From e-online.com:

“Fans of the family series 7th Heaven may need a moment to process this—but little Ruthie is all grown up. Actress Mackenzie Rosman proved to fans that she is no longer just a child star, but a sexy young woman with curves to flaunt, by posing…for the September issue of Maxim…Rosman is currently starring in the film Beneath and will appear in the TV movie Ghost Shark, premiering on SyFy Aug. 22.”

See the full article and more pics on e-online.com.

And check Rosman out as Deb Voorhees in BENEATH, now On Demand, on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and Google Play.

Just announced:

Night Moves, the latest film from  Glass Eye Pal  Kelly Reichardt (River of Grass, Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff), written by Kelly Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond, will play at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival. The fllm stars Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard, Alia Shawkat and James LeGros.

Fessenden served as executive producer, along with Reichardt regulars Todd Haynes (executive producer),  Neil Kopp  (producer)  Anish Savjani (producer) as well as several new collaborators. See full credits at imdb.

Glass Eye Pix regular Jeff Grace scored the film.

Get a look at Larry Fessenden’s BENEATH at Latino-Review.com

BENEATH is now in theaters, On Demand, on iTunes, on Google Play, and on Amazon.

1944-2013

Printing posters has never been so terrifying…

BENEATH Review From Twitch:

Larry Fessenden takes the old fashioned horror-as-allegory approach to his work. Recently (though Beneath is his first feature in nearly seven years) this has meant adapting the environmental horror aesthetic of 70s films like The Boogens to the present decade by using an inspired minimalism. His technique in Beneath owes more to ʻsuspenseʼ films like The Birds than it does to the explicit gore of more famous 80s slashers and the last decade’s torture horror.

Beneath, however, could never be considered a thriller or suspense film because it’s plot
seems to have been chosen (from beneath a pile that had lain on the director’s desk for years, so they say) for its extremely generic qualities. Six teenagers head out on a small boat to party, but when their lives are threatened by an inexplicably enormous fish their erstwhile hedonism transforms quickly into a vicious mob mentality. The real horror is humans themselves, etc.

The plot isn’t what keeps this boat afloat, but it was never intended to. Fessenden’s new project is more interesting as an exercise in minimalist filmmaking intended to occupy that increasingly blurry space between film and television and as an act of subtle environmentalist propaganda in a genre that has become so tongue-in-cheek that most messages come out too garbled to understand.

Beneath lays its cards on the table pretty early on. You get a taste of the message to come as soon as the teens cram into the car in the first five minutes on their way to the unnamed lake. They are irritating, sure, and you are forgiven if a lack of patience for the inane dialog inhibits your enjoyment of the film. But Fessenden is an aesthetically rigorous guy. By keeping the kids nothing more than a collection of toned bodies and weakly improvised half jokes and insults, he establishes them as all surface.

There are no depths for the film to explore or even allude to in these characters; the only depths belong to the environment, the lake. Even when their tolerance for each other quickly erodes into homicidal competitiveness and sophistry we get the feeling that the horrible potential of the would-be partyers was so near the surface it could never be what the title Beneath refers to. The binary is between the inevitable death waiting in the murky depths and everything else — plot, characters, the game of filmmaking itself included.

One reward we do get for having to watch sexist jocks and aggressive nerds pretend to be friends is a laugh or two. The characters are funny because they take their dumb exchanges seriously. ‘Crazy to think about — high school is over,’ says Deb during a pre-horror, humanizing swim. ‘Yeah that’s weird,’ replies Kitty, the woman all the boys are crazy for ‘Remember that time we went to summer camp when we were 15?’ ‘Yeah.’ And with that, their conversation concludes.

Terrible dialog? To me it seemed more like a riff on the predictability of characterization and the meaninglessness of human interaction. It’s a riff that’s repeated throughout the movie. When Deb gets her arm bitten reaching for an oar and bleeds to death, the teens ad-lib a cliched funeral oration (“she was brave, a hero”) before throwing her body ignominiously to the piranha. When the characters must provide justification to their peers to avoid being thrown off the sinking boat, their reasons for living boil down to “I’m gonna be someone someday” or “I’m strong.” Side with the fish and you’ll laugh; try and identify with the characters and you’re bound to be depressed.

Self-awareness in horror is as big a part of the game these days as the blood, and Beneath walks the line between straight-faced and winking pretty well. Johnny, the one character who the audience might want to root for, is a horror enthusiast and his room is filled with horror in-jokes that I didn’t fully get.

