Closed for the Season
The movie was filmed in the actual abandoned Chippewa Lake amusement park. At the start of principal photography, the park has been abandoned 30 years.,I have doubt's whether Closed for the Season is a deliberate effort in magical realism rather than the usual kind of low budget horror film dissonance that comes from plot holes and poor technical quality, but that's all i have. The goal for the film makers, as illusive as it is, appears to be creating a constant sense of disorientation and not much else. Whether that goal is achieved or not is not for me to say. I'm not confident even on what the feat is, let alone if it was defeated.

Reviewing the film first on Youtube, i was ok to dismiss Closed for the Season as pretentious hipster crap. But that was until i recently rewatched Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (1973), a film with striking similarities to Closed for the Season that i had a good time with. Not wanting to keep double standards based on vintage, i thought i'd revise my opinion. I have also come across director Woelfel's highly ambitious and much more engaging Beyond Dream's Door, which, above everything else, made me realise that i might not do enough research.

Because with watching these two films, i get a better idea of what Season was going for. That is was made by a man who spent the majority of the 80s trying to get his passion project off the ground and not by grad trust funders with no respect for the horror genre. And my main problem with Season was issues revolving around sincerity. But the fact that i considered the work of a 20+ year vet to be on the level of fresh faced amateurs still backs up another point i made, which is Season failing to engage in it's sound and images.

Malatesta was an experimental short expanded to feature length, set in a carnival, with impoverished production values and under-lit cinematography. But unlike Season, it was made by a guy who was a documentarian as well as an experimental film maker. Even if the images were poorly defined, they were numerous and creatively framed. Season's cinematography overall is both flat as well as dark. Malatesta also definitely had stronger continuity in both it's themes and tone, which helped retain engagement.

But Closed for the Season, like Malatesta, does feature solid art design and atmosphere throughout. Unlike Malatesta, or Beyond Dream's Door, the acting is poor as well as the pacing. Scenes are drawn out way too long and your mileage will vary. Kudos for still being a unique horror film amongst its contemporaries. It's intentionally confusing instead of just being confusing through ineptness. It's intentionally dream-like and surreal, but has very little to say. Something about carny culture dying or something. Whatever the point was, it wasn't worth bringing up it seems because the whole film comes off as a random bunch of scenes that have very little effect. For the life of me, I could not find a reason to care after twenty minutes. It all just felt like pretentious nonsense.

Closed for the Season is indeed one of the most unique horror films I've seen from the 2010s and time may be kind. If you are really that desperate to see something that is south of the Asylum, then I would recommend Closed for the Season as it does try something new. Jay Woelful is obviously dealing with resources that appear to be even more disparate than he was in '89 in his debut feature and i can appreciate how he has retained his esoteric ambitions. But the film has no point and it doesn't have enough spectacle to inspire the levels of charity in the audience that this film's indulgences would require.,