Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I’m pathetic. Seriously. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself because my Park City trip fell apart. No Sundance for me. Of course, I know that many of you have never been to that festival and would never be able to go, and it’s just miserable whining on my part when I complain, and keeping that in mind gives me some perspective. Even so... that hasn’t kept me from crying to any of my friends who will listen.
One of them took pity on me. He slipped me a copy of a film he saw at NoDance that he really liked, and yesterday morning, when it was still dark enough outside to enjoy a horror film, I popped it in and took a look.
Richard Mauro and Anthony Savini made the film for something under $50,000, and normally that would be a problem. I’m not a big fan of films shot on video. Two things really make MOLE fascinating, though. One is the cinematography by Savini, who has actually managed to create something fairly stylish and moody by really pushing the extremes of light and shadow. The other is the location, and that’s really what this film is all about.
If you haven’t seen the documentary DARK DAYS, find it on video or catch it on IFC or Sundance Channel, where it always seems to pop up. It’s an amazing film about the people who lived in the subway tunnels of NYC. I interviewed the director of the film, and that sent me on a sort of rampage of research of my own into this remarkable subterranean world, this abandoned infrastructure that’s given rise to a sort of alternate society.
As a result, maybe I was really primed to enjoy MOLE and to be amazed by how well they’ve used their access to the abandoned tunnels to enhance their production value and create the sensation of being in this sort of forgotten section of the city. The basic premise involves a reporter named Susan Pei (played by Sam Tsao). She’s trying to earn more onscreen time and better assignments, and the discovery of several bodies in a tunnel seems to be the springboard she’s looking for. She gets a cameraman named Nick (John-Luke Montias) and a guy who claims to be an expert guide, Tom (James Cox), and she heads into the tunnels to find a story.
In some ways, we will never be finished paying for the sins of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. There are a few scenes in this film that closely echo that picture, especially because of the shot-on-video shaky cam feel. This isn’t a mockumentary, though, and in the end, the makers of MOLE seem more interested in exploring what preconceptions and fear and being lost in pitch dark like this can do to someone. There are urban myths interwoven into the dialogue of the characters, but there’s no “big supernatural finish” here. Instead, it’s something more human that turns out to be the thing to fear.
Releasing a film that looks like this, a film shot on the kind of next-to-nothing budget that this one was, can be tricky, and I don’t know if I think this is the sort of thing that would work in theaters. But on video, this is a great little surprise. It’s a potent, creepy concept, and even though I can imagine how a larger-budget remake of this with the right resources could be truly disturbing, this smaller, more self-contained version is a great example of what festivals like NoDance are supposed to be about... movies that succeed in spite of limitations, that somehow overcome their size through sheer force of imagination.
Expect all sorts of stuff from me this weekend. For the first time in months, all I’ve got on the plate for the next few days is AICN, and I’ll be bringing you a number of things I’ve been working on. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