Zeke is an annoying filmmaker — the movie switches occasionally to POV mini-dv cam occasionally for some of his first person narration. Though all the characters (with the exception of Johnny, who is merely weak) have hideous personalities, Zeke the filmmaker is the worst. Fessenden seems to use Zeke to satirize the whole project. While the other characters do seemingly productive things like bail water or paddle with their hands, Zeke just films everything and is responsible for suggesting that the characters vote each other off the boat, Survivor-style.

Through Zeke, Fessenden alludes to the worthlessness of the whole entertainment/filmmaking project. “I’m the only one of you worthless people who will ever amount to anything!” screams Zeke before he’s tossed to the fish. Maybe not. When the footage he has shot resurfaces in the third act, what it shows is damning rather than redemptive.

Which brings us, finally, to the monster. It looks ridiculous, like fishes usually do. There’s no CGI in the film, and the fish’s rubbery aspect and clumsy movements do well to mitigate its onscreen terror potential. But it looks good. Real, like any earth creature would. For those that got turned off monster-horror in the past decade because they couldn’t abide characters fleeing endlessly from CGI cartoons, here you go. Fessenden doesn’t shy away from showing it, either; it’s not the ‘mysterious depths’ that will kill you, it’s a big weird fish with bug eyes. The fact that the teens can’t escape from it just 100 yards from shore makes them seem that much more pathetic and rash in their decision to sacrifice each other.

Beneath was financed by Chiller Films, a horror spin-off of the SyFy channel. From my understanding, it is being released both in theaters and on television nearly simultaneously. This is a good idea, and not only because the boundary between television and film is pretty much indistinguishable in all but budgetary terms these days.

On TV with commercial interruptions, Beneath will probably play out like a relatively uninspired but aesthetically pure genre piece. In theaters, Fessenden comes across as more of a budget auteur using horror traditions to tell a story about the complete failure of the human race. The characters’ only ambition is to “get outta here.” As far as I can tell, “here” is earth and they never do, never will.

From Ken W. Hanley at DiaboliqueMagazine.com:

For two decades now, independent genre filmmaker Larry Fessenden has navigated the world of horror, fighting against other low-budget horror outlets to emerge as a gateway for some of the most promising talents in the horror community today. Without Fessenden at the wheel of his ship, subversive horror might have drifted too far into the realm of satire or exploitation. And while Fessenden works his magic with his production company, Glass Eye Pix, the man still continues to spread his talents elsewhere, whether it be directing, such as with his creature feature Beneath; producing, such as with his audio drama, Tales from Beyond the Pale; or acting, such as in Chad Crawfod Kinkle’s Jug Face and Glenn McQuaid’s I Sell the Dead.

And it’s in McQuaid’s directorial debut where most fright fanatics may recognize Fessenden’s face, aside from die-hard Brad Anderson devotee’s. Fessenden’s portrayal of the wily and cowardly Willy Grimes helped define I Sell The Dead as one of the most funny and enjoyable horror comedies in recent years, alongside genre vets Angus Scrimm and Ron Perlman, as well as a top-of-his-game Dominic Monaghan as Fessenden’s foil. Luckily for Diabolique, Fessenden dug up some free time between promoting his projects and developing new films and spoke a little on his graverobbing, genre acting and Glass Eye Pix…

DIABOLIQUE: One of the reasons I Sell The Dead works so well is not only Glenn McQuaid’s great script and visual flair, but the incredible rapport between yourself and Dominic Monaghan. How did you and Dominic establish the playful, naturalistic friendship between the two of you? Did the nature of the roles lend itself to improvisation or did you both play it close to the script?

LARRY FESSENDEN: There is very little improv in the film. Dom is smart and a generous spirit and we struck up a friendship quickly. He brought a lot of his own spunk to the role of Arthur and we found a natural chemistry; I can easily slip into the role of bewildered curmudgeon. Glenn runs a warm and enthusiastic set. He loves his characters and the good vibe behind the camera translates to the film. The movie was blessed with positive feelings all around.

DIABOLIQUE: I Sell The Dead showed off your prowess for comedic acting. Do you approach your comedy roles any differently than a dramatic or horror role? Do you prefer dialogue driven comedy roles or physically humorous roles?

FESSENDEN: My approach to acting is to intuit the character’s motivations, and from there, develop physical characteristics. Once I understand that, I can riff on the character subtly or broadly, depending on what’s required. I always like scenes with no dialogue. There are no distractions from the words; you are just existing in the story.

DIABOLIQUE: Since its release on home video and its subsequent availability on Netflix Instant Streaming, I Sell The Dead has been accruing quite the cult audience. As both an actor and a producer on that film, what do you think it is about the film that’s given it an appeal beyond the horror crowd? Was there any specific sequence that was the most memorable to film?

