The Tenants is showing as part of the Hola Mexico Film Festival at  Montalbán Theatre, Regal Cinemas LA Live and LA Plaza De Cultura Y Artes. in Los Angeles on 01 June 2019. And we are honoured to welcome back author V. Castro, who has been taking a look at and interviewing the directors of two fo the horror films showing at the festival.  V has already reviewed Feral and interviewed its director, and today she takes a look at The Tenants, a film from director Chava Cartas 

If you are in LA this weekend you can purchase tickets to the film by  by clicking here 

When I was a small child my mother said I had Ojo, the evil eye. They say if you admire a child and don’t touch that child, they will become ill. Apparently, I had the Ojo, and a ritual involving an egg was performed. I also remember having a small vial of oil in my room with my name across the bottle. I was told never to open it. I was too scared to do so. Watching The Tenants (Inquilinos) reminded me of that spiritual underbelly that is very real in my culture.

A young couple appear to be very much in love but are starting over after a personal tragedy. They start a new life by moving into a new apartment. There are a few remnants of the previous tenants, like a wardrobe in the bedroom that refuses to open. As the couple begin the process of settling in, strange occurrences begin to happen. Things go missing, an older tenant warns both Luzma and Damián of danger, Luzma experiences frightening sleep paralysis. As Luzma becomes more frightened and seemingly delirious, Damián takes her to see a Curandero because she is a believer and he is not. However, the danger might not be around them, but a little closer to home.

From the start of the film you are taken to a place that can just be described as dark. You know straight away that this film has all the hallmarks of witchcraft, but it is that kind of witchcraft that is very much alive in places around the world, which means none of this could be beyond the realm of possibility. That thought alone makes my imagination go wild and scares me. Isn’t that the point of good horror?!

The entire cast give solid performances to build the sense of an evil shadow controlling the lives in this apartment complex. You are not sure until close to the end who or what might be the root of the terror. That is always difficult to accomplish in a horror film because there are so many movies using the same tropes. Danny Perea (Luzma) has the most screen time and does a great job propelling the story forward and into a downward spiral of fear.
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What I enjoyed most about this film is that it takes a different approach to the witchcraft trope in storytelling and setting. Mexico! If you are a fan of Rosemary’s Baby, The Entity, Angel Heart, or The Serpent and The Rainbow, then check out this film.  

V.Castro is the author of Maria The Wanted and the Legacy of The Keepers - her debut vampire novel series and The Erotic Modern Life of Malinalli the Vampire- an erotic novella series. You can also find her horror film reviews on

​www.scifiandscary.com.

She is a Mexican American ex-pat living in the UK for the past 12 years. As a full-time mother, she dedicates her time to her family and writing.
Violet can be found on Instagram, Twitter and at her website www.vvcastro.com 
​Contact: vvcastro100@gmail.com

Maria is a wanted woman. She's wanted by and Aztec trafficker, a cartel boss, the people she fights for, and now the Devil she can't resist.Her journey begins as a would-be immigrant turned vampire in Juarez, Mexico until the injustices of the world turn her into somehting else. She's not just out for blood, she wants answers.Maria spends twenty-two years in motel cleaning purgatory trying to keep her faith and sanity intact. When she feels all hope is lost she meets an ex-boxer that offers her a new job and teaches her to fight. During this time, she becomes an unlikely bad ass enforcer of justice for the community that has embraced her. Is she a saint or an old God from a forgotten past?

Not only does she evolve into the woman she always hoped to be, but she finds her creator – Adam- he is nothing like she imagined.  He invites Maria to travel with him to England to join The Keepers, a vampire organization led by the ancient Mordecai and Dr. Elizabeth Appleton.
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Learning that the true vampire way isn’t destruction but the safety of humanity, Maria joins The Keepers as they uncover a plot set into motion by Lucifer himself. The Keepers must end his corruption through political manipulation or watch as the world hurtles towards self-destruction.

