Posthouse

Creating a full feature film is a lot of work, and it takes a whole team to be able to create a professional film. You have to have a cinematographer, a screen writer, producer or several producers, the whole cast, costume designer. set designers, i mean we could go on forever. The point is that making a film takes a lot of time to create, and there is a lot of hard work behind it, you have to make sure everything works. Obviously things can chane along the way, the budget may have to change or you have to change the script. You can´t always guarantee everything will go smoothly. There are actually movies telling the story of making a film and i have especially one title on my mind. That film is called Barton Fink, directed by Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen. This is a very well written dark comedy about a screenwriter known as Barton Fink ( played by legendary actor John Turturro, who i especially remember from the classic gangster drama Miller´s Crossing ), The year is 1941, up-and-coming Broadway playwright Barton Fink ( John Turturro ), accepts a contract from Capital Pictures in Hollywood to write film scripts for a thousand dollars per week.  Upon moving to Los Angeles, Fink settles into the cheap Motel Earlie. Fink is assigned to a wrestling film by his new boss Jack Lipnick ( Michael Lerner ), but he finds it difficult writing this script since he knows nothing about wrestling. As he begin working in his motel room, he is often disturbed by loud noices by the room next door, where his neighbor Charlie Meadows ( John Goodman ) lives. As the noises gets bigger and disturb Barton trying to work, he is about to find out that his neigbor is no ordinary hotel guest. This is a very charming, and surprisingly funny black comedy about the film industry as well as the challenges of being a writer of scripts. Very well acted performances, wonderful set designs capturing the historical view of the 1940´s, with strong character development. Barton Fink is a cult classic worth picking up on physical media from The Cohen Brothers brilliant film catalogue. Speaking of film making and trying to create film, i came across a horror film on Netflix from The Philippines called Posthouse, with a interesting plot regarding a film editor. Netflix have actually released some good horror films over the years, so does this film Posthouse deliver as well or should you avoid this one for sure?

Film editor Cyril Anderson ( Sid Lucero ) is working hard on a new commercial film, trying to edit it as perfect as possible to make sure the commercial will be succesfull. Cyril have a past of a broken marriage and alcohol problems, while trying to have a good relationship with his only daughter Rea Anderson ( Bea Binene ). Cyril come across some very oldfilm footage that might be the oldest silent hororr film ever made in The Philippines, that was never completed. Cyril decides to go through all the material to see what was actually filmed. While he does, strange things begin to happen inside the editing room and the photography studio.

Imagine if you could see The Philippines silent movie version of Sinister, throw in a creepy woman similar to The Ring, doesn´t that sound like an interesting combination? I was actually surprised that i have never heard of this film last year, until i accidently discovered it myself on Netflix. But i am glad that i did since i have not seen many horor films at all from The Philippines. Not that i don´t want to see films from this specific country, but here in Sweden we only get a handful of horror films released for example from South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam or The Philippines. There may be many different reasons why they only choose certain titles, i still find a lot of foreign horror films more interesting than American horror releases. It could be because some of these foreign films have a religious undertone, or folklore connected stories in to their country´s history. The story about the very first silent horror film made in the Philippines, is a very fascinating idea for a horror film. If you had the actual footage in your hand, knowing it was never released, would  you want to finish the film or at least try and get it released? Would you go through all the footage to learn about the making of this film? I find the concept of Posthouse very interesting, since this is a pretty different approach than we are used to see. Knowing that the main character is a film editor, that also makes the discovery of this silent film even more interesting since he knows how to edit films. The mysterious lady that we see in the silent film, we do find out a bit of her background story and why she is connected to the mystery behind this silent film. I would say that her creepy looks works, especially with her long fingers. The acting from lead actor Sid Lucero as the film editor Cyril, is actually a solid acting performance. I think his chemistry with actress Bea Binene playing his daughter Rea matches well on the screen, portraying father and daughter relationship in a natural way. Posthouse definetely stands out a little bit for doing something different than the usual horror release. It may not be a film for all horror fans, but if you appreciate the horror film Sinister then this might be for you. Director Nikolas Red proves with Posthouse you don´t need to spend lots of money to tell interesting horror stories, and manage to make this film work with such a simple plot. Worth a watch on Netflix for sure this late spring.

Rating: DDD