The good, the bad and the ugly from this year’s Frightfest…
5 MUST SEE’S
Ever wondered what is lurking beneath your bed at night?
Director of REC Jaume Balaguero delivers this dark and sinister psychological
thriller about an apartment janitor Cesar who sneaks into resident Clara’s
apartment at night and hides under her bed, waiting until she is asleep to
carry out his disturbing fantasies. In addition to constructing a captivating
plot about a man’s obsession, Balaguero creates a controlled suspense as well
as a lasting intensity that seeps a creepy uneasiness.
Six tapes, six stories, six directors. An anthology of short
found footage clips that will make you give late night skyping a second
thought. Framed by a story of a group of hoodlums who are paid to break into a
house to obtain a certain rare vhs tape, the rest of the stories are the ones
that they regretfully come across during their search. Boasting variety in
plots, lengths and twists, V/H/S uses several shooting methods, covering every
piece of technology that has a record button!
Ethan Hawke stars as true-crime
writer
Elis who
is desperate to recoup his former success and make his next book a hit. But
when he moves his family to a house that was once a crime scene in a series of
family murders spanning five decades in a final hope for inspiration, he finds
a box in the attic full of reels that contain footage of these deaths.
Convinced that he is seeing mysterious figures lurking around his house that
resemble those in the footage, he soon realises that he is way beyond his
professional limits and that danger is creeping closer and closer to his
family. A nail-biting supernatural thriller by director of THE EXORCIST OF
EMILY ROSE Scott Derrickson that holds its restraint and suspense while
offering plenty of scares that will keep you jumping out of your seat.
Jennifer Chambers Lynch directs this dark chiller,
delivering what she herself describes as a psychological look into “how
monsters are born.” Cab-driver Bob spends his days kidnapping girls off the
city streets, taking them to his secluded house in the country and raping and
killing them before burying their corpses in his garage. When he carries out
this ritual on Tim’s mother, young Tim is left in the hands of the serial
killer. Time passes and, after years of being locked up and kept as a slave,
Tim must decide whether he is to stay chained up in his captures house forever
or choose the life of a killer for his freedom. Whilst CHAINED is both an
adequately moving and troubling account of a deranged man teaching a young boy
his murdering methods, the plot tries to do too much towards its conclusion and
a climatic twist opens doors that are never sufficiently closed.
SHADOW director Federico Zampaglione attempts to revive the
Italian giallo horror genre in this classic whodunit murder mystery.
Businesswoman Lisa spends her days at the top of the corporate game, but at
night her little dark secret is exercised when she regularly visits an
underground Club Tulpa where a Tibetan Buddhist guru teaches that personal
freedom can be found through promiscuous free sex. But when her lovers in Tulpa
are being murdered one by one, her secret world runs risk of being uncovered
and her life is endangered. A colourful masterpiece that closely resembles the
classic artwork and imagery of giallo directors Bava, Argento and Fulci but
which ultimately suffers in its unnecessary and distracting use of bad dialogue
and dubbing.
5 AVOID THESE
Our anguished vampire family return with a new name in this
sequel to the 2006 feature THE HAMILTONS. Desperate for some place to go after
being forced to leave their home town, the Thompson family are faced with an
offer they can’t refuse: ancient vampire clan the Stuart’s offer them shelter, solace
and a place to belong their cosy English town. But when they arrive it is clear
that their intentions are not so welcoming. The story is comprehendible and the
story runs smoothly enough, but the charming elements of its predecessor are
absent: the mystery of whether it’s entirely a vampire movie is lost, and the
poetic resonance that ‘they have a disease and are not monsters’ is
imperceptible. With its content poorly sourcing the first film of the
franchise, the quality of the plot stands alone and thus runs the risk of it
simply being another teen-vamp movie.