Dir. Andrés Kaiser, Mexico, 101 mins

“Sometimes we have to forgive God’s sins”

Juan Felipe is a troubled man that experienced a troubled family life. He leaves his mother behind for a monastery where he undergoes psychoanalytic treatment. The Vatican does not approve of the treatment the monks are undergoing and the monastery severs ties with the church. Eventually Juan moves to the edge of a forest in Oaxaca where he and his closest friend find a feral child. With his background in psychology, Juan decides to take this child into his home for rehabilitation. It is an arduous journey that only becomes more intense as he and his friend make another discovery that will push Juan Felipe to the edge of his moral compass.

Religion is a curious thing. Most of the time it asks of us things that are contrary to our nature. It unites people as much as it tears them apart. Throughout the film, the church feels like a secretive monolith dominating the town and the people’s lives, and not for the better. Contrast that with the sweeping landscape of the Mexican countryside, the misty wet forest. This makes you question which is more inviting. I wanted to get lost in that forest.

Feral moves from found footage that is disrupted by static and at times grainy, which gives us a single view into what is happening in this home with an ex-priest and the children he is trying to bring into civilization and God’s grace. In fact, he names these children for the saints that were converted and martyred for not believing in the old ways. I couldn’t help but to feel that this story was almost an allegory about colonization, bringing the savages out of the cave (almost reminiscent of Plato’s The Cave?) by one that knows better. However, as history has shown, the benevolent men of God can’t always see their ways as abusive and wrong.

I have to give this film credit for filming in Oaxaca and including an indigenous woman speaking her native language. This is a wonderful to see. The entire cast give authentic performances. If I didn’t know this is a film and not a documentary, I might not have known.

This is dark, subtle psychological horror that keeps unspooling the longer you watch. The story unravels at the same rate as Juan Felipe’s ability to control a situation that is clearly beyond his capability. It begs to ask what do we do for ourselves versus for others. Can we ever be truly altruistic? Feral is the kind of film that makes a bed in your mind and doesn’t want to leave. It was creepy as it was atmospheric as I didn’t know what was going to happen next.
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This is one to watch.

Feral is showing as part of the Hola Mexico Film Festival at  Montalbán Theatre, Regal Cinemas LA Live and LA Plaza De Cultura Y Artes. in Los Angeles on 01 June 2019, if you are in the are you can purchase tickets by clicking here 

 
Dark Rift Films: Paul Butler and Stewart Sparke, makers of ‘The Creature Below’ have done it again with a partly Kickstarter funded award winning horror film.

To set the scene it’s Sophie’s 18th birthday and she’s hoping to have a quiet time of things but that’s not going to happen as her friends have organised a surprise party, and if any of the ‘teenagers’ at the party were under twenty years old I’d be surprised, but that’s not a big deal all things considered as it doesn’t detract from the film. Anyway, back to the basics… Her dad Jonas (Nicholas Vince, yes THAT Nicholas Vince from Hellraiser and Nightbreed) gives her a present, it’s a book which her mom used to read to her when she was a kid, the titular ‘Book of Monsters’, which she’s not too thrilled about having as the last time she saw said book she was eight years old and her mom was killed by a monster under the bed with the result that Sophie spent a year in an asylum getting over it.

I’m twenty five minutes into this film and I’m uncertain as to whether it’s actually supposed to be a comedy as it’s a ridiculous gore-fest in a 1980s style. A little while later and yeah, ok, it’s a comedy! The garden gnomes have confirmed that for me, I’ll not tell you why as you are probably going to want to see it for yourself. I say that as I’m only half way through it and already want to watch it again.

Full of ludicrous situations, unbelievable reactions and shonky dialogue it’s got what in a straight horror would be some serious downsides, but as it’s played for laughs it has nothing which prevents it from being highly enjoyable with far more imagination than most of its contemporaries. Right at the start I was wondering what the hell I had got myself into as it looked as if it was going to be another piss-poor attempt at a horror film but I need not have been concerned as it’s dumb, cheesy and very funny. The acting is for the most part good, the concept is overall fine if a little derivative, and I’d say that it’s well worth the addition to anyone’s collection.
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It’s available right now, so go get it as I’m giving this a solid four out of five on the Gingernutometer.

