frightfest tagged posts

April 21, 2020, Posted in  Features, Reviews Comments: No comments

For those of us social distancing alone, technology is not only a conduit to reaching friends and family, it often becomes a friend or cool cousin. When lockdown rules are relaxed, it will be interesting for us lone stay-at-homers to mingle with real people again, rather than exclusively talking to faces on Zoom. I foresee awkwardness.

Technology, specifically a Roku box and my TV, enabled me to spend last Sunday with Shudder, immersing myself in independent horror cinema. By independent I don’t mean cheap, but rather imaginative, surprising and exhilarating film making.

No, Shudder are not paying me or offering a free subscription to write this. To prove it, on the Roku box cast and director details are not listed for any of the movies...

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  Reviews Comments: No comments

Director: Abigail Blackmore

Writer: Abigail Blackmore

Cast: Laura Fraser, Johnny Vegas, Mackenzie Crook, Dustin Demri-Burns, Sophie Thompson, Kelly Wenham

Producers: Ed Barratt, Richard Wylie

Music: Warren Bennett

Cinematographer: David Mackie

Editor: Agnieszka Liggett, Edel McDonnell

Cert: 15 (TBC)

Running time: 93mins

Year: 2019

What’s the story: A group of people gather at a dead friend’s lakeside lodge to scatter his ashes. To pass the time they tell spooky stories.

What’s the verdict: Like a middle-class Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Lodge is an anthology movie containing six stories ranging from the comic to the creepy...

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...

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...

July 25, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

The biggest monster in 2018 is my dear friend who has chosen to get married abroad this August Bank Holiday weekend.

Ahem, I jest. It is, of course, a privilege to be invited to his wedding. Plus, it means I shall spend the next 12 months catching up with the fantastic films listed below. An all-year-round FrightFest? There’s an idea…

Arrow Video FrightFest 2018 sees the festival entering a remarkable 19^th year, and showing no sign of easing up on the shocks, surprises, special guests and treats.

Located at Leicester Square’s Cineworld and Prince Charles Cinema, the celebration of shivers runs from Thursday 23^rd to Monday 27^th August.

Over these five days FrightFest will showcase a record breaking seventy movies from eighteen countries...

June 13, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

Pink Flamingos. Society. Ichi the Killer. The Sound of Music. Sometimes a film comes along so wild, weird, whacked-out and debauched, it sears itself into the brain forever.

Attack of the Adult Babies is such a cinematic experience.

A suburban family stumbles upon a world of privileged perversion in a palatial country manor house. Here they discover elite middle-aged men indulging in infantalised fetishism, and it’s all about to get murderously messy. Yet, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until they get to the bottom of things.

The brain child (or baby) of Dominic Brunt and Joanne Mitchell, the team behind British horror flicks Before Dawn and Bait, and scriptwriter Paul Shrimpton, Attack of the Adult Babies is a film to witness in mouth-open disbelief...