 The biggest event of the year for horror fans in Scotland – not that we get much – Glasgow FrightFest offers a chance to get the first look at a bunch of horror films that will be subject of excited conversations for months to come... as well as one or two that may never be heard of again. This year was the first time I've ever attended and I fully intend to return. The organisers put together a really well-executed event with a terrific atmosphere in a great venue. And the carefully-curated line-up of films wasn't so bad, either. FrightFest opened on Thursday, February 28th, with a screening of LORDS OF CHAOS, which I did not attend, but which has been heavily reviewed elsewhere. The other 11 films were shown over the following two days, including a number of world, European and UK premieres. And I watched them all. These are my reviews. DAY 1 Friday kicked off in stylish but subdued fashion, with LEVEL 16, a dystopian thriller about a group of young women being raised within the windowless confines of a prison/boarding school where obedience is prized above all else. As she approaches graduation, Vivien (Katie Douglas) begins to suspect something more sinister may await her than the adoption to a loving family she has been promised. Though it has an intriguing and carefully crafted first half, it lags in the second, leaking tension when it should be ramping up and robbing the reveal of what is really happening – which really is pretty horrifying – of much of its impact. The excellent performances (Douglas in particular) will keep most viewers invested up to the anticlimax. DEAD CENTRE, at first glance, seemed like it was going to be much more exciting, opening as it does with a compelling sequence in which an apparent homicide victim wakes up in the morgue, breaks out and finds himself a bed in the hospital ward. Discovered later in a catatonic state, he is admitted to the psychiatric unit by a kindly doctor (Shane Carruth) who tries to figure out what's wrong with him, unaware it may be supernatural, rather than psychological. The film is never better than its first few minutes, which set up the psychiatric unit in vivid, chaotic clarity. Unfortunately, the rest is a drag, with the doctor and lethargic medical examiner taking almost the entire running time to figure out what the audience already knows – and then doing astonishingly little about it as the film limps to its predictable conclusion. A welcome hand grenade of madcap energy deployed just when it was needed most, HERE COMES HELL is a real crowd-pleaser. A low-budget comedy horror that feels like THE OLD DARK HOUSE crossed with EVIL DEAD (and if you don't think that combination can work you really need to see it), it finds five friends gathering for a séance at an English manor – and accidentally unleashing the forces of darkness. The painstaking attention to detail in evoking the black and white chillers of the 1930s is impressive, but the real fun begins when the splatter effects come out. Bursting with energy and inventiveness – and lifted by pitch-perfect performances from the entire cast – I imagine you'll be hearing a lot more about HERE COMES HELL very soon. Creative and visually striking, BLACK CIRCLE feels like the kind of film David Cronenberg could have made if he moved to Sweden in the 1970s. Isa and Celeste are a pair of sisters whose lives are changed for the better – and then very much for the worse – by the discovery of a rare album produced by magnetic hypnotist Christina Lindberg (THEY CALL HER ONE EYE). Combining New Age psuedo science, an extra-dimensional Lovecraftian mythos and an analogue approach to its special effects, this is a strange and mesmerising beast. It is also definitely a film for fans of exploitation siren Lindberg, who completely takes over as soon as her character appears on screen. A confusing and curiously low-stakes climax mean the ending is less interesting than the beginning, but the overall aesthetics and ideas in play make BLACK CIRCLE a trip worth taking. While it almost certainly had the biggest budget of any film in the line-up, DEAD ANT (aka GIANT KILLER ANTS) looks the cheapest, as a cast of semi-recognisable faces do battle with terrible CGI. The premise? The members of a past-their-prime rock band head into the desert to indulge in hallucinogens and get on the wrong side of the local ant population. If you've seen any comedic creature feature, you know how this sort of thing goes. DEAD ANT is certainly much better than the likes of SHARKNADO but falls far short of TREMORS or even PIRANHA 3D. It distinguishes itself from most films of its ilk by having the decency to be genuinely funny and by wringing strong, committed performances out of its cast. While it's unlikely to become a cult classic, DEAD ANT has enough charm that I can imagine it winning a few very loud, enthusiastic fans. DAY 2 Saturday began with a 10.45am screening of THE RUSALKA (aka THE SIREN) and thank goodness they showed it in the morning and not late at night, when it would have surely put me to sleep. About as pretentious as indie arthouse horror gets, the film actually opens with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, which rightly got my alarm bells ringing. It concerns a man who visits a lake where lots of people have been drowning, encounters a young woman who apparently lives in the water and completely fails to put two and two together. He's a mute water-phobe who's desperate to get laid. She's a living ghost who likes to drown random men. Could they possibly be any more perfect for each other? Very much paddling in the same pool as the superior SPRING, THE RUSALKA aims to win hearts with its shallow romance, but arrives pretty much dead in the water. For me, it was probably the low point of the