ABCs of Death 2: N for Nexus. 2014. USA. Directed by Larry Fessenden. DCP. 5 min.
Not since Alfred Hitchcock blew up a small child on a London bus in Sabotage have we witnessed a form of vehicular homicide as grisly or suspenseful as in Fessenden’s brilliantly staged short, made for a Fantastic Fest movie anthology. Courtesy Magnet Releasing
Depraved. 2019. USA. Written and directed by Larry Fessenden. With David Call, Joshua Leonard, Alex Breaux. DCP. 114 min.
Lest we forget, the first true horror novel was written by a woman in 1818: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Now, a remarkable 200 years later—and 18 after his first stab at tackling similar themes in No Telling —Larry Fessenden has put his own contemporary spin on Shelley’s myth while remaining true to its tragic spirit of hubris and pathos, human aspiration and godly delusion. While infamous for its toxic canal, Gowanus, Brooklyn, seems also to be a seedy enclave of Big Pharma profiteering and trafficking in body parts, as well as the makeshift factory lab of a Gulf War field surgeon whose PTSD and loneliness drive him to grotesque ends, a broken man desperate to be whole again. Courtesy IFC Films