>>PREVIEW
CALGARY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
Neighborhood Watch
STARRING Nick Searcy, Pell James and Jack Huston
DIRECTED BY Graeme Whifler
Friday, April 13
Uptown Screen
Neighborhood Watch is a horror movie, but past that, it is difficult to place in any one horror genre. It’s a bit funny, a little gross, kind of suspenseful, fairly scary and a good deal disturbing.
"This movie isn’t like anything you have seen before, it is unlike anything else out there, it defies description," says writer and director Graeme Whifler.
Making the film festival rounds since 2005, Neighborhood Watch has caused some strong audience reactions. Whifler reports that he has seen an audience member develop hives from the stress of the story and has been at screenings where people have actually passed out.
He says that it isn’t rare to see audiences flee the theatre in the late stages of the film because the climax becomes a bit too much for some to handle. He adds that he has found that audiences that can handle the stress and gore end up having a great time.
"When people leave the theatre, they are grinning from ear to ear, and quite a few of them come over and thank me afterwards," says Whifler. "It is a guilty pleasure for a lot of people."
The story is about newlyweds Wendi and Bob Peterson who move across the street from the neighbour from hell – a man who poisons and terrorizes the neighbourhood when he isn’t practicing surgery on himself. Though it looks like your average B-horror flick, Neighborhood Watch has a kind of creepy realism to it that makes it more effective (for better or for worse) than a lot of films of its ilk.
Whifler explains that one of the reasons that it strikes such a chord for many is that it contains elements of truth. The crazy neighbour is actually an amalgam of two real people – one a paramedic who fed his co-workers donuts laced with rat poison and later became a doctor that poisoned his patients. The other is a self-diagnosed sex-addict who castrated himself and attempted to remove a gland that controlled his sexual urges on his own home operating table.
Though the story is at times too far-fetched, playing into horror movie clichés (like the police are no help, and the couple refuses to move away), the elements of reality add something extra to the film that makes the absurd seem possible."It plays on people’s fears, a lot of people are afraid of being poisoned," says Whifler. "It also has that dreamlike quality that makes movies like this feel plausible."
The combination of the solid performances of the lead actors and the less studied performances of many of the supporting cast, whether inadvertently or not, adds to the feeling of being stuck in a strange and creepy world and further connects the audience to the couple’s sense of foreboding.
After an exhaustive casting process, in which Whifler says actors were either immediately impressed or repulsed by the script, Neighborhood Watch managed to put together an impressive cast for a low budget horror. The cast includes up and coming actress Pell Jones and Mr. Show alum John Ennis (who can both be seen currently in Zodiac), as well as perennial nice-guy-next-door Nick Searcy, who plays a very different kind of neighbour.
Neighborhood Watch is not for everyone, the mix of low production values, offbeat script and some very real terror adds up to a strange and, at times, hard to watch film. Though it will please those who like their horror gritty and dark with a hint of the surreal, audiences need to be forewarned – this is not for the weak of heart or stomach.
Neighborhood Watch will be playing at the Uptown Screen (upper stage theatre) on Friday, April 13 at 9:15 p.m. Director Graeme Whifler will be in attendance at the screening. |
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