by MATTHEW HAYS

Filmmaker Mike Mendez makes no bones about it. He’s a full-on, flat-out, complete and utter horror movie geek. Thus his entry at this year’s Fantasia (his second, after 2000’s horror-comedy nun spoof The Convent) feels like it owes an allegiance to good old, old-fashioned horror movies. The script for The Gravedancers, as he recalls it, was so soaked in nastiness that it leapt out to Mendez the minute he read it.

“I really loved the ideas in it, which began the five-year journey to get funding and make the thing,” says Mendez, who will be in town to introduce the film for both of its screenings.

The set-up is simple: several college friends reunite one night after the funeral of a mutual friend. The loss of someone so close can do odd things to people’s emotions, so they head off with some booze to go to the gravesite and say farewell in their own way.

As often happens in horror movies like this one, strange things begin to happen in the cemetery. As they get more and more drunk, they begin dancing on some graves. Then, they find a mysterious card left on their friend’s grave. The words they speak, sadly, are ancient words that will summon the dead. And in this case, they’ve had the misfortune of dancing on the graves of a bunch of convicted violent criminals—who are now coming back to life and are out for fresh blood!

Mendez confirms that he didn’t want to be emulative, nor too derivative or self-referential, but that he also wanted to gently evoke the big-screen horrors of yesteryear. “My all-time favourite horror movie of all time is Evil Dead 2,” he says. “And with this film, I wanted to be very classical in style, to be quite straightforward, and avoid the kind of flashiness the genre has shown of late. In particular, I was thinking of The Omen, Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Howling, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—though at the same time I wanted to avoid too much bloodshed. There’s only one throat-slitting scene in the film. I couldn’t resist.”

Respect for the dread

One thing that struck him about Brad Keene and Chris Skinner’s screenplay was its ongoing sense of suspense and surprise: “Something I really liked about the flow of the script was that you never really knew where it was going. It kept moving into something you didn’t expect a few pages earlier. It keeps changing, keeping the audience on its toes.”

Surprisingly, Mendez says one of his key inspirations and guides for The Gravedancers was the Disneyland ride the Haunted Mansion. “That has always been a favourite of mine. The design, the feel, the pacing of that ride is incredible. They turned it into a very mediocre film with Eddie Murphy. But the ride is great.”

Mendez acknowledges that the horror genre is one that often gets no respect, to paraphrase the old Rodney Dangerfield line. “Yes, horror is the red-headed stepchild of film genres, there’s no doubt about it. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, horror was seen as one step above porn. It’s come a long way now. There were some major strides made during the ’80s and ’90s, with The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and more recently The Others, which gave the genre a certain class. Certainly, the studios have now recognized that the genre can be hugely profitable. But people still often see horror as lowbrow or childish. But it has come a long way, without a doubt.

“I mean, I still wish the films that were coming out were a bit better. There are still a lot of not-so-great movies coming out, and the studios are too quick to want to remake everything, rather than come up with something fresh and new. I really wish the studio heads would see beyond being so close-minded. To see beyond whatever was big last week.”

The Gravedancers has its Canadian premiere at Fantasia on Saturday, July 15, 9:30 p.m., at the Hall Building and Tuesday, July 18, 3 p.m., at the de Sève Cinema. Info: fantasiafestival.com

>> Movie Listings