Since the beginning of 2017 I've become increasingly fascinated with the films of Patrick Horvath & Dallas Hallam (depending on the project Horvath & Hallam wear different hats but they're a filmmaking team at the end of the day. If you google one name the other name shows up as a related search)/
This fascination came from following Patrick Horvath on twitter and learning what some of his cinematic influences/favorites are which he conveyed through his brilliant artwork dedicated to the films he loves...
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| Horvath's illustration of No Such Thing |
I know it's a cliche thing to dwell on the cinematic influences of a filmmaking team but when those influences seem to be everyone from Hal Hartley & David Lynch to Bruce McDonald & The Dardenne brothers combined with the fact that their movies are nothing like those aforementioned filmmakers (on the surface), I find that incredibly admirable & intriguing (seriously - how often do you find filmmakers dropping titles like Hal Hartley's
No Such Thing or Bruce Mcdonald's
Pontypool?) I heard their film
Entrance described as a Dardenne Brothers movie with a serial killer thrown in. I don't know about you guys but I'm instantly sold on a description like that.
One of my favorite things about doing this series is coming back after a few years to update these. The Cinema Of... is an ongoing labor of love (we'll be updating the Paul Verhoeven piece at some point this year). Patrick Horvath & Dallas Hallam are young (and active) with only four features under their belts so you can imagine how often this piece will updated going forward over the years (it's also nice to delve in to the horror genre as we don't really get in to horror movies that often on PINNLAND EMPIRE).
Enjoy...
A STRONG FEMALE PRESENCE
Patrick Horvath & Dallas Hallam definitely have a knack for crafting female leads (
Entrance &
The Pact 2) & co-leads (
Die-Ner). Even in their male-dominated section of the anthology film
Southbound (
Jailbreak) - a woman is still at the center of the story...
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| Die ner (Get It?) |
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| Die-Ner |
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| Entrance |
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| The Pact 2 |
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| The Pact 2 |
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| Jailbreak (Southbound) |
"WOMEN IN TROUBLE"
To add a little complexity to things, they kind of counter & challenge the previous category by putting their (sometimes) strong female protagonists in harms way quite a bit.
Entrance in particular highlights the realism of "women in trouble" the best in my opinion. Sure we see women chased & haunted by monsters in
Die-Ner &
The Pact 2, but Entrance is, in my opinion, the most frightening because it's the most believable. And I'm a (large) man saying this. Imagine how a film like
Entrance feels to women.
I often hear my lady and her female friends talk about the potential dangers & fears of walking to and/or from a train station late at night or, depending on their moods, how uncomfortable they (sometimes) feels next to men or groups of men when their alone.
Entrance highlights this (you don't even need to watch the whole movie to get this. Just watch the trailer for
Entrance on YouTube and note the number of times we see the female protagonist walking alone with an unknown man behind or next to her).
The only thing is you have to have patience to get to the meat/reveal of everything (I promise you it's worth it). While the framing and overall story of
Entrance is great, watching Entrance works best the first time. It'll never be as good as the first time (that's a compliment). It's certainly a fun second viewing because you want to go back and see if you missed anything in the first hour (some folks mislabel the first half of
Entrance as boring but if you have the patience you'll see it was intentional). And honestly - the boredom of
Entrance is horrific/scary in itself (think of Haneke's
The 7th Continent). I'm certainly a guy who likes things a certain way and is set in his own ways on some level (which is totally fine) but the (very real) monotonous routine we see in Entrance is just as horrifying as the climax.
Basically - If you read Fangoria and love vintage Chantal Akerman then
Entrance is a wet dream...
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| Entrance |
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| Entrance |
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| The Pact 2 |
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| Jailbreak |
PARANOIA & UNCERTAINTY
Sure there are plenty of jump scares in the cinematic world of Hallam/Horvath, but there is also a lot of tension, slow build-up & uncertain danger always lurking around the corner. As seen in the images directly below (and other images in other sections of this piece), you often find characters looking over their shoulders or behind their backs (a horror genre standard but still)...
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| The Pact 2 |
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| The Pact 2 |
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| Die Ner |
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| Entrance |
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| Entrance |
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| Jailbreak |
VISUAL SIMILARITIES/(POSSIBLE) INFLUENCES ON HALLAM & HORVATH
Some of these comparisons & homages could very well be my own forced projections but knowing that Horvath is a David Lynch fan (and I assume Hallam is also), casting Patrick Fischler in a Los Angeles-based noir/horror/thriller like
Pact 2 is definitely a cool homage given that he appeared in the most notorious scene in
Mulholland Drive (a Los Angeles-based noir/"horror"/thriller directed by Lynch). It's similar to Lars Von Trier casting Fassbinder's regular stock actors in his movies (Fassbinder is one of Von Trier's biggest inspirations) or all the secondary regular actors from Spike Lee's films showing up in the films of Ernest Dickerson (Dickerson was Lee's cinematographer from
She's Gotta Have It through
Malcolm X) or Jim Jarmusch eventually working with Robby Muller who was the regular cinematographer of Wim Wenders who Jarmusch has admitted to borrowing from quite a bit.
One could also view
Entrance as a reworked
Mulholland Drive which in Itself is the age-old story of coming out to Southern California only to have things not work out (which is an understatement in the case of both
Entrance &
Mulholland Drive).
But like I mentioned earlier, Entrance is also very much from the school of the Dardenne brothers...
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| Nosferatu/The Pact 2 |
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| Pans Labyrinth/Jailbreak |
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| Lost Highway/The Pact 2 |
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| Eyes Without A Face/Entrance |
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| Mulholland Drive/The Pact 2 |
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| The Son/Entrance |
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| Jeanne Dielman/Entrance |
VISUAL SIMILARITIES/(POSSIBLE) INFLUENCES ON OTHERS...
I'm probably reaching with these but you never know...
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| Drive/Die Ner |
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| The Pact 2/American Horror Story Season 5 |
RECURRING SHOTS...
REFLECTIONS
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| Entrance |
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| The Pact 2 |
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| Jailbreak |
SHOT FROM BEHIND
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| Jailbreak |
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| Entrance |
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| The Pact 2 |
THE HORROR GENRE
Horvath & Hallam work almost exclusively in the horror genre so you should expect some of the standard horror movie tropes (even though they do try to carve out their own niche within the genre)...
JUMP SCARES
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| The Pact 2 |
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| Entrance |
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| Die Ner |
MONSTERS, ZOMBIES, GHOSTS & MENACING ANTAGONISTS
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| Die Ner |
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| The Pact 2 |
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| Entrance |
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| Jailbreak |
THE WEST COAST
Much like Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson & F Gary Gray, Horvath & Hallam are very much west coast directors. From the architecture (
The Pact 2) to the subtle backdrops (
Entrance &
Jailbreak), the west coast of America plays a dominant role in the overall vibe & ambience of their work thus far. There is almost nothing "east coast" about their movies.
So while there
is plenty of death & murder, there is also plenty of healthy sunlight to balance things out...
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| Entrance |
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| Jailbreak |
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| The Pact 2 |
