The Event: Screamfest Horror Film Festival, Los Angeles. Premiere screening of Return to House on Haunted Hill, which debuts in video stores all over America this week. Bonus: Screening of House director Victor Garcia's miniseries/Webisodes 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails.
The New Thing: Navigational cinema is an elegant way of saying choose your own adventure. In Hill, the action stops at key story moments and lets you, dear viewer, choose whether the foxy chick (Clyta Rainford) elects to make out with two other foxy chick ghosts. You can bet that at the screening the crowd emphatically voted for the three-way action. Oh, people, so predictable.
Voting is just plain fun. We Screamfest-goers were also blessed with a terrific master of the remote control: Hill's psycho doctor Jeffrey Combs, who conducted each poll and did just the right amount of teasing. The crowd got way into it, hooting for the main damsel (refreshingly nonanorexic Amanda Righetti) to call her sister back.
The Verdict: Navigational cinema is just plain fun. And if producer Joel Silver makes a pretty penny off this strategy, we might see more direct-to-DVD movies following suit. After all, everyone has that hammy friend who talks too much during the movie. With this kind of setup, if you gather your friends for your own little screamfest, you can give hammy friend the remote control and let him make a big, dramatic deal out of the decisions. And you won't miss any of the action. Neat, right?