Another Hole in the Head Film Festival Coverage
Invoking Yell review.
A black metal band heads into the woods to work on a special project. Behind the Music meets The Blair Witch Project.
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Invoking Yell
Directed by Patricio Valladares
Written by Barry Keating and Patricio Valladares
Starring Macarena Carrere, Maria Jesús Marcone and Andrea Ozuljevich
Invoking Yell Review
A two-woman black metal band heads into the woods to work on a “special project”. From the setup alone you know that some kind of evil is afoot. Invoking Yell is a foreign language found footage movie. It’s set in 1997…which gives it an aesthetic and charm that helps separate it from modern found footage fare. At times it can feel like a lost chapter of a V/H/S movie…but there’s not a lot you can do about that when striving for authenticity.
Andrea (Maria Jesús Marcone) and Tania (Macarena Carrere) are Invoking Yell. A band that specializes in “depressing, suicidal black metal”. We learn all about them and their music through interviews conducted with Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich). Ruth is there to film the band and…whatever it is they’re heading into the woods to do.
The trio arrives at a cabin in the woods. It doesn’t take long to discern the group dynamic. Tania, despite the intent of her music, is a kind person who enjoys talking with Ruth. Andrea does not. She’s bothered by the entire process and wants nothing to do with Ruth. She does, at least, attempt to keep her more hateful remarks for when Ruth isn’t in the area. Of course, we see and hear it all through Ruth’s camera…so one assumes this attempt at discretion has failed.
Ruth prods them for information about everything from their personal histories to their musical influences. She seems happy to be along for the trip and is hopeful to be called upon for future projects. This is something that Andrea makes clear to Tania she has no interest in whatsoever. Andrea has a controlling personality. Tania just wants to keep the peace.
An abandoned, decrepit bus is the most interesting stop on their journey to…wherever they’re heading. Legend has it that a school bus crash killed ten children, and this was the remaining husk. There’s the requisite creepy doll hanging in a tree and spooky sounds picked up by Ruth’s audio equipment. Things that can be used for a metal band’s album cover or layered onto their music tracks.
This goes on for almost an hour.
The three stars of the movie are great, don’t get me wrong. It also feels like the late 90s. Despite having no experience with what it would be like to spend time with a late 90s black metal band…nothing in Invoking Yell rings hollow. That thing I mentioned about sometimes feeling like a lost V/H/S segment? Change that to an expanded feature film based on one. It’s not that what’s here isn’t good. It is. What’s here, however, is a lot of waiting around for whatever it is that’s going to happen. This project had better be worth the wait.
For the most part…it is. The trio finally reaches their destination, throws on some face paint, and films some metal music. Then they begin the ritual. About 56 minutes into Invoking Yell we learn what the destination of the band…and movie…has been. And things finally get fun. It’s like an episode of Behind the Music came back from its last commercial break and turned into a bloody nightmare. Which…more episodes of Behind the Music should have done, honestly.
If you don’t mind the wait…there is fun to be had at the end of the journey. Including a final scene that is genuinely creepy. I don’t want to give the impression that what precedes the final act is bad. It isn’t. It’s just a lot of walking around the woods and talking. Yes…that’s what The Blair Witch Project was too. For longer, even. But that trio talked about their dire situation and weird things were happening as it built to its climax. Nothing strange happens to these characters until the climax. They discuss things that are not pertinent to a growingly scary situation. Invoking Yell pads out a near hour delivering as realistic a conversation with black metal bandmembers in 1997 as it can. It completely succeeds at it. What that’s worth to you may vary.
Scare Value
It takes 56 minutes for Invoking Yell to reveal what kind of dark magic it is going to unleash. That’s a long time to hear about the ins and outs of a fake metal band. This feels like an expanded segment from a V/H/S movie set in the 90s. The aesthetic works…the characters are interesting enough…there just isn’t enough there to justify a feature length runtime.
3/5