Whilst many sighed at the prospect of a new version of Pet Sematary I did not mind too much as I never had much love for the original film, which I saw on the cinema way back in 1989. One shudders at the sheer number of Stephen King adaptations which have hit the screens in the thirty years since we made that original cinematic journey to the Pet Sematary. The 1989 film was fairly faithful to the source material, this new version takes a more substantial detour from the book. However, I found the alterations in the third and final part to be an entertaining diversion, whether the many King diehards whom know the book back-to-front agree is another question.

This 2019 version was a solid, but unspectacular, take on what is an incredibly bleak book and very difficult to film without getting too schlocky or trashy. It is not creative enough to rank amongst the best of King adaptation, however, there are a lot worse on the market. Nine-year-old Ellie (Jeté Laurence) definitely has a much bigger part which cleverly alters the dynamics of the family unit and in particular the final third of the film. If film goers unfamiliar with the original King novel are encouraged to read the book they’re going to get a number of surprises that should be seen a major plus point in a story which is too familiar to many. As I said, the 1989 film was more faithful to the book, this adaptation strayed further, but could have updated even more by ramping up the evil and sense of threat, which seemed to be lacking from the overall atmosphere of the film.

The story is so well-known I’m not going to spend much time on that. Louis and Rachel Creed escape the rat race and buy a rural house close to a very busy road, which has an ancient Pet Sematary lurking behind their property. The family befriend elderly neighbour Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) who introduces Louis to the secret burial ground behind the Pet Sematary after the much-loved family pet cat Church is killed on the deadly road. The next day the cat is back, but changed, and off we go.

I have to give a special mention to the cat Church, as he was a major disappointment in both films. Why? Because in the novel he is SCARY AS HELL! I first read Pet Sematary as a 13-year-old and reread it thirty years later and one night during the revisit I had a nightmare and jumped clean out of bed. I was sure that damned cat was in the bedroom. That’s the power a scary book that gets under your skin can have which a film can never recreate, especially if it relies on jump scares, which this does. In the novel the cat is described as having a jerky kind of movement absent in both films and the level of cruelty is downplayed significantly. All Church does in the new film is scratch a couple of people, hiss a lot, kill a bird and scare the little boy. Disappointing, as in the book it truly oozed both evil and menace.

Along the way there are some decent jump scares, however, the majority of these are connected to the back-story of Rachel Creed (Amy Seimetz) who has unresolved issues over the death of a sister many years previously rather than the Pet Sematary itself. This went unexplored in the original film but is given a decent amount of screen time this time out.

The trailer (and poster) is seriously misleading as it gives off a slight folk-horror vibe, with a parade of kids with freaky masks marching to the Pet Sematary with a dead dog in a wheel-barrow. Sadly, the scene from the trailer is not expanded upon in the film and none of these other children have any part in the film and only appear in this one scene. It was freaky and ripe for development in a film that had very few characters. Featuring some other kids could have broadened the story out somewhat and was a missed opportunity to do something different.

And why not? Ellie Creed has a bigger role in this version and most crucially in the corresponding scene from the original which tears the family apart. I had not read any other reviews and welcomed this major alteration, after all, this scene from the original is highly memorable and amongst the best in the film. It would have been pointless to simply recreate it shot by shot. 
  
The acting was solid, if unspectacular, John Lithgow plays Jud Crandall very similar to Fred Gwynne in the original, if not quite as bug-eyed. Both parents interacted well with the child actors, for instance, when they attempt to explain what happens after death, but ultimately none of the leads are stretched too far.

Its weakness is the incredible familiarity of the story. We all know where it’s heading, with very few surprises along the way as we head into very standard horror-by-numbers territory into an ending that seemed quite rushed. And for the record: in the book, to find the supernatural burial ground it was much further behind the Pet Sematary and was a true hike to reach. I read elsewhere that this film was attempting to bring Stephen King to a new younger audience, hence the poster states: “From the director of IT” and so I hope it succeeds in showcasing an amazing book (and cat nightmares) to a new generation. Finally, to be fair to the film, it may well detour from the book but it does not cop out with its ending.
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3/5
Tony Jones

I was particularly impressed with the look of Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist). I felt that the work they have put into this Blu-ray really worked especially well for making the make up of the deceased Victor look especially grotesque. I felt that this is the best that it has looked. They have done an amazing job cleaning the film up and enhancing the colour and effects.

