September Ultra-indie film weekend

Microfilmmaker magazine continues its monthly “Ultra-indie” series of extremely low-budget movies at Kentucky Theatre this weekend with two previous hits.
You can see why Livelihood was a hit the first time around. A quirky zombie story, it has enough graphic elements to be considered light horror and enough laughs to make it accessible to people who aren’t going to go see The Descent and its ilk. The story is that the dead start rising from their graves, but they don’t want brains or blood. They just want their old jobs and families back. But nobody wants a rotting corpse around, and frankly, some of the families and “friends” were happy to see the dead people dead. The most successful living-dead assimilation is an 1980s rocker, Billy Jump (photo, above). When a record company executive realizes that a common trait of all great bands is a member who died, he sees a scheme to promote a band that has an actual dead guy playing. In the indie spirit of Kevin Smith, Livelihood goes for the grossest jokes possible, a lot of them dealing with decaying body parts. The overall concept is often more clever than the script, but the movie is a fun diversion for a Friday night and it gives you an idea what can be done for the low five figures.

With Oculus, Mike Flanagan’s greatest resource is imagination. The short film has a Twilight Zone feel. Set in one white room, it’s a standoff between a man and a mirror he believes has been responsible for many gruesome deaths. As the confrontation continues, we wonder how much there is to the man’s theories, and how much he is simply losing his mind. It gets under your skin.
Scott Graham (photo, above, from Oculus), who is in both films, will be at the midnight screenings tonight and Saturday at the Kentucky. Joining him will be Livelihood director Ryan Graham. Admission is $5.