Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: PLAY HOUSE [Fantastic Fest - Austin, Texas]
Building films out of Fantastic Fest is great thing. Film festivals are obviously a proving ground and inherently where deals and ideas come to fruition. “Play House” was one of the winners of the Fantastic Pitches competition last year aiming to get smaller genre pictures made with the community built at Fantastic Fest. "Play House" is a simple story but surprisingly well done in an urban setting. It is obviously very low budget and it is always tricky for a first time filmmaker to get even that going. It is interesting since the marketing shown around Fantastic Fest plays with puppets and yet that is just a periphery structure of the story which is much darker. What anchors the film mostly is the tapes by James Urbaniak as a man wanting to create a puppet show called Monster Alley. Will Harrison plays Elliot, a man buying his first house but not looking before he leaps. He is trying to impress his former girlfriend who simply wants him to step up to the plate. He also has a motormouth friend named Alden who seems like he has been best friends from childhood with. Eliot’s discovers some VHS tapes in the basement with some creepy elements to them (cue Monster Alley).
The director Nicholas Curcio did say in the Q&A that they produced the shows separately so the actors saw them for the first time on set. Eventually Mr. Morton (Urbaniak) disguised as a water and power guy comes back around asking about the house. Obviously a dark secret has been kept there. As the friends come to the end of the episodes of the videotapes, the viciousness of Morton becomes clear. Urbaniak plays Morton as an ambitious person with a screw loose that eventually completely breaks down. The idea is that he was denied his dream but the way it plays out is fairly by the book. A realtor as a victim is an interesting play simply because it deflects the levity for a minute or two. But the film is essentially about dreams lost (all around). Elliott as played by Harrison is a bit of a softie with some elements of self-esteem caught in a circle that he cannot escape. The scares are fairly basic but it the culmination of a more DIY aesthetic and a single location shoot that is the real trick. Beyond anything, "Play House" is a great progression of getting a film made by osmosis and a lab like Fantastic Fest…and in that way it is a success. 78%/C+
By Tim Wassberg