If you have never seen the original, then there is no more perfect a time. This Blu-ray release is £8.00 on Amazon, it’s a bargain. It’s packed with new features, as well as the original commentary with Mary Lambert. The film itself has never looked better in my opinion, and of course, it’s all about the Pet Sematary at the moment with the recent release of the 2019 re-imagining.

Get yourself a copy, sit down with some snacks and revisit an eighties classic.

You won’t be disappointed.
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Film - 5/5
Special features – 5/5
Lesley-Ann
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Be sure to check out our Film Review page tomorrow, when we have a review of the remake of Pet Sematary 

Run Time: 102 minutes
Director: Mary Lambert
Release: 25th Marth 2019
Starring: Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Brad Greenquist, Michael Lombard
 
Blu-ray special features:

• A look back at this classic with the cast and crew of 2019’s Pet Sematary.
• REVISITATION – NEW INTERVIEW WITH MARY LAMBERT - Director Mary Lambert shares memories of the movie.
• 3 NEW BEHIND-THE-SCENES IMAGE GALLERIES Including NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN Storyboards
• Commentary by Director Mary Lambert (original release)

• Stephen King Territory • The Characters • Filming the Horror (original release)

 
Formerly known as ‘Canaries’ but released under the title Alien Party Crashers on VOD and DVD the film has a promising start reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in that it follows reports of alien sightings from multiple locations and the promise of imminent contact. This film obviously lacks the budget of CE3K or indeed the average home movie by the overall look of the production, but I am not holding that against it as there’s so much more that I can. It may well start with locations in America and Thailand but it soon transfers to a small village in Wales with an equally small bunch of locals about to host a miniscule New Year’s party. What they don’t know is that aliens have planned to make their presence known to the authorities with a test-invasion and have chosen Lower Cwmtwrch to do it by dropping a dead Maasai Warrior on the house where the party is being held and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
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Killer aliens and brief mentions of time travel can’t prevent this film from lacking any real atmosphere, humour or excitement that could elevate this above being tedious. When the shit eventually hits the fan the film offers up some of the worst bargain-basement excuses for aliens I’ve ever seen, I kid you not, I’ve seen ordinary regular people’s Hallowe’en costumes with more going for them, I’m not talking the cool cosplay sort either, hell I’ve seen little kids in home-made monster outfits which were better thought out and scarier.

Even though classed as a comedy this wasn’t entirely played for laughs but should have been, or should have been played entirely straight, it might just have pulled through if it had and would then have been in the 1970s Dr Who level of scariness, but this mixed up attempt at an alien invasion comedy is sloppy and all somewhat pointless.

On the Gingernutometer I’m giving this a resounding one Gingernut, but only because we don’t have half Gingernuts and giving it zero would be a bit mean.

After hitting the big-time with Get Out Jordan Peele returns with his highly anticipated Us which he has written, produced and directed. Early reviews have been very positive however, I’ve avoided reading much of anything about the film as I invariably get disappointed overindulging in advance. All I was aware of was the rather intriguing basic premise: a family are stalked by a group of doppelgängers. That hook was enough to entice me to the cinema.

I was not a big fan of Get Out which was entertaining but ultimately overrated, and I have much the same opinion on Us. It was very watchable, but let’s not get carried away and trump-up a flick that has plenty of flash, but in other places had me scratching my head, particularly in the very long final twenty minutes where I drifted off somewhat. One of the things I really loved about It Follows was the fact it reveals absolutely nothing about the supernatural entity, Us does the complete opposite and bombards the viewer with a really boring information dump, before winding-up with a twist I saw coming.

