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Festival coverage

Abertoir

13 November – 18 November 2018

Piercing
Piercing

Wales' number one horror festival returned in 2018 for another spooktastic November with Friday The 13th director Sean S Cunningham as its special guest and a selection of scary films that was guaranteed to please. Its big focus was on classic slasher movies but it also featured some of the most highly acclaimed horror films found on the festival circuit that year.

The festival ran from 13 to 18 November.

View complete schedule

Other years (12)

Box office and information

Latest reviews

  • Friday the 13th
    Review preview for Friday the 13th

    Friday The 13th is a well made but fairly unremarkable film. What about it could so incense the white male American critic?

    Donald Munro · 3 out of 5
    A series of vicious murders occurs at a summer camp.
  • One Cut Of The Dead
    Review preview for One Cut Of The Dead

    A film that understands its audience exceptionally well.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    Shooting a zombie movie in one take is harder than you think...
  • The Wind
    Review preview for The Wind

    Teresa Sutherland's script finds Gothic tensions in a landscape where the imaginary has as much power to harm as the real.

    Jennie Kermode · 3 out of 5
    On the Western frontier of the United States of America in the late 1800s, a plains-woman is driven mad by the harshness and isolation of the untamed land.
  • Piercing
    Review preview for Piercing

    Without a doubt, Pesce is one of the most exciting young directors to emerge in recent years.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A man seeks out an unsuspecting stranger to help him purge the dark torments of his past. His plan goes awry when he encounters a woman with plans of her own. A playful psycho-thriller game of cat-and-mouse.
  • Assassination Nation
    Review preview for Assassination Nation

    Older viewers may find it too much but it's spot on for what it's trying to achieve.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    This is a 1000 percent a true story about how the quiet, all-American town of Salem, absolutely lost its mind.
  • Tumbbad
    Review preview for Tumbbad

    If we have, ourselves, become greedy to know exactly what the secret is by this point, Barve certainly does not disappoint.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    A greedy boy seeks out hidden riches in the dungeon beneath an ancestral house guarded by a terrifying deity.
  • The Last Man On Earth
    Review preview for The Last Man On Earth

    Well established as a player of scholarly roles with a hint of madness, Price fits the original character of this story better than anyone else.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    When a disease turns all of humanity into the living dead, the last man on earth becomes a reluctant vampire hunter.
  • In Fabric
    Review preview for In Fabric

    You might not think you're in the mood for buying, but his extravagant sales pitch is likely to win you over by the end.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    Two stories about a cursed dress and its victims.
  • Cam
    Review preview for Cam

    Screenwriter Isa Mazzei is a former camgirl herself and it shows in the film’s focus on the business side of proceedings, but director Daniel Goldhaber extends her work in a much stranger direction.

    Jennie Kermode · 3 out of 5
    A sex cam worker finds that her identity has been appropriated by a mysterious doppelgänger.
  • Anna And The Apocalypse
    Review preview for Anna And The Apocalypse

    Any film that has both a fight director and a dance choreographer is probably doing something right.

    Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
    When the zombie apocalypse hits the sleepy town of Little Haven - at Christmas - teenager Anna and her high school friends have to fight, sing and dance to survive, with the undead horde all around them.

A–Z of Abertoir 2018 reviews

Features

  • Unnatural pleasures
    Nicolas Pesce on working with Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowski and channelling Hitchcock in Piercing
  • Rhapsody in red
    Peter Strickland on dreaming through films and In Fabric