CITADEL (2012) review

Citadel (2012) (1st viewing) d. Foy, Ciarán (Ireland/Scotland)

After witnessing a brutal assault on his pregnant wife by a savage gang of hooded youths, Aneurin Barnard finds himself crippled with agoraphobia. Barely able to escape the confines of his dilapidated apartment complex to attend therapy sessions or retrieve food for his newborn daughter, Barnard is haunted by visions of the past, fearing the assailants will return. Return they do, revealing themselves to be more than an underage collective of thugs, but legitimate monsters cut from Cronenberg's Brood cloth and equipped with savage cunning and a perverse agenda. Writer/director Foy pulse-pounding debut is set amidst snow-swept, urban wasteland environs, successfully isolating his protagonists such that terror – ours and his – is felt during both daylight and darkest night. As a gruff priest and sympathetic nurse, James Cosmo and Wunmi Mosaku respectively offer able support, but it’s Barnard and Foy’s show all the way – the director and star ably work in tandem, creating an oppressive atmosphere of tension and despair. Having already racked up multiple audience awards during its brief festival run, this is a bold new voice in horror that I’ll be rooting for and that you will be hearing about.

CITADEL takes Best Director and Best Actor at PiFan

Remember us raving about a little Irish movie called CITADEL a couple days ago? Apparently, more than a few others shared our passion, as it just walked off with the Best Actor and Best Director prizes at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) in Puchon, Korea.

Our sincere congratulations to director Ciarán Foy and lead actor Aneurin Barnard! We're going to be championing this film because it's a horror flick that deserves to reach as wide as audience as possible. Keep an eye out for it!

Fantasia Day 8 (Thursday, July 26)

With the exception of my interview with Citadel writer/director Ciarán Foy this afternoon (followed by a surprise encounter with none other than Johnny Rico himself, Casper Van Dien in the hotel lobby), it was a pretty low-key day. Saw a couple non-horror features (though I had hoped that the second, The King of Pigs would live up to its Fantasia catalog write-up as “borrowing touches from genre cinema, notably suspense and horror films.” Yes, there was a bit of animated blood spilling from its animated characters, but I guess I was lobbying for more fear factor than they were dishing out.

(For the record, the Foy interview went smashingly well, and I’m looking forward to championing this man and his work. And for the other record, yes, Casper Van Dien is just as ruggedly handsome in person as he is on screen. Whatta man, whatta man, whatta mighty man… I thought about asking him to take a photo, but he was sitting there on his laptop with all his luggage heading for the airport and I would have had to enlist someone else to take the shot, so it all seemed like a bit more trouble than necessary.)

Fantasia Day 7 (Wednesday, July 25)

As of yesterday, it’s been a full week of Fantasinsanity, and MAN what a ride it’s been. However, I’d yet to be leveled by any amazing horror features (that I wasn’t already aware of, hello Manborg and Juan of the Dead). Happily, I recently encountered a trio of fright flicks that with any luck with be arriving on everyone’s radar in the not-too-distant future.

With The Pact showing up as “sold out” on the Fantasia website yesterday morning, I opted to head over to the press room to view a digital copy rather than run the risk of not getting into the screening itself. While this meant missing out on the by-all-reports enjoyable Q&A with Casper Van Dien, his presence within the film is so incidental that it felt a bit like a (presumably small) “paycheck gig” for him, although the fact that he was willing to travel to Montreal in support of it (and his exec-produced Starship Troopers: Invasion) says something, I suppose.