The prologue takes us back to 1986 where a young girl is separated from her parents in a seaside fair and wanders into a house of mirrors where she sees a little girl who looks almost exactly like her. So, the doppelgänger concept is revealed before the opening credits begin, flashforward to the present day the little girl is now married, has two kids of her own and is heading to their holiday home which is on the side of a remote bay. We quickly realise this is in the close vicinity of the childhood seaside incident which she still has issues over in recurring dreams. The film only has a few other characters and is mainly set over one single night, much of which is very familiar territory to any home invasion movie, except for the doppelgänger angle. The scene when the twin family make their debut appearance was terrific, the son spots their shadows first “there is a family standing on our lawn” he says before things kick off. It was reminiscent of the famous pose of Alex and his ‘droogs’ standing in the tunnel in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, as were the boiler suits the doppelgängers wore.  Lupita Nyong'o was a stunning leading lady, bringing high intensity to the role, particularly when her kids are threatened, and in acting two very contrasting roles.

The middle-class family dynamics is nicely drawn and the acting is excellent, both children in particular were superb, and their doppelgänger counterparts were suitably different, but still almost identical, to add a certain level of creepiness. It was both very stylish and visual with powerful use of music, and because of this I felt it lacked old fashioned scares and the highest levels of threat came when the kids were being stalked by their doppelgänger counterparts. However, the tough teenager daughter was not to be messed with and the audience will be rooting for her in no time. There were a few jumpy moments and a couple of kill scenes which happen abruptly, but apart from that I would not call it a white-knuckle ride.  
I recall Get Out getting more outlandish as it went along and in some ways Us follows a similar pattern, however, this film does have a clever plot shift in the final third, which goes ultimately unexplored and was a tad frustrating. There is a scene in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead where the besieged characters watch TV to see about the attacks in the outside world, it’s a bit like that, it might even be deliberately referencing it?  I’m sure there will be lots of experts out there trying to decode the inner-meaning of some of the film and the symbolism used but I would not bother looking for deep social sub-contexts. Long term horror fans will pick up on the odd sly reference to other films such as C.H.U.D. which sits on a video shelf in the prologue story and has some foreshadowing on what is to come.  Something about the way the doppelgängers communicated reminded me of the very final scene featuring Donald Sutherland in the late 1970s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, again I don’t know if that was intentional or not.   

Jordan Peele seems to have become one of those directors who has risen above criticism, he’s directed two imaginative films, but neither have been complete successes. There are lots of things that do not make sense in Us, but as I want to limit spoilers you can find them for yourself. I will be interested in seeing what he does with the new episodes of The Twilight Zone, however, I do not see the point in remaking Candyman, another project he is currently involved it, I’m sure many in the horror community agree that it’s a pointless exercise.  
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High concept horror-films have their fans, and often reach a wider market with their style over substance approach, I recall shaking my head at the plaudits The Cabin in the Woods received and feel the same about Us. It’s a decent film, but if it had appeared in a streaming service I’m not sure I would have got too excited about it or pegged it as anything out of the ordinary.
3/5   

When you think of great zombie movies, what comes to mind? Dawn of the Dead? Night of the Living Dead? 28 Days Later?

All reasonable picks, but I’d like to add another to that list: Japanese comedy One Cut of the Dead.

Though the genre may give you flashbacks to 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, Shinichiro Ueda gives us something refreshingly different, but still utterly hilarious.

You’d be forgiven for disagreeing with me after seeing the first act. Much of it – lasting around 40 minutes – plays out like your run-of-the-mill apocalypse flick. Zombies have infiltrated (where else?) the set of a zombie film. There’s the dingy warehouse, a cast of stock characters, and more jump scares than you can shake a severed arm at.

The opening section has many bright spots in its own right - Takayuki Hamatsu goes all-in as the perfection-obsessed director, Chinatsu becomes a heroine you can’t help but root for, and all of it is filmed on a camera that’s constantly shaking. However, throughout this first half you can’t help but sense that something is wrong.

For example, the aforementioned camera falls to the ground during one chase sequence. You expect it to be picked up again after a few seconds, but it stays there for half a minute, filming fragments of the scuffle. Why?
These are questions we don’t get the answer to – at least, not in the first half.

