Getting the nightbus isn’t the best way to get to anything, never mind your first in-person Frightfest, but when you are 247 miles away from the event and trying to be efficient, there are few better ways to go.
So, its 12:45 am and I’m waiting outside the local BBC radio station for the coach to pick me up, alongside an array of people going to events like AEW’s Forbidden Door and the Notting Hill Carnival, amongst the many other things likely happening in the capital on an August bank holiday weekend. So off we trundle, heading to London the long way round, stopping at York, Doncaster, some god forsaken service station that’s still open at 3:30 am and then Milton Keynes. The noise from all these stops, the forced ejection at the service station and more ensured that my idea of sleeping while we travelled was killed stone dead. Arriving at London’s Victoria Coach Station at 6:30 am, and exhausted from being on that coach with next to no sleep, I walked off for Leicester Square. A highlight of that journey being the perplexed looks on Buckingham Palace’s armed guards as I exhaustedly muddled my way past them in search of my final destination. It’s an odd experience having people with powerful weaponry looking at you like that.
I got there around 8 o’ clock, too early for anything to start happening or check in to what would forsake me for the entire long weekend – my hotel. I say hotel, it was a capsule hostel as the zedwell piccaddilly regard themselves. I’ll spare you the details, but if you are claustrophobic, they are your hell, as we are taking about a box not much larger than a coffin, complete with a pull-down shutter that you’d typically get in one of those out of town self storage facilities. Everything is in that box, getting changed in that box, storage in that box, I was stuck here for the rest of this long weekend. It was a miserable start to the event, all told. I would recommend staying for one night if you are lucky enough to get one lower to the ground, I must’ve had to scale 8 feet into the air, clumsily navigating my way over steps that people used for shoe storage. That I never broke an ankle, or worse, is a small miracle, but come on, let’s be honest – my trials and tribulations getting to and staying at “the woodstock of gore” isn’t why you are here, you are here for the movies.
The first movie of my first ever frightfest was Chris Marrs Piliero’s Appofeniacs, a divisive movie among this year’s crowd. It tells three stories where horrible and ironic things happen because of one man meddling with AI and deepfake technology – all told with a clear adulation for the early career work of Quentin Tarantino. The power of AI in this movie has clearly been exaggerated for dramatic purposes, but the intent is clear – the antagonist behind all these instances wants to screw with people for the pettiest reasons. Like Tarantino, the violence escalates to some pretty gruesome climaxes, one of which includes a feral looking man on PCP masturbating so hard, he almost dies. Welcome to Frightfest, yeah? Violence aside, I fall on the negative side of reactions because of the same reasons that plagues so many other Tarantino homages – besides extreme violence, edgelord-level comedy, out of place racial slurs and smart mouthed characters there isn’t much more to it. The heart is missing and although people love this sort of vibe, sadly, I’m not one of them. I simply found it hard work, and Sean Gunn (the biggest name in this project) deserved better.
The next movie on the main screen continued that tepid start sadly with Juan Pablo Arias Munoz’s What She