FrightFest

Latest reviews

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  Dachra

  Review preview for Dachra

  This is an unusually clever piece of genre cinema which also resonates emotionally.

  A group of journalism students discover a hidden tribal society that has cultivated a way of life brimming with ancient practices and beliefs, rituals and blood.
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  Rock, Paper And Scissors

  Review preview for Rock, Paper And Scissors

  Most interesting for its nicely balanced performances.

  Jesus and Maria José live together in the grand house that belonged to their recently deceased father. Their playful routine is disrupted when Magdalena, their half-sister on their dad’s side, returns from Spain asking for her part of the inheritance which they have no intention of sharing.
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  Bullets Of Justice

  Review preview for Bullets Of Justice

  In a film that sees teabagging used as a combat move, pretty much anything goes.

  During World War III, the American government initiates a secret project codenamed ‘Army Bacon’ in order to create super soldiers by inbreeding humans with pigs. 25 years later the hybrid Muzzles have occupied the top of the food chain, eating and farming humanity.
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  The Perished

  Review preview for The Perished

  Not a great film, but more nuanced than it has been given credit for.

  Dealing with a pregnancy termination in Ireland has been hard for Sarah Dekker. Shunned by her religious zealot family and unforgiving boyfriend, she travels to a friend’s country house to recover. But unbeknownst to her, it sits atop a mass grave of unwanted babies and their lost, confused sprits want to be reborn.
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  Spiral

  Review preview for Spiral

  Bowyer-Chapman is superb.

  A same-sex couple move to a small town so they can enjoy a better quality of life and raise their 16-year-old daughter with the best social values. But nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighbourhood, and when Malik sees the folks next door throwing a very strange party, something has got to give.
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  The Wretched

  Review preview for The Wretched

  The tropes it uses are old ones but simplicity works in their favour, adding to the sense that there are uncanny powers at work and that nothing is quite what it seems.

  A defiant teenage boy, struggling with his parent's imminent divorce, faces off with a thousand year-old witch, who is living beneath the skin of and posing as the woman next door.
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  Daniel Isn't Real

  Review preview for Daniel Isn't Real

  Schwarzenegger handles his role with a restraint unusual in actors his age, so that even viewers with a strong sense of what's coming will warm to him or wonder how bad he can really be.

  A troubled college freshman, Luke, suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend Daniel to help him cope.
• 
  Depraved

  Review preview for Depraved

  At the centre of the film, Breaux is superb, not only capturing the pathos vital to the monster but carrying him through the long, slow process of cognitive development and emotional realisation without ever striking a false note.

  A disillusioned field surgeon suffering from PTSD makes a man out of body parts and brings him to life in a Brooklyn loft.
• 
  Rabid

  Review preview for Rabid

  Rose has the qualities of an archetypal, folkloric figure, enduring the same events over and over again in different places, in different forms.

  A remake of David Cronenberg's original, in which experimental plastic surgery leads to a sudden outbreak of disease.
• 
  The Sonata

  Review preview for The Sonata

  Janis Eglitis' exquisite cinematography is beguiling in the proper sense.

  After the death of her estranged but famous composer father Richard Marlow, young virtuoso violinist Rose inherits his old French mansion. There, she discovers her father’s final work: a mysterious score marked with arcane symbols. He may be dead but his plans for her are still very much alive.

A–Z of FrightFest 2019 reviews →

Features

• Forbidden fruit
  Keola Racela on wholesomeness, horror and comedy in Porno
• Messing about in boats
  Rob Grant on superstition, Harpoon and the art of keeping still
• Facing the music
  Andrew Desmond on Freya Tingley, Rutger Hauer, Alexis Maingaud and The Sonata
• Getting under the skin
  The Soska sisters on Rabid, female relationships, #MeToo and being back at Frightfest
• Challenging images
  The Soska sisters on David Cronenberg, plastic surgery, transhumanism and remaking Rabid
• Meeting the wolf man
  Gavin Baddeley on a cinematic history of lycanthropes and writing The Frightfest Guide To Werewolf Movies
• Five films to sink your teeth into at Frightfest
  A Good Woman Is Hard To Find, Satanic Panic, Harpoon, The Sonata and Come To Daddy
• Thinking big
  Zach Lipovsky and Adam B Stein on Freaks, Bruce Dern and telling big stories with small budgets
• A tale of the unexpected
  Zach Lipovsky and Adam B Stein on keeping viewers guessing, working with children, and Freaks
• Different for girls
  Jennifer Reeder on teenage lives, adult epiphanies, #MeToo and Knives And Skin
• A woman's story
  Pollyanna McIntosh on Darlin’ and the wildness in all of us
• Dinner and devilry
  Jack McHenry and Margaret Clunie on Here Comes Hell

News

• Full Frightfest line-up announced
  Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is among the treats in store
• Come To Daddy to open Frightfest
  Elijah Wood thriller headlines horror festival