Sunday, April 22, 2018

Indie Showcase: Dead Again (2018)

The world is becoming a more interconnected place all of the time. The globalization trend has been steamrolling across the plant for many decades now, but its results have often been one-sided. This is especially true for the arts and culture, where it can often seem that creative work from all over the world is trying to mimic the trends from a few mostly Western locations. However, the exact opposite applies for the Dead Again indie film which is about to start its festival rounds. Here’s how the film presents itself:

Dejected by love troubles and job upheaval, Thomas comes upon a mysterious diary and begins to read its haunting tale of love and loss. Besieged by strange occurrences and with no one to trust, Thomas embarks on a treacherous journey to unravel disturbing details about the diary’s author and even his own past.

The director, a graduate of University of California-Riverside's Creative Writing program called Dave Silberman wrote and directed several hilarious, suspenseful, and thought-provoking short films. While teaching English for five years in Korea, he won a top prize in the "Seoul, Our Movie" competition awarded by Park Chan Wook. He created DEAD AGAIN, his first feature film, with a modest budget, total commitment, a bit of basic Korean and a lot of body language.

In this case, a western artist was willing and able to take on the cinematography and culture of a very different place than his own native US. As the trailer shows, Dead Again looks like a cool mixture of the Far East horrors and modern love story, all taking place in the urban, modern setting. There is a strong sense of the local cinematography influences in the film, while the pacing makes the story feel menacing. Thanks to all of this, there is little doubt that the Dead Again will be interesting to the audiences in Asia as much as the western movie-goers. 

Find out more about the film on its Facebook Fan page or IMDb listing. Also, Dead Again will screen on Saturday, April 28th at 1:00 pm in Houston at Worldfest and on Saturday, May 19th at 12:00 pm in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Independent Film Awards.