FESSENDEN: I think the film has charm and style, and people respond to two working stiffs just trying to make a go of it. The movie is funny without trying to be a comedy. It is the situations that are funny, with two mates surrounded by so much death and menace. It was all generally fun to shoot, but the vampire sequence was especially buoyant because Glenn had really hit his stride as a director and the scene was well thought-out and choreographed, and orchestrating all the beats was very rewarding. It was at the end of the shoot and we were all pals by then. It was absolutely frigid that night but no one complained because the vampire, Heather Robb, was wearing nothing but a nightgown.

DIABOLIQUE: You also appeared in Ti West’s horror-comedy Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever in a short but humorous role. Had you been a fan of the original film or did you board the project to work with Ti once more? Are you ever hesitant to board studio projects, even as an actor?

FESSENDEN: I only did Cabin Fever 2 because Ti invited me to be a part of it. It was the first film he’d done outside of Glass Eye Pix, so he gathered a bunch of unusual actors to be in the film like Mark Borchardt and me. I almost always take acting work and I have no problem working for the studios. Studio shoots are generally very well run and it’s illuminating to see how the big boys do it.

DIABOLIQUE: Many fans in the horror community consider you to be the Godfather of Indie Horror, with your mentor-like relationship to indie horror maestros like Ti West, Jim Mickle and Glenn McQuaid, and now Adrian Bogliano. What do you find specifically appealing about working with young horror filmmakers? With projects like The Comedy and Night Moves leaning closer to drama territory, are there any other genres besides horror that you’d like to work in, either as a filmmaker or an actor?

FESSENDEN: I am interested in seeing good work get made, regardless of genre. I have a point of view and a taste in cinema. I enjoy trying to perpetuate that perspective through not only my own work but also through the work of others. Ti West brings a patient realism and mounting dread; Mickle brings pulpy, big-hearted, gruff poetics to stories; McQuaid a Gothic whimsy; Rick Alverson has a ferocious aversion to narrative tradition; Kelly Reichardt is searching for authenticity in every frame of her work; Ilya Chaiken brings street pathos, Graham Reznick is a meticulous and heady craftsman; Joe Maggio and J.T. Petty are both wickedly smart writers; Jim McKenny loves the old horror tropes as I do.

The list of directors I have worked with that I admire goes on. I love their individual voices and am inspired by all of them as a collective. This is a movement beyond horror. It is a rebuttal to the mono-chromatic offerings coming out of Hollywood and the Indiewood of Sundance (and though many of our films play Sundance, I retain a resentment).

DIABOLIQUE: You have a pivotal role in the upcoming film, Jug Face, playing the father to the lead character. What attracted you to the project? Do you prefer horror stories that are rooted in the supernatural rather than human evil?

FESSENDEN: I was invited to do Jug Face by the producer, Andrew van den Houten. I had been in a previous film of his years ago, Headspace, and we had remained comrades in the world of low-budget producing. The script by Chad Crawford Kinkle was unique and I had lots of affection for Sean Young and Daniel Manche, both of whom I’d worked with before. A lot of my choices are based on timing, vibe and, of course, financial consideration.

I absolutely prefer my horror rooted in the supernatural. While there are some remarkable slasher movies, like Psycho, Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer and Angst, I much prefer the element of the unknown to inspire the horror. [Supernatural horror] gets at the bigger existential themes being able to speak in allegory rather than absolute realism. Pure human evil is depressing, but the yearning for meaning is an endearing human trait. In my own films, I try to show the struggle between these two aspects of reality.

DIABOLIQUE: Your next film, Beneath, brings your filmography into the territory of creature features. Why did you decide to make Beneath your next directorial project rather than your next production? Was there any element of the creature feature that you wanted to avoid in making this film?

FESSENDEN: I have scripts I am trying to get financed that I have great passion for, but they seem to defy easy categorization, so it has been hard to raise the money. Still, I love making movies and love the challenge of solving problems like, “How do you shoot on water on a limited budget with limited time?” I love the craft of film. I love working with restrictions like the eight act structure we were saddled with to accommodate ads, as Beneath is going to be airing on Chiller TV this fall. Most of all, Beneath had a script and a premise that spoke to me, both in its set up- with a giant fish- and philosophy- with people that will turn on each other under duress. I thought that I might be the best man for the job.

DIABOLIQUE: As someone who has acted and produced horror comedies, what is it about that comedy that lends itself to the horror genre? Do you personally prefer straight-laced horror or horror-comedy in your horror films?