A child’s worst nightmare is played out onscreen when Jonny
and younger brother Gattlin are tormented at night by a terrorizing monster
hidden under their bed. With an engaging insight to Jonny’s mental and
emotional past instantly raising questions about the truth of his claims -
similar to the opening scenario in
supernatural thriller THE HAUNTING IN CONNETICUT - we are offered a promising
start. But when the brothers decide to team up in a bizarre battle with the bed
monsters with nothing more than a home-made doctor-who-like torch, the haunting
horror cripples into nothing more than a kid’s fantasy film accompanied by
cheesy acting and pointless random chunks of narrative. As the brother’s night
terror unfolds and the monsters enter next-door neighbour’s territory, it
appears that the threat is no longer restricted to under the bed - perhaps it
should have been.
Two strangers survive a road accident and wake up to find
that they are alone in their small hometown which is now an unfamiliar and
unworldly existence. Being slowly engulfed by a foreboding black mist that
conceals ravenous creatures, the two form an unlikely alliance to work out the
truth about their lonely isolation. The sci-fi thriller goes through the
motions of a struggle to understand the strange happenings in a race against
time but the outcome is realised by the viewer long before the characters
figure it out. AFTER is visually impressive in its bold exploration of
dreamlike and imaginative atmospheres and, following a similar pattern than
that seen in Gareth Evans’ MONSTERS, the blossoming relationship of the pair is
a welcome diversion from the hardships of the situation. But again this falls
short to being unconvincing and predictable- a severely dull watch after the
visual splendour of the dark fantastical ‘world’ is appreciated.
- Outpost
II: The Black Sun **
During the close of WW2, German
scientist Klausener worked on a terrifying new technology with the power to
create his own immortal Nazi army. Now a NATO force is being deployed to go to
Eastern Europe and stop whatever is relentlessly killing
everyone in its path. Ruthless war investigator
Lena
teams up with adventurer Wallace to track down infamous war criminal Klausener.
But when the duo are confronted by a swarm of Nazi Storm Troopers, they find
themselves in dead mans land and are forced to team up with the Special Unit
forces in an attempt to stop the supernatural machinery behind their monstrous
regime. While containing some brief references, the sequel lacks considerable
relevance to OUTPOST, replacing originality and horror rudiments with 100
minutes of explosively brutal action set pieces. The narrative and script is
lifeless but coherently sustained - at least until its conclusion takes several
bizarre turns, one of which in the purposeless, cackling wicked-witch type
nurse who chases the good guys around the tunnels with a hypodermic needle! The
characters are not in the slightest bit interesting (if anything too serious
for a zombie flick), nor has anything been noticeably advanced with the race-running,
knife-stabbing zombies- they’re still the blood-thirsty, human digesting brutal
blighters we saw in the first! After the mediocre success of its predecessor,
one wondered where else the franchise could go. But with this sequel set for a
straight to DVD release and with a prequel in production, prepare for yet more Nazi
Zombie regimes!
Chilean director Patricio Valladares treats
us to a large slice of exploitation of the rawest kind! Brought up in forest
isolation, tormented sisters Ana and Anny seize the opportunity to escape their
sexually abusive father when the social services call. Taking their incest
son/brother with them, the trio journey through in the woods to flee their
former lives. But big time drug boss Costello and his hot-headed henchmen are
determined to stop them in their tracks to find out where their now imprisoned
father is storing a multi-million dollar drug stash. Rape, revenge,
prostitution and cannibalism drive the shock factor in this Chilean frenzy. But
unfortunately this can only make up for the unrealistic and seemingly
motiveless madmen mafia pursuit, which too heavily features exaggerated
machismo gun shoot-outs that boast plenty of violent carnage, but cop out of
showing any respectful special effects.
More Gore to look
out for:
To see more about the event, this year’s films and what
FRIGHTFEST has in store for future dates and festivals, visit
http://www.frightfest.co.uk/
Six tapes, six stories, six directors. An anthology of short
found footage clips that will make you give late night skyping a second
thought. Framed by a story of a group of hoodlums who are paid to break into a
house to obtain a certain rare vhs tape, the rest of the stories are the ones
that they regretfully come across during their search. Boasting variety in
plots, lengths and twists, V/H/S uses several shooting methods, covering every
piece of technology that has a record button!
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