MOVIE News: THE DEATH PARADE - THE UNHOLY SMOKE OF 'LOON'

Fabrizio Federico (filmmaker)

Death & cinema has always been a powerful union, people are fascinated by serial killers, car crashes and violence in general, but in art-house films ambiguity & uneasiness is much more involved on a personal level. ''My maxim has always been create in the dark, shine in the light'' says Loon's director Fabrizio Federico.

''I call it Mistakeology, it's best to stamp on the eggshells of Neoism. This is my darkest film yet!''
  
The lo-fi experimentalism is a big plus from the filmmakers point of view, in that he has completed the movie he dreamed of making, and since it was on zero-budget, if the film bombs financially it doesn't matter.
It's a long list of filmmakers living the cinema dream this way, film outlaws such as 
Abel Ferrara, Jim Jarmusch, Larry Clark, John Cassevetes, Todd Haynes, Alex Holdridge and all the way to the present day. 
Loon is an irrational movie, and a natural extension to this cannon of filmmaking.

''I don't want to smooth out my rough edges, like using a script or being linear, it's probably never gonna fucking happen I enjoy being spontaneous and childlike too much. Being avant-garde is normal to me, it's like a spider's web.'' 

When a director decides to use as the soundtrack to his new film, an album recorded at the cursed Boleskine house in Scotland, previously owned by the notorious magician Aleister Crowley and then Led Zeppelin's virtuoso guitarist Jimmy Page, you know that you're about to enter into Grimm's fairy tale's. But not everybody's gonna understand this film's purpose I can guarantee that. This is the cinema for the future, but the speed of the attention span of this movie is diabolical.

   ''I don't think my true fans have been born yet.''

Films such as Natural Born Killers and We Need To Talk About Kevin have addressed the issue that goes into the making of a murderer. The beauty of Loon is that it takes the primal experimental side Oliver Stone's Killers and the poetic stillness of Lynne Ramsay Kevin and transfuses them together. 

In LOON you witness the family environment, including how the NHS is responsible for encouraging the parents to judge their children and label them under the umbrella of a medical condition. But mix it with delusions of grandeur, drum lessons, a Folie à deux relationship and a lunatic streak, what you get is a ticking time bomb.

The main character Charlie brings to mind lone killers who one day snap and go on an uncontrollable rampage, such as Charles Whitman, Mark Chapman, and Jodie Foster's stalker John Hinckley Jr. A person can change his home, religion and passion but not his family. What this film understands is the root of what creates a serial killer. 
The invisible puppet master from your past trauma, pulling the strings that creates new tragedy.

''I just want people to find the movie, it's been a complete DIY operation filmed on a CCTV camera, and is only gonna be available in digital form (it's on YouTube), I've got the passion and commitment to do it all myself but to keep it simple, without going through the headache of having a team... I should treat myself to an ice cream.''

http://fabriziofederico.co.uk/