I can’t give too much away about One Cut’s brilliant second act without ruining the whole film. In a nutshell, a flashback to one month earlier shows how what we’ve just seen was created.

The film’s structure is deliberately confusing. After seeing the cast as actors-playing-characters for almost a quarter of an hour, they’re now actors-playing-characters-playing-actors.... It was a change that I initially struggled to wrap my head around.

For many, this back-to-front storytelling might be a deal breaker, but I encourage you to stick with it. My five minutes of puzzlement was worth it for what came afterwards.

Act 2 is when One Cut begins to evolve into something more. We see the director Higurashi’s humble beginnings creating karaoke music videos. His teenage daughter Harumi is attempting to follow his path with little success; he recruits her, and his wife Mao, for a TV channel’s ambitious launch alongside many other acquaintances. The pace slows down here, but for an important reason – it gets you to care about these characters as more than just archetypes.

The switch into family drama pays off in the final part. Knowing the story of these people, we see the first film again – but this time, from behind the camera, with all the roadblocks involved. That’s also where the comedy ramps up; details from the second act that seemed irrelevant suddenly become pivotal. TV Tropes calls that a “Brick Joke”, and rarely have they been executed so well.

(Also, for the record – the dropped camera is one of these reframed events. You’ll have to see it to believe it.)

That being said, some aspects of One Cut’s comedy didn’t resonate with me. Yamakoe is the subject of toilet humour at one point; it’s bound to raise laughs from some but seemed out of place compared to the sophisticated jokes that followed. This will, of course, be a matter of taste.

Something else that may also throw people off is the lack of music. It’s largely confined to chase scenes in the first half, and comedic moments in the second. However, this wasn’t a huge distraction for me – the generic action movie soundtrack is just another way in which genre conventions are parodied throughout the film.

Make no mistake, though, this is a comedy that ribs on its subject with love. Nothing captures that feeling more than the climax of the movie, where the crew pulls out all the stops to grab their closing shot.

The scene is equal parts funny and sweet – much like One Cut as a whole. However, it also leaves you appreciating the work of film production crews; fitting, considering One Cut’s road to festival glory.

It was filmed in just eight days, with a cast of unknowns scouted from Tokyo’s Enbu Seminar drama school. It was originally shown on just two screens in Japan – but interest from the European festival circuit led to a re-release. Helped by a tactic of giving free tickets to moviegoers dressed as zombies, the film made more than ten times its 3-million-yen (roughly $27,000/£21,000) budget. It makes perfect sense to compare One Cut of the Dead with the likes of Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland, but the latter’s an indie production done good, in a way the other two could never claim to be.

Of course, despite the critical acclaim, One Cut didn’t get off scot-free.  There’s been some controversy in Japan about the story’s similarity to Ghost in the Box, a 2011 play by Ryoichi Wada. Ueda has openly admitted that Wada’s play inspired the structure of his film but denied copying it wholesale. Whatever its origin, worldwide audiences seem to love it regardless.

After such success, it’s only natural Ueda’s trying to follow it. At the time of writing this, he’s begun work on his next film. All we know is that it’s another comedy, with plans to start shooting in the spring – but if One Cut is anything to go by, it should be another masterpiece.
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One Cut of the Dead is not your typical zombie film. It’s got a wacky structure, but this is more than compensated for by the sincerity at its heart. For those who like their undead hordes to be self-aware rather than serious, this is the perfect tonic and earns an 8/10.

Tia Owen is a student of English & Creative and Professional Writing, currently in her second year at the University of Derby. Since getting a certificate for a thoroughly derivative superhero story at the age of six, she has been published in several Young Writers anthologies (including 2014’s War of Words) and written articles for the University’s newspaper The Phantom. She also runs her own blog, The Scribbling Student (https://thescribblingstudent.wordpress.com/), chronicling her adventures on the road to publication and giving advice to other writers.  She’s not fussy when it comes to genres, but her current big project is a historical vampire romance tentatively titled Blood Devotion. ​

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.