DVD Liner Notes by Chad Clinton Freeman of PollyGrind Underground Film Fest
I’m a big fan of found footage films. I have been ever since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. ASIDE FROM IT, THE LAST BROADCAST, AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER 1 & 2, QUARANTINE, GANG TAPES, INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSASSIN, and WICSBORO INCIDENT are some of my favorites.
Each year I try to showcase good found footage films at PollyGrind, an independent film festival that I created and program. PollyGrind has an entry category called Phony Baloney for mockumentaries, spoofs, self-aware projects, metafilms, homages, parodies, satires and found footage. So, I see a lot of independent found footage films.
The bad ones mostly try, but fail at recreating the magic of the BLAIR WITCH or mimicking PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, which was essentially a copy of BWP. But then there are the gems like SKEW, which I screened in 2011, and the 2012 official selections - THE VIDEO DIARY OF MADI O: FINAL ENTRIES, HATE CRIME and PLAY HOOKY - that make the time wasted watching all the bad ones worthwhile.
Of the four that have played PollyGrind, Frank S. Petrilli’s PLAY HOOKY stands out as a truly original found footage film and also a perfect example of what the festival is all about.
Shot in seven days on a flip-cam purchased at Best Buy for less than $200, PLAY HOOKY was awarded Most Innovative Film at PollyGrind. It’s a horror film, it’s an exploitation film, it’s a slasher, and it’s a damn good found footage film. It’s not at all perfect, but within the short and exhilarating feature are multiple perfect moments.
The film, as the title suggests, shows a day of skipping school. Five kids, one equipped with a camera in his hat (and one with a huge bag of weed), go about looking for a place to party. After a series of random realistic misfires, the group heads to an old abandoned insane asylum known as Oakhurst Sanitarium. As the group explains en route, the psychiatric facility has been the home of reported past tragedies, hauntings, witchcraft and demonic possessions.
Kim Kleemichen, as the tough Rosie Delgado, and Becky Byers, as the sexy, yet fragile Megan Burke, are the highlights of the film acting wise. Byers, who is a bit reminiscent of Amy Adams, delivers a performance of a seemingly strong young woman that unravels through the course of the film, while Kleemichen’s Rosie is more of a quiet outsider that rises to the occasion. But Theresa Davis as the annoying Claire Kulikowski and Vincent Kulish and Jason Wright Chester as the ring leaders, Lance and Brad Walton, all hold their own and play essential parts as well.
The main attractions here, however, are the camerawork and the building where the second half of the film takes place. The documentary-like photography of Chester puts the viewer right in the mix of the horror as the group gets trapped inside the decrepit building.
A 1915 Remington Arms Factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut was used for the establishment shot of Oakhurst Sanitarium, which is a made up institution inspired by Pennhurst Asylum in Pennsylvania. The rest of the exteriors and the interiors where shot at a former parks and recreation center known as the Hunt Center.
Located in Stamford, Connecticut, the site was a carriage house in the early 1900s, before becoming the Stamford Museum at Courtland Park. Around the late fifties it was a fire station, and even later it became the Hunt Center. Today it sits empty and looks just as it did in the film.
Once the door of Oakhurst slams shut on the kids, the creep factor and adrenaline kicks in. The film’s intensity only lets up briefly for a playful scene, which features Megan showing off her perfect panties to skip school in and locking lips with Rosie. And then the fun begins.
PollyGrind of Las Vegas is where art house meets grind house. The mission of the festival is to celebrate individuality, diversity, creativity and empowerment. I always look for interesting, fun and cool new films to program, so that PollyGrind can best live up to its reputation as a “film festival of a different breed.”
PLAY HOOKY isn’t just a good fit for PollyGrind; it’s the epitome of the pioneering spirit that propelled the early years of indie filmmaking, which led to both grind house and art house cinema, and inspired me to found the event.
I see PLAY HOOKY as the perfect example of making something out of nothing. The no-budget movie doesn’t rely on anything, but creativity and talent to present a found footage film like no other. It’s a unique experience and artistic vision from Petrilli that happens to be in the same genre and subgenre as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. It brings something new and fresh, while also toying with your expectations.
I think it gets better and better each time you watch it. The first viewing you have your own expectations of what a horror film and a found footage film should be and because of that, it may seem to drag a bit in the first half. But each viewing after that you start to appreciate it more for what it is.
For the first half of the film, we are a fly-on-the wall voyeur, watching a realistic portrayal of five high schoolers ditching class and looking for a good time. We don’t get over the top nudity and sex like some films choose to do; instead we get everyday randomness. The whole reality element isn’t forced either. Only two of our players know there is a camera amongst them, so we are able to get lost in the story as the characters do and not caught up on the fact that it’s all being filmed by one of the participants.
Then the film switches and we become a victim, trapped along with the teens in a scary place. There’s an uneasiness bubbling under the surface and some claustrophobia as the group wanders through the building, giving us a visceral haunted attraction experience that’s ten times better than Eli Roth’s Goretorium, a year round haunted house on the Las Vegas Strip that costs $29.95 a pop.
The bodies then begin to hit the floor. Instead of gore aplenty, we get suspense and minimal blood. Before the nightmare is over, the hat, and thus the point of view, switches and we see through the eyes of the killer a la PSYCHO and HALLOWEEN, and then safely back to voyeur as the film’s final scene plays out.
There’s a genius to the downplaying of the exploitative elements, as well as the meshing and bending of subgenres. But with the popularity of GoPro cameras these days, I predict the film’s found footage point of view switch from victim to killer will be the element many remember and quite a few will be inspired by.
At the end of the day, PLAY HOOKY is a morality play much like many of the great horror and exploitation films of yesteryear; “skip school, do bad things and you will pay for them.” But it is also a commentary on our cultural. While not at all the look at child abuse Tobe Hooper’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was, PLAY HOOKY does offer parents that poorly supervise their kids, and scream and yell at them. Had either of the parental figures that are in the film been present or intervened in better ways, the tragedy of the day would have been averted. But instead, just as often in life, the inmates run the asylum.
I hope you enjoy PLAY HOOKY as much as I have and continue to do. I was very proud to world premiere it in 2012 and I'm even more excited and honored to launch PollyGrind Presents with it. So dim the lights, turn up the volume and get ready to be creeped out and witness some great independent filmmaking magic.
Chad Clinton Freeman
Founder & Chairman, PollyGrind Film Festival
Las Vegas, Nevada