It's been a little over thirty years since indie horror godfather Larry Fessenden burst into the consciousness of the underground with his sideways vampire epic, Habit. In the decades since then, he and his Glass Eye Pix production house have shepherded some of American horror's most unique storytellers to the big and small screen as a producer while still managing to take time to direct his own idiosyncratic features challenge the present notions of what horror can be in these tumultuous times.
It took almost twenty years for Fessenden to return to his monstrous reimaginings with 2019's Frankenstein riff, Depraved and 2022's wolf man story, Blackout. With this Mad Monster Party trio of existential horrors now out in the world, he is here to cap it all off with his own Avengers assemble moment in Trauma, Or Monsters All, premiering at this year's Overlook Film Festival.
Trauma puts us in the shoes of author Cassandra (Laëtitia Hollard, The Pitt), who has rented a cheap farmhouse in Talbot Falls in upstate New York to focus on her upcoming book about famed scientist, George Washington Carver. One night while milling about in her house, she notices a strange man doing strange things outside of the strange house next door, which sends her down a research rabbit hole.
In an effort to exorcise her frantic curiosity, Cassie writes a piece for the local paper questioning whether there may be real life monsters in the woods that surround Talbot Falls. Her neighbors’ unusual behavior has her under the impression that not only is the town’s werewolf legend more than just a scary story, but perhaps a Frankenstein’s monster might be his keeper. The town doesn’t take kindly to an outsider digging through their dirty laundry, and before long out come the pitch forks, putting Cassie and her obsessions in new and unexpected danger.
Fessenden’s horror stories have always taken an askew glance at the genre, reading into the subtext of the classics to hew closer to the spirit of the stories and the way they’ve always commented on the human condition. Trauma, Or Monsters All is no different, only this time it’s not only the things that go bump in the night that get put under the microscope, it’s also those who would hunt them down.
The collective trauma in Talbot Falls erupts after Cassandra’s article riles up the town and, as the title says, makes monsters of everyone. While the town around her disintegrates into a swirling mass of paranoia and persecution, our old friends Adam (Alex Breaux’s creature from Depraved), Charley (Alex Hurt’s werewolf from Blackout), and Sam (Fessenden’s forlorn vamp from Habit), are monsters left seeking the most human thing of all, connection.
In order to complete his story, Fessenden not only brings back his classic monsters, but also populates Trauma, Or Monsters All with fellow indie horror icons, including returning Talbot Falls attorney Kate (Barbara Crampton), as well as a couple of other blink and you’ll miss them cameos from some of the genre’s most exciting up-and-comers. But Trauma is less indulgent than you might think (though not entirely free of that quirk), for the first time centering the story around a human protagonist who unwittingly stirs up a hornet’s nest in a place she doesn’t really feel welcome.
If you’re a fan of the filmmaker, Trauma, Or Monsters All will be like sweet mana from horror heaven. It’s every inch a Fessen-film, with frequent digressions and monologues that may or may not move the story forward, but also no shortage of blood and gore, with much of it inflicted mercilessly upon fan favorite characters. Three decades after he started this story, Larry Fessenden remains indie horror’s most singular visionary. He may not have imagined his saga ending this way – and it does seem to be a pretty definitive ending, but it’s hard to imagine any other conclusion for this story that marries so many of his consistent obsessions.