Continuing from our previous interview, Attack from Planet B talked with Michael Fausti regarding his first feature film EXIT, and the various influences that have helped shape him as a filmmaker.
The political landscape has evolved or, perhaps that should be mutated into a picture so grotesque that, ten years ago horror fans wouldn’t have been able to conjure up our present reality from even the darkest corners of their imagination. One of horror’s most powerful and moving attributes is that it is able to reflect what is occurring within society at any given moment. Along with a shift towards nationalism in the recent years, the notion of what scares us at the movies has gravitated away from slasher villains and horrifying monsters to a deep rooted fear of people…
The Ingress Tapes and Dead Celebrities are both witty, engaging and at times disturbing pieces and are effective for their conciseness. With their tight running times and often dream-like, art house aesthetic, Michael Fausti’s works act like a short sharp adrenaline shot.
‘There’s a few things I’d like to get off my mind before I go’ confesses the deep voice of an unseen man with a South London accent. Before us is a desk with three objects laid out on its surface; a reel to reel tape recorder, a telephone and an ashtray. In The Ingress Tapes we will hear the detailed and confessional musings of an unidentified criminal but intriguingly neither they nor their interviewer are ever identified, a detail which adds to the film’s overall atmosphere of ambiguity. It would appear that the tapes are first-hand accounts of a catalogue of brutal and shocking crimes.
Meet Mick, he’s a psychopath who wants to be famous and he’s found a way of achieving his dream – but Mick is no ordinary killer, he knows a secret. A secret he shares with Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Judy Garland, and other dead celebrities.
Dead Celebrities is misleading, with the narrator Mick seeming like he has a fetish for dead celebrities, or at the least, a conspiracy theorist with his tales of a get famous quick scheme. However, as the story unfolds there are attempts to make his tale seem credible.
