The Offscreen Festival comes pounding this year at the door of that familiar cocoon and safe haven we call home. With this selection of films, sub-categorized into Home Invasion and Haunted Houses, even the most solid foundations will tremble. When it comes to living in a dysfunctional family, being harassed by strange forces or tyrannized by paranormal phenomena... there’s truly no place like home. The program includes no less than thirty titles, spread across Nova Cinema and Cinematek: from classics over rare gems to bona fide grindhouse.
In literature as in cinema, home is a hearth whose flames only create more shadows: tear away the facade of any happy home and you’ll find a nostalgic and spooky residue of family history. The role of home as a last defence against the perilous outside world heightens our fear of intrusion, be it supernatural or real.
The haunted house is a classic symbol in 19th century gothic novels and their fascination with the paranormal. Dilapidated ruins, old manors and castles remain for a long time the favorite settings for many gothic-inspired horror films such as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Innocents or The Haunting. From the 1970’s onwards the romantic-era loci terribilis are traded for the modern apartments and suburban family homes of The Entity, The Tenant or Inferno.
The 1970’s also brought home invasion movies, a subversive affiliate of the rape & revenge sub-genre. The controversial Straw Dogs is a prime example, Lady in a Cage a surprising precursor and with Fight for your Life or Death Weekend we enter pure grindhouse territory. You’ve heard the pitch before: strangers submit inhabitants to all kinds of sadistic games. These tales of domestic robbery, home-jacking and violence skilfully play on a sense of neighbourhood insecurity and danger.
With Offscreen we also selected films that resolutely colour outside the lines. Demon Seed, The Dead Mountaineer Hotel or In a Glass Cage: all very unusual films that give an unexpected twist to the home sweet home theme. There’s a lot more going on behind closed curtains than people suspect.
So lock and bolt your doors, because this enticing selection will be topped off with the Cinematek’s B to Z programme in March.