festival. Talking of low points, for a number of attendees, AUTOMATA was theirs. And while I would suggest that many of the comments I heard voiced about it were a little unfair, it is certainly a frustrating viewing experience. To independently produce a film this daft and idiosyncratic in Scotland is a true achievement and deserves respect, but it still feels compromised. Following an academic and his stepdaughter as they attempt to verify the authenticity of a 17th century automaton while being slowly seduced by the perverted spirits that surround it, AUTOMATA doesn't lack for ambition, but feels like it is constantly holding back, never daring to pursue its own dark heart. While it boasts gorgeous visuals, great locations and costumes as well as some “interesting” performances, it is much too tame to succeed as an erotic horror. But at least it's never boring. Talking of boring (last time I use that segue), FINALE... is. A film about a couple of petrol station attendants kidnapped and forced to appear in an online snuff show, it is unusual in that it is Danish and Danish horror films are, so I'm told, fairly unusual. But in all other regards it's pretty standard stuff. We know from the opening scene that the girls have been abducted but we're forced to sit through flashback after flashback of them being tediously menaced at the petrol station before we're finally plunged into the horror in the third act. While the violence is at least gruesome and gory, it's not very inventive and even those who have yet to get their fill of torture porn flicks will probably be getting impatient long before the end. (A brief note: Walking home after FrightFest had finished, I was trying to recall each of the 11 films I'd seen, but I could only get to 10. I was racking my brains for ages trying to remember the missing film that I knew I had seen just a few hours earlier but had already completely forgotten about. FINALE was it.) The 1000th film to be screened at FrightFest, THE WITCH: PART 1 – THE SUBVERSION is much better than its exhausting title makes it sound, though it is still – in parts – pretty exhausting. The story of an amnesiac girl living on a farm in Korea who, when she participates in a TV talent show, reveals herself to be an escapee from a super-soldier programme, it is, for the first half, a fairly heart-warming family drama. After the villains show up, the exposition endurance test begins, with much of the rest of the film playing out like one of those interminable METAL GEAR cut scenes or a foreign soap opera where the dialogue is comprised of characters saying the same things to each other over and over again, but in slightly different ways. There's no denying that, when it comes, the action is electrifying and bloody as hell, but there's not nearly enough of it. Maybe in PART 2. The biggest hit of the night, the festival and, for me personally, one of the best films I've seen in the last five years, FREAKS is a true joy that everyone should see – ideally knowing as little about it as possible. Avoid the trailers, avoid the reviews, just go see it. That should be my review. But I'll say just a little more, for anyone who's not convinced. A young girl is being raised by her father in a dilapidated, possibly haunted old house, where he teaches her to lie about her circumstances and warns her never to go outside or interact with any of the neighbours – especially not the creepy old ice-cream man. The mystery of what the hell is going on is captivating, but eclipsed by the masterful reveal, unfolding a fantastical, almost Spielbergian adventure with a serrated dark edge all of its own. It's a small film set in a big world with big themes, emotional to watch, easy to fall in love with and the only film that made me forget I was at a festival or that I had to write a review afterwards. It even made me forget all about the pain in my knees, which by this point had spent the better part of two days being constrained by the Glasgow Film Theatre's slightly-too-close-together seats. An ingenious, nail-biting, furiously exciting story told with seemingly no budget, I have no idea how FREAKS got made, but I'm delighted it was. All I have left are superlatives. Go see it. Rounding off the FrightFest experience was THE HOARD, a parody of a hoarders reality TV show that is so perfectly executed it would not surprise me if the crew from one of those shows made it on their weekends off. The team from EXTREMELY HAUNTED HOARDERS (which I'm frankly surprised is not a real show) undertake their toughest assignment yet. High jinks ensue. After a barnstorming first half hour, the jokes come fewer and further apart, but it's harmless stuff and made for a nice way to wind down at the end of the festival. The only better way to watch it, I think, would be happening across it by accident on the TV after coming home from the pub. If that ever happens to you, watch it.  John McNee is a writer of numerous strange and disturbing horror stories, published in a variety of strange and disturbing anthologies, as well as the novel PRINCE OF NIGHTMARES. He is also the creator of twisted sludge-city of Grudgehaven and the author of GRUDGE PUNK, a collection of short stories detailing the lives and deaths of its gruesome inhabitants, plus the sequel, PETROLEUM PRECINCT. He lives on the west coast of Scotland, where he is employed as a journalist. He can easily be sought out on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter and YouTube, where he hosts the horror-themed cooking show A RECIPE FOR NIGHTMARES. Twitter: @THEJohnMcNee website: www.johnmcnee.com Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y6k7l5ac YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/yc33j9d6   |
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