FrightFest — A–Z of films

There’s a sense of dread here rarely found in modern horror.

Garai has plenty of ideas and a willingness to embrace both more intellectual horror ideas and gore.

A film unlike anything else you’ll see this year.

Although the story is essentially quite simple, it’s beautifully framed, both narratively and visually.

High concept films like this can easily go awry, but Makoto Ueda’s script somehow manages to stay on the ball throughout.

There's an all too familiar kind of horror here which makes the first half of the film an uneasy watch.

A haunting and ambiguous take on the vampire myth.

The film is pretty hit and miss.

This is an impressively thorough piece of work which manages to fit in a great deal whilst remaining fun to watch.

Timely in its exploration of how we determine what’s real and how easy it is for what seems like legitimate research to become unbalanced and lead to strange places.

Foley does the hard work of internalising a struggle too often treated as vast and external.

Coming Home In The Dark takes us to familiar places and renders them strange.

Crabs! is not very good in the wrong ways.

It will delight the eyes whether or not you succeed in engaging with its underlying ideas.

Very different in tone from the average horror film, Dementer prompts questions about how we measure mental capacity, social functioning and even individuality.

This movie sucks cocks in hell.

This documentary sets out to explore the development of the phenomenon at the same time as tracking changing notions of what seems real and of how realness itself is understood and valued.

Perhaps better understood as poetry than as science fiction.

Whilst this is as scrappy as you'd expect given its financial limitations, it's quite well directed in places and stylistic choices made early on pay off nicely.

The subtlety Vogt employs as a director pays off in spades as he gets as much creepy mileage from the disturbance of soil and water as any amount of CGI could muster.

This is, at its core, a film about shattered illusions, but for most of its running time it’s surprisingly light.

The psychological drama, which Pearson handles with impressive assurance, is the strongest part of the film.

If this hits the spot for you, you’ll probably be in stitches throughout, caught in a repetitive cycle of laughter – but if it doesn’t, you’ll be a bit lost.

Molocco’s performance is excellent and will make viewers feel for Molly even if they have no experience with this type of situation.

The psychological dimension adds depth to the story.

Edoardo Vitaletti packs his frames with detail, even when the decoration is relatively sparse.

It feels less like a horror film than like a telenovela.

We spend a good deal of time getting to know them before the action starts, and these are the strongest scenes of the film.

At a breezy 80ish minutes it manages an ending that asks questions of us without indulging too much in the temptation to dig up answers.

One of the finest films of the year.

Keating is a master of building up atmosphere and is much more interested in that than in conventional plot mechanics.

Despite the whole thing being incredibly messy, it's eye-gogglingly enjoyable at the same time.

As sweet-natured as it is bloody, Red Snow is anchored by an ebullient performance from Cisneros, who is in almost every scene yet never seems to flag.

Easy come, easy go entertainment for those who want to enjoy a bit of violence and still feel good about themselves.

The sheer quantity of imitable violence in the film is likely to frighten censors around the world.

It’s always nice to see alien encounters explored in a way which genuinely feels alien, breaking with narrative convention.

It’s all very handsomely shot, with a feisty soundtrack and ebullient sense of humour, but too often it feels as if it’s just being quirky for the sake of it.

In the end, The Show bites off more than it can chew, but it makes a good effort and there’s plenty there to please the fans.

Both Maturo and Manning are superb in this film, and it’s the chemistry between them that really makes it.

A stylistically innovative, intelligent piece of work.

If you're a fan of Three Stooges-style silent slapstick but wish it came with a lot more gore, then, Sweetie, you won't believe what a treat you are in for

Ultrasound is a slippery little puzzle of a film. It's cleverly put together and really quite neatly tied together, though not every viewer will successfully unravel it or, for that matter, make it to the end.

Rather than trying to establish a thesis of her own, Janisse allows her interviewees to deliver contradictory viewpoints on key issues, and the film is richer for it.