Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.11.2016, Qupperneq 46

Movie Baltasar Kormákur46
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 17 — 2016
The first movie the filmmaker
Erlingur Thoroddsen remembers
seeing is the 1989 Tim Burton/Mi-
chael Keaton ‘Batman’, at a mul-
tiplex in the Reykjavík suburbs.
“I just remember the music and
how dark it was,” he says now of
his first impressions of cinema.
“I don't remember remembering
the story at all from that time, but
the darkness of it somehow stayed
with me.”
Erlingur’s film ‘Child Eater’,
is now playing at Bíó Paradís: it’s
his first feature, but the Icelan-
dic writer-director, who now calls
New York home, has been mak-
ing horror films since he was a
teenage movie geek. (For a scene
in which a character had his head
bashed in by a sledgehammer, he
and his friends filled a papier-
mâché skull with oatmeal and red
food colouring.)
‘Child Eater’ is expanded from a
fifteen-minute short that was one
of Erlingur’s thesis films at Co-
lumbia University’s graduate film
program. It’s got enough creepy
and gory flourishes for a whole
shelf in the Horror section of your
local Blockbuster (RIP): a baby-
sitter looking after a precocious,
fearful, motherless little boy in
a creaky old house, and sheriff’s
deputies blundering into harm’s
way in an abandoned family fun
park in the deep dark woods; eye-
less dolls and scarecrow masks;
and a local-legend monster who’ll
eat anyone’s eyes, but prefers
those of children (“they’re best
when they’re fresh”).
“The original genesis of the
short film was to do a proper
horror movie, something scary,”
Erlingur says. “I went back and
was like, ‘What scares me?’ So
all these things kept creeping
in—it became a hodgepodge of all
these elements. We wanted it to
be something that felt familiar,
that almost felt like a movie you
could have rented from the video
store back in the 80s.” What Er-
lingur calls the “timelessness” of
the movie comes through in the
production design and cinema-
tography: the land-line phones
and warped closet doors, the dead
pine needle autumnal palette and
widescreen compositions shot
with vintage anamorphic lenses,
for a distorted, dreamy feel.
Lead actress Cait Bliss told the
filmmakers that the town in the
script was exactly like her up-
state New York hometown—so
the filmmakers shot the movie
up there. The house where things
go bump in the night, a clapboard
Victorian with wraparound porch
and weatherbeaten paint, is ac-
tually her own home. “Like, her
parents still live there,” marvels
Erlingur.
Like the 1979 adaptation of
Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot’—
another work about a creepy old
semi-rural house and resurfac-
ing ancient evil—‘Child Eater’
draws on the classic ‘Nosferatu’
for its creature design, the elon-
gated pale face and fingers and
the bat-wing ears of its slow-
moving boogeyman. The other
photos Erlinger gave his costume
and makeup team were of Fran-
cis Bacon paintings, and Christo-
pher Lloyd as Judge Doom in ‘Who
Framed Roger Rabbit?’ (Vindica-
tion for at least one friend of mine
who was also terrified of that film
as a child. If a future horror film-
maker thought it was scary…)
‘Child Eater’ has already begun
to find a niche audience since its
festival-circuit debut last month
(a VOD release is planned for early
next year), and that’s hardly sur-
prising for a film that, like its
maker, is steeped in genre tradi-
tions. “There's the references that
I'm totally aware of,” says Erlin-
gur, in between discussing John
Carpenter and Brian De Palma’s
compositional sense, the scores
of Jerry Goldsmith, and the sus-
pense of ‘The Shining’. “And then
there's probably a lot more that
got in there subconsciously.”
Now playing at Bíó Paradís.
Words MARK ASCH
Best When Fresh
Erlingur Thoroddsen Brings Horror To Iceland
OPEN 7-21
BREAKFAST,
LUNCH & DINNER
T EMPL AR A SUND 3 , 101 RE Y K JAV ÍK , T EL : 5711822, W W W.BERGSSON. ISHV
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Įvairių tautybių tėvai
Padres Internacionales
International parents
Międzynarodowi rodzice
Për prindërit me origjinë të huaj
Интернациональный клуб родителей
Alþjóðlegir foreldrar
ผู้ปกครองต่างชาติ
Phu huynh quôc tê
The Red Cross welcomes all parents with children at the age of
0-6 years who want to meet others with young children.

Presentations concerning children and society will regularly be
held. Toys for the children and refreshments are provided.

Participation is free and no knowledge of Icelandic is required.
Place: The Red Cross House,
Hamraborg 11, 2nd floor,
200 Kópavogur
Time: Thursdays
at 10.00–12.00
Place: Ársel,
Rofabær 30,
110 Reykjavík
Time: Tuesdays
at 10.30–12.30
Facebook group: International Parents Rauði krossinn
The Red Cross House, Hamraborg 11 – open weekdays 9-15
570 4060 – kopavogur@redcross.is