CURIO
Directed by: Steve Nesbit   - 97min.  -   United Kingdom
WATCH THE TRAILER AT IMDB
29-year-old Lauren and her young daughter Emily travel from the US to visit an old cottage in the North Yorkshire Moors bequeathed to them by their distant uncle. Within an hour of their arrival things rapidly begin to go wrong, Lauren and Emily are fleeing from the police across the bleak Yorkshire Moors, after dark, with nowhere to go.

Lauren wakes up in a bed in the middle of an old room. She has a gunshot wound in her shoulder, and a badly sprained ankle. Watching over her is Len, the kindly rescuer who took her in. He explains what happened and that her daughter is safe in another room.

Despite Len’s constant generosity and warmth, he is unpredictable and quick to temper. It becomes clear that Len has lived alone here for years. With his unyielding religious and puritanical views, Lauren is at Len’s mercy, she can’t move, she is on the run for double murder and she doesn’t know where Emily is.

There follows a complex, tense, relentless psychological battle between a desperate mother and  psychotic captor. Len’s mood goes from evangelical to tumultuous at the click of a finger, Lauren is never quite sure where she stands with him, and she needs to placate him if she is ever to get back with Emily and escape. When Len’s history is finally unraveled, it is far more terrifying than she could ever have known. Len carries the darkest of secrets, and he needs Lauren to absolve him.

Sunday, August 15, 2010
9:00 pm
at Spring4th Center


THIS FILM IS PART OF A DOUBLE FEATURE SERIES AND PLAYS AFTER:

SHELLTER
Directed by: Dan Donley - 84 min. - USA
film website
Zoey (Cari Sanders) finds herself in a hospital room in an underground Fallout Shelter. The Doctor (Will Tulin) explains that an infection has killed most of the population above ground. The only people left are either a few lone survivors like herself, and the infected, the living dead roaming the earth who attack and eat anything that moves.

The only way of “curing” the infection is by surgically removing the effected area which, depending on the spread of the disease, leads to gruesome results.

The Doctor is assisted by a Nurse, (Maria Olsen,) who seemingly has gone completely insane. They “treat” a steady stream of survivors/patients/victims. The Doctor wants Zoey to replace the unstable Nurse and become his new assistant. Zoey is very hesitant, but the Doctor is willing to do whatever it takes to survive, no matter how questionable or terrible the acts. But after a patient offers to trade places with Zoey and do “anything” the Doctor wants, Zoey realizes that if she doesn’t do these terrible things, someone else will do these things to her.

Zoey has to decide what she is willing to do to survive and the viewer has to make that same decision.

Sunday, August 15, 2010
7:30 pm
at Spring4th Center