Category Features

August 28, 2019, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

The Arrow Video FrightFest 2019 came, delighted and went. Let us take time to reflect upon a fantastic 20^th anniversary weekend for the UK’s premiere horror film festival. Indulge us as we run through memorable moments from the weekend and the movies that played.

THE BUCKET LIST MOMENT – Dario Argento Interview and Signing

For FrightFest’s 20^th anniversary, it was fitting that undisputed maestro of terror Dario Argento was in attendance. Watching an Argento movie at a formative age is the reason many of us have dedicated so much time to the genre. For the record, my movie was Suspiria, viewed age 14 when I should have been revising. I regret nothing…

Dario Argento joined the festival for a one-day appointment on Friday 23^rd, supporting the English langu...

August 27, 2019, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

A standout movie at the 2019 Arrow Video FrightFest was Tony Dean Smith’s Volition. Co-written with Smith’s brother Ryan, this cerebral sci-fi thriller has reviewers drawing parallels with Looper, Inception and Black Mirror. We rather enjoyed it too..

Adrian Glynn McMorran of TV’s Arrow is James, a man afflicted with clairvoyance. Believing destiny is fated so there is no point in trying to be better, he gets by using his ability to scam sports bets. But, after becoming involved in an illegal diamond exchange, James begins to see visions of his own murder.

Together with Magda Apanowicz’s Angela, a woman who has burst into his world, he must discover the identity of the unknown killer. A journey that will reveal to him his affliction is not quite how he understands it…

August 19, 2019, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

One of the brightest gems playing the 2019 Arrow Video FrightFest is Graham Hughes’ Death of a Vlogger.

Cannily spinning fresh ideas into the mockumentary and found footage genres, it tells the story of Graham (Hughes himself), a prolific vlogger who accidentally captures on camera an apparently supernatural event. When this and subsequent spooky occurrences go viral, Graham and his pal Erin (Annabel Logan) hire in brash YouTube ghost chaser Steve (Paddy Kondracki) to help them solve the mystery.

As events unfold, reality begins to wobble and characters question if they can really trust anything on the internet.

A smart skewering of online toxicity and a genuinely unnerving ghost story, Death of a Vlogger should be on the watchlist of anyone who likes their horror served w...

August 8, 2019, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

Horror fans will rejoice (and possibly feel a little old) this August Bank Holiday. The legendary Arrow Video FrightFest is marking twenty bloody good years of terror… and it is doing it in style.

From Thursday 22^nd August to Monday 26^th August the Arrow Video FrightFest will host an astonishing seventy-eight movies, a record-breaking number for the event. Celebrating horror from around the globe, FrightFest will bring films from fourteen countries to the Cineworld and Prince Charles Cinema in London’s Leicester Square.

There are 20 world premieres, 20 International or European premieres and 28 UK premieres. Make no mistake, this is horror so fresh the blood is still wet…

Highlights include opening film Come To Daddy, Ant Timpson’s chiller starring Elijah Wo...

December 29, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: 2 comments

Time thwarted us and we didn’t get chance to write up a review of 2017. We weren’t going to allow a second year to pass without forcing our opinion of how the year in cinema shaped up on the cinema-going public.

2018 may have seen politicians outdo themselves in dumb-fuckery and the world was put on final notice regarding climate change. But, amidst the wreckage there were pleasures to be had. Many of them found within the dark confines of your local picture house.

Here are some of the most notable moments. But, to match the mood of the year, we’ll open on a downer…

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR – You Were Never Really Here

Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novel is not bad in the sense that it is poorly made...

October 28, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

At Electric Shadows, we like art of all stripes. Particularly when that art is infused with an achingly cool sense of noir. A painter who has recently grabbed our attention is Vincent Kamp.

For his latest solo exhibition, on Thursday 8th November Kamp will turn Mayfair’s Clarendon Fine Art gallery into a den of iniquity, featuring wily card sharps, inked mobsters and gun-toting barmaids.

Comprising thirty new paintings and featuring a cast of twenty characters, The Long Game tells the story of a high stakes poker match that ends badly.  For one night only, the cast will be present, alongside ‘the narrator’, re-enacting the story to create a unique interactive experience for the viewer.

Acknowledged as one of Britain’s most evocative and exciting new figurative artists, Kamp is fas...

October 16, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

An exquisite torture when attending the London Film Festival is working out how many movies can be viewed over the twelve days before physical shut down occurs. Two or three a day seems reasonable. But, with 225 feature films showing (plus a further 160 shorts), 24 or 36 movies begins to seem like small beer indeed.

A first amongst first world problems, we know, but there is so much to feast upon and so little time. And sleep tends to encroach at some point (typically around day 4).

What is genuinely good fun is seeing how the disparate films can be bunched together. What themes emerge across the movies? Below are our observations of this year’s London Film Festival at the midway point.

Sure, it is arbitrary as all hell – key films we were unable to attend include Vox Lux, Beautiful Boy...

August 23, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

Mike Mort’s infectiously fun mash-up of 80s action clichés and horror tropes has been a pet-project years in the making. Chuck Steel himself (imagine Dirty Harry without the sensitivity training) has been percolating with the writer/director since his teens.

The 14-minute short Chuck Steel: Raging Balls of Steel Justice played the festival circuit in 2013 and set the template for Steel’s feature debut. Lovingly detailed Claymation style stop-motion animation, violent splatter, unabashedly un-PC jokes broad enough that no-one should take to Twitter…!

We sat down with Mort to discuss the making of his glorious mash-up of Wallace and Gromit and Stallone’s Cobra. 

Rob Daniel: I had a blast with Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires...

August 22, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

Perhaps the most unusual film playing at FrightFest 2018 is Sam Ashurst’s singular directorial debut, Frankenstein’s Creature. Based on a one-man play by the film’s star James Swanton, it is a breathtaking experience.

Set in the ruins of an unnamed house and shot in a single, fixed take, this is the Frankenstein story as told exclusively from the Creature’s point of view.

Ashurst was good enough to give up a chunk of one Saturday afternoon to discuss his memorable creation. Being a working film critic, this meant a conversation steeped in movie knowledge. And if you like the below, we recommend you check out the Arrow Video podcast the director co-hosts with special effects artist Dan Martin.

It was a lengthy, rewarding conversation, ranging from the practicalities of shooting l...

August 20, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

Currently making an impact on the festival circuit, Jenn Wexler’s The Ranger is a horror home-run. When a gang of punks run foul of the law they flee to a cabin in the nearby woods. But soon discover the laws of nature are governed by a terrifying park ranger with a lethal zero tolerance policy on infractions.

Deftly working in elements of Green Room, The Blair Witch Project and Friday the 13^th, it rises above mere pastiche due to Wexler’s deft direction and great performances from Chloe Levine as the troubled Chelsea and Jeremy Holm, larger than life as the titular park official.

A horror movie producer for Glass Eye Pix, The Ranger is Wexler’s directorial debut...