“Drag Me to Fest Vol. 2” Can Be Your Next Horror Anthology!
Seven horror shorts prey upon our emotions, evoke our fears, and stimulate the senses. A masked maniac chases a woman into a junkyard where the owner takes the fight to killer in a toe-to-toe contest of villainy. A knight will do anything to bring back love from a terminal fate, even if that traversing her corpse across the land and to a forbidden cavern where eternal evil lies and waits. Creatures roam in a forest in danger of deforestation and a woman lost inside must come to understand the pain that surrounds her. An unfaithful husband drives down an isolated forest road and accidently strikes a person; the incident traps him in a loop of his own fate. A narcissistic man preparing for a date wages war against the delusional imperfection by removing the minor flaws that inadvertently remove most of his skin along with it. An ant behavioral scientist finds himself strapped to a table by the hands of food bickering kidnappers with a desire to senselessly kill. Lastly, escaping fear through drugs is only temporary, especially when fear projects through a manifested, sharp-clawed creature that targets your attention.
The Milian, Italy independent horror film festival, Drag Me To Fest, returns with its second physical media release with “Drag Me To Fest Vol. 2: Tales from the Italian Horror Festival!” The anthology carries with it unconnected, individual indie shorts from Italy and other parts of Europea and in the second volume, we see more Italian and Spanish shorts make the cut. The lineup includes Juanjo Avi’s 2023 action-thriller “Turno de Noche: El Lugar Equivocado,” also known as “Night Shift: The Wrong Place,” written by José Casas and hailing from Spain, the 2024 dark fantasy “Juggernaut” is directed by the Italian brothers Daniele and Emanuele Ricci who cowrote the piece with Eugenio Krilov, “Olivia” protests as pro-nature eco-horror from 2024 out of Italy with Byron Rink writing-and-directing, the guilt-driven, coiling horror “Hado,” aka “Fate,” is the 2023 Spanish horror helmed and penned by Rubi Rock, the 5th film in the set is the only animated short, a Spanish production entitled “El Padrastro,” or “The Skin,” with the return of José Casas in the writer’s chair as well as directing the 2023 short, the Italian “Il Mirmecologo,” aka “The Myrmecologist” is an escapism fantasy and dark, obsessive comedy by Ajad Noor in 2024, and “Metus” wraps the anthology with an Italian grip on fear and facing it with Alberto Gelmi serving as both writer and director for the 2024 short.
An international anthology like “Drag Me to Fest” showcases unknown acting talent to the Americas and gives independent, short filmmakers a shot to be recognized for potential bigger, future projects. José Casas is one that aims high to be seen. Not only is Casas the writer and director of “El Padrastro” and the writer of “Turno de Noche: El Lugar Equivocado,” he also stars as the junkyard madman in “Turno de Noche: El Lugar Equivocado” who goes toe-to-toe with the masked killer Pit Pasos Pesados (Rafa Teruel), or Pit Monster, in an all-out, bare-knuckle brawl amongst the wreckage. Cases and Teruel bring the ferocity in the fight without delivering a single line of dialogue, a shared act of silence that transitions from the first “Drag Me to Fest” showing into the next with “Juggernaut.” A voiceless story that relies on the fight or die trying actions of Eugenio Krilov, who also cowrote the film, as the brave Ricker standing in arms against a subterranean and supernatural-spurred death king Nicolò Cerreti in order to resurrect and save a victim of terminal illness, a noble lady in Adriana Papana. The action without words works, convincing tells the narrative without exposition and only leaving some ambiguity on the table while images and actions do all the heavy lifting. After the first two shorts, the rest are more conventionally verbose, starting at the third film, “Olivia,” that tries to be melancholically poetic about the manmade destruction of a tree grove, one known to produce oils and other fruit genus. Actress Emanuela Greco wanders aimlessly through the woods, being chased by equally aimless creatures led by the Old Tree, which is represented by Byron Rink in human form, and whose followers are cloaked with twigs for fingers. It feels all very pretentious, crunchy, and definitely has the trimmings of a student project. “Hado” is also nearly dialogue silent but that strictly pertains to the chief principal character (Miguel Garces) only as he’s trapped in a distraction of himself, caught in between two world that’s riddles with guilt and all he has is his actions in the wreckage that is his personal life. The crudely colorful animated short “El Padrastro” has Pedro Jiménez-Vallejo in the illustrated skin of handsome and muscular Robert Larsen with a deeply attractive voice until it becomes distorted and gargled like his peeling physical form. ‘Il Mirmecologo” is less gory but is no less dark with a myrmecologist (Francesco Cavaro) finds himself wanting to live simply as his studied ants do while Pavel Berdon and Tiziano Musci bicker and debate over eating habits make this black comedy very surreal in its arbitrary meat-or-no meat dispute in position of irony as they’re about to butcher a person for fun. Roccardo Cola, Elona Gjini, Fabio Maneti, and Alice Gubetta round out the cast in the last short, “Metus,” as laughing hyenas high on an unknown substance as they try to distract themselves from their fears brought to fruition by the centered monster, a contorting and grotesque-made up Martina Ferone. “Metus” too doesn’t have much dialogue other than a hefty about of humorous sidesplitting but there’s enough told in in their fears symbolized by gray sepia perspective shots with Veronica Pizzi, Massimiliano Triggiani, and Francesca Bruni Ercole acting out shame, vices, invalidity, and desires to draw them closer to their demise.
In my interests of transparency as a reviewer and to be frank with my tastes, “Drag Me to Fest: Vol. 2” is a step down and back from the first anthological set. The Milan horror festival selections had a sheer shortage of… horror. Dark fantasy, purebred black comedy, and skirting the genre with more expositional eco-horror takes the nail-biting tension and scary shock out of the equation of a horror anthology. Volume two certainly teeters the track of genre bending but never wholly completes the intention of the festival, which is to scare the pants of its short film panelist and viewers. Volume one did that very well with also spreading the genres but did it with folding in mostly horror, keeping it at the forefront of the mind without a diverting distraction into another category. On its face, I couldn’t tell if I am watching a horror anthology or if I was rather duped into sparring comedy, a conversative PSA announcement, a mafia plot tying up loose ends, or undiluted fantasy that each dabbled in horror rather than have the genre be its keystone focus. Other than “Olivia,” production value has high-quality appeal that could easily turn any of these shorts into a feature length production. “Olivia’s” more performance art with a black and white façade that relies on the characters to provide the not-so-subliminal message, whether vocally or in act, and lurk around with a floating threat that isn’t all that perilous evoking. Some of the shorts didn’t flesh out the story in its entirety, feeling half-full rather than being a complete, well-rounded start-to-finish tale. “Turno de Noche: El Lugar Equivocado” is a good example of that last comment that puts audiences right in the middle of killer-prey chase and most moviegoers can piece together what happened: a kidnapping, an escape, and the hunt. Where things get dicey with the details is the junkyard owner’s mad dog behavior and a mafia family’s role in creating the monster. There’s so much backstory there that when the short ends, the short feels unsatisfactory negating goliath and gore-soaked violent skirmish in the middle.
Limited to 500 DVD copies produced, Rustblade’s “Drag Me to Fest: Tales from the Italian Horror Festival Vol. 2” will be a rare oddity of anthological horror. Inside the tri-fold slim case with snapper lock, the MPEG2 encoded DVD5 disc has presents in 720p and in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Like all other anthologies, competing and different aesthetics come with each short based on the stylistic preferences of the filmmakers. “Olivia” is shot in black and white, “Juggernaut” is a desaturated contrast, and others have a more organic, natural look about them, even “El Padrastro” is crudely animated but extremely colorful in its grotesqueness. The digital shoots shorts have a variability of cleanliness in image quality with no instances of ambiguity stemming from compression issues or the commercial equipment that often has difficulties capturing and decoding certain lighting schemes and motion. Overall, without feature length consistency considering image quality, Volume 2 is generally suitable and works to for the space. The audio encoded is a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with shorts containing mostly Italian and Spanish with some English peppered in there but just a pinch. No glaring issues with the discernible encoding, no crackling or hissing, dialogue is strong and forefront with clear speech and exposition but then again, half the shorts are mostly dialogue free. Range is limited to diegetic sound design with only the soundtrack being characterized under its nondiegetic source. English and Italian subtitles are available and must be selected prior to hitting play. The physical packaging mirrors much the same of Volume 1 with a picture-laden cardboard and trifold DVD jewel case that provides synopsis in English and an Italian. Rustblade is an Italian company, making the DVD release for the Americas region free. All shorts are unrated and have a total run time 92 minutes.
Last Rites: Volume 2 underwhelms as a follow up that traditionally, having been tested through time-and-time again, are supposed to be bigger, badder than its predecessor but this fest of ferocity’s focus seems to be less about horror and more about suspenseful comedy and drama with a touch of blood.
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