FESSENDEN: I hope you won’t toss me off this interview, but I don’t like horror comedies. I really don’t like camp either. I like comedy that derives from the folly of life, our relationships, anxieties, dashed dreams, paranoia’s and the stark juxtaposition between our hopes and reality. Ironically, I would say those are the same basic themes of my scary stories. What I don’t favor is the know-it-all style comedy that mocks the genre and winks at the audience, serving up pop-references in a spiral of navel-gazing self-congratulation. I don’t really believe in empowering the audience at the expense of the characters on screen. I think it encourages arrogance and dismissiveness in the culture.

DIABOLIQUE: Do you have any genre projects on the horizon? Can you reveal anything about your segment for The ABC’s of Death 2?

FESSENDEN: No, I have to focus on that next… yikes

DIABOLIQUE: Glenn McQuaid mentioned he is working on I Sell The Dead 2, which he compares to be closer to a heist film or a train robbery film. Are you involved in developing that project as well? Would you return to the role of Willy Grimes?

FESSENDEN: If Glenn and the financiers would have me back, I will be Willy Grimes again, quite literally back from the dead. And yes, Glenn and I are talking about how the story would go. He’s written copious pages with fantastic new characters, but it all has to be shaped. There’s so much to do, so little time, so little money.

You can see Fessenden currently in Jug Face, now on VOD, iTunes, Amazon and other on-demand streaming services. Fessenden’s Beneath will air exclusively on Chiller TV this fall. Fessenden can also be seen in Adam Wingard’s You’re Next, in theaters from Lionsgate on August 23rd. For more on Larry Fessenden, you can visit glasseyepix.com/, and you can follow Larry on Twitter: @GlassEyePix. Fessenden’s audio drama series, Tales from Beyond the Pale, co-created and produced by Glenn McQuaid, can be found here at TalesFromBeyondThePale.com. For more on Fessenden, Beneath and Jug Face, check back here at DiaboliqueMagazine.com! And don’t forget to pick up Diabolique #17 later this month, which features more on Horror Comedy from the likes of Alex Winter, Doug Benson and Lloyd Kaufman!

BENEATH Review by Fangoria’s Michael Gingold:

BENEATH is a movie that plays best if you don’t take it too literally. That may seem an odd thing to say about a flick in which a killer fish chows down on hapless teenagers, but then most nature-amok low-budgeters aren’t directed by Larry Fessenden, who never metaphor he didn’t like.

Having previously explored various permutations of the supernatural in the thoughtful chillers HABIT, WENDIGO and THE LAST WINTER, Fessenden takes a dip in made-for-cable monster-movie waters with BENEATH, a Chiller TV production which is getting theatrical exposure starting today at New York City’s IFC Center and playing other cities as well, and is also available on VOD (go here for info). Though produced for the small screen, it has a polish and atmosphere that make it right at home on the big one, and the latter also serves notice from early on that there’s going to be a little more under the surface (pardon the expression) than one usually finds in this sort of flick.

An opening dream sequence establishes that apparent protagonist Johnny (Daniel Zovatto) might have some idea of what awaits him and a quintet of his recently graduated high-school friends when they travel to an isolated lake for one last get-together before going their separate ways. The group consists of four guys and two girls—never a good ratio in a scenario where relationship issues are bound to raise their ugly heads—and they all pile into an old rowboat to head across the water. When they stop halfway over so a few of them can take a dip, while Johnny tries (though not too hard) to dissuade them, a six-foot flesh-eating fish raises its own ugly head and tries to eat them, then goes on to thwart their attempts to paddle to safety.

It sounds like—and is—a traditional setup for a youth-in-peril film, but what makes BENEATH distinctive is the way Fessenden twists Tony Daniel and Brian D. Smith’s script into a kind of horrific morality play. The way he shoots the introductory scenes, there’s a fatalistic air hanging over the trip from the very beginning, to the point where warnings by a local old-timer (played by veteran actor Mark Margolis) aren’t really necessary to let us know these kids are doomed. Nor does he attempt to build too much sympathy for them, the guys in particular, who also include entitled jock Matt (Chris Conroy) and his competitive brother Simon (Jonny Orsini), who’s got a barely disguised thing for Matt’s girlfriend Kitty (Bonnie Dennison), who’s also Johnny’s ex and once had a fling with their friend Deb (Mackenzie Rosman). The sixth member of the gang is “Zeke the geek” (Griffin Newman), an aspiring filmmaker who annoys everybody by constantly taping them on his wrist-mounted GoPro.

In lesser hands, this bunch might get annoying to the point of tuning out for the audience as well, but the way Fessenden plays out the scenario, it becomes a darkly comic study of people showing their worst sides under pressure, becoming as great or greater a threat to each other than the aquatic creature stalking them. They attempt to put on a civilized veneer, constantly putting life-or-death decisions to “a vote,” even though the end result is barbaric. They become so overcome with playing out the little minidramas between them that it isn’t until the end that one of them comes up with a solution to the problem that the viewer can figure out within the first 20 minutes. And hovering over it all is the question of whether Johnny set the whole trip up to maneuver at least some of his friends into danger.

Meanwhile, the fish circles, waiting for the next human snack to fall (or be tossed) into the drink. Happily eschewing current CGI trends, Fessenden elected to use a practical monster (by Fractured FX, run by Justin Raleigh and Ozzy Alvarez, who did the nifty critters for SPLINTER) that may not always quite convince as a living thing, but has a physical presence that makes its scenes work. The fish comes to have a symbolic presence, too, serving as a harbinger of the doom that the characters are bringing on themselves; when it gets fruitlessly speared with a piece of oar that protrudes from its back for the rest of the movie, it’s less a callback to the barrels in JAWS than a constant visual reminder that the teens can’t stop the fate that’s coming for them.

Lest it seem like I’m getting too deep about this, BENEATH can also be enjoyed on simple B-movie terms, with enough fish attacks and blood (courtesy of makeup FX creator Brian Spears) to satisfy the basic jones for watching lower lifeforms attack tasty humans. It’s the (pardon the expression again) undercurrents Fessenden brings to the project, though, that make it stand out, along with the usual high production values of his and fellow producer Peter Phok’s Glass Eye Pix. Gordon Arkenberg’s cinematography nicely contrasts the beauty of the natural surroundings with ominous mood, and Will Bates (son of Hammer Films acting legend Ralph Bates!) supplies properly edgy, off-kilter music. BENEATH is the kind of movie where schlocky thrills are the bait, but it winds up giving you more to chew on.

BENEATH movie review from VillageVoice.com:

Over the last few decades, Larry Fessenden has become something like a one-man rescue team for modern American psychotronica. Think of a fresh horror-genre indie of note from the last decade and a half, and chances are, Fessenden’s name is on it somewhere. But for all his ubiquity, Beneath is only Fessenden’s fifth mature feature as a director, and it is every inch the work of a dedicated geek, a proudly lowbrow, low-budget monster movie that sees nothing wrong with the cheap-and-dirty shortcuts of yesteryear.

In fact, the movie’s nothing if not nostalgic—for the pre-digital days when homovorous movie creatures had to be built, worn, and operated in three real dimensions. Even Beneath’s setup is shamelessly 1979: Six high school grads trek out into some secluded woods for a hedonistic weekend, and launch out onto a mysterious lake in a rowboat, only to discover that a 20-foot, gape-mouthed monster fish won’t let them reach shore. The cast of characters is also Central Casting standard-issue, all revolving lustily around the blond hottie (Bonnie Dennison): the sensitive, Johnny Depp–ish hero (Daniel Zovatto), the digi-camera-toting dweeb (Griffin Newman), the blond girl’s jocky stud boyfriend (Chris Conroy), his jealous brother (Jonny Orsini), and a closeted lesbian (Mackenzie Rosman) who, perhaps predictably, is the first to feel the teeth.

Yes, the whole movie takes place in the boat, with the characters eventually deciding to sacrifice one another to the hulking mouth patrolling the water, thereby exposing plenty of betrayals and homicidal narcissism in classic Twilight Zone style. Nothing happens—particularly not the fish’s oar-impaled dorsal hump beelining for the boat like the tethered barrels in Jaws—without plenty of cheesy soundtrack portent. This is exactly what Fessenden wants; like his compatriot Ti West, he is a true believer in genre film traditions and in the creative modesty that piddling resources demand. He plays his movie straight, but doesn’t take it seriously—every glimpse of the sawtoothed über-bass, which is fabulously, defiantly, hilariously analog, comes off as a salute to the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Beneath may be an earnest goof, but any intended irony is so spiked with rainy-day-matinee movie love that the result is an oddly guileless horror exercise, unscary but rather adorable.

Fessenden even goes light on the meta-thriller’s most annoying trope—kids in a horror movie knowing what to do or not to do because they’ve seen a lot of horror movies. He wants it genuine—you get the sense Fessenden would like us all to be as innocent as he was as a preteen in the ’70s catching Them! on The 4:30 Movie for the first time. We’re not, but it’s a sweet thought.

Bonnie Dennison and Chris Conroy featured in the Washington Post’s Eye on Entertainment gallery alongside Johnny Depp, Hugh Jackman, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Check out the full gallery.