memorable, and hilarious and ... and so, so
gross.
Virginia Popova wins for Best Make-Up Effects.
Aliens tend to fall into three categories.
Humanoids, Grays,
and the S-kind:
slithery, slimy, scaly. It's this third kind that attacks Wong.
At
first the alien appears small and helpless, squirming and squealing
(more S's) about Wong's boat. But it grows quickly, squealing
louder, threatening with teeth and tentacles. This ain't no rubber
suit monster. This is a living, breathing, pulsating, true-life
monster.
Luis Tinoco wins for Best Visual Effects.
Vicious is a mostly silent film.
Sitophobia even more so. There is no dialog. Not even
a story. In this surreal excursion through a haunted donut box, mood
and atmosphere take center stage, rather than functioning in their
usual support roles.
Samantha Foster's music
plays a large role in creating that mood. Her score is playfully
spooky. Eerie yet also fanciful and fun. Its fast pace sweeps us
from room to room, like a haunted house ride that doesn't want the
audience to catch its breath.
Samantha Foster wins for Best Music Soundtrack.
* The Final
Tally
Tabloid Witch Award Winners
*
Best Horror Feature Film
.......................... Ryota Sakamaki & Daisuke Miyazaki (Dark Side of the Light)
*
Best Dramatic Horror Short Film .............. Alexander Mattingly & Joey Hemphill (The
Thin Place)
* Best Comedic Horror Short Film ..............
Bob Pipe (The Monster)
* Best Animated Horror Short Film ............. Brad Uyeda (Sitophobia)
* Best Avant-Garde Horror Short Film ........ Luca Machnich (The Eve)
*
Best Horror Music Video .......................... Patrick Kendall (Afflicted)
*
Best Actress ............................................. Megumi Hatachiya (Dark Side of the Light)
* Best Actor
................................................. Andrew Ng (The
Fisherman, aka El pescador)
* Best Supporting
Actress ...........................
Carlee Baker (Creatures of Whitechapel)
* Best Supporting
Actor ............................... Chris Spyrides (Stained)
* Best Cinematography
...............................
Jose Carlos Gomez (Day
1)
* Best Sound Design
................................... Matthew Walker (Vicious)
* Best Editing
............................................... Steve Hudgins & P.J. Woodside (Frances Stein)
* Best Production
Design ............................ Jonathan Martin & Daniel Whiting (Creatures of Whitechapel)
* Best Visual Effects
.................................... Luis Tinoco (The Fisherman, aka El pescador)
* Best Make-Up
Effects ...............................
Virginia Popova (Stained)
* Best Music
Soundtrack ............................. Samantha Foster (Sitophobia)
Tabloid Witch Honorable Mentions
* Alejandro Suarez Lozano (The
Fisherman, aka
El pescador)
* Oliver Park (Vicious)
* Adeena Charlotte Grubb (The
Marshalls)
* Phil Haine & Mark A.C. Brown (Stained)
* Angel Ripalda & Santiago Taboada (It Wasn't Me,
aka Yo no he sido)
* Michal Imielski & Peter Maple (Dead Sunrise)
* Joshua Ojeda (Papa)
"Hollywood Investigator" and
"HollywoodInvestigator.com" and "Tabloid Witch" and "Tabloid
Witch Award" trademarks are currently unregistered, but pending
registration upon need for protection against improper use. The idea of
marketing these terms as a commodity is a protected idea under the
Lanham Act. 15 U.S.C. s 1114(1) (1994) (defining a trademark
infringement claim when the plaintiff has a registered mark); 15 U.S.C.
s 1125(a) (1994) (defining an action for unfair competition in the
context of trademark infringement when the plaintiff holds an
unregistered mark). All content is copyright by
HollywoodInvestigator.com unless otherwise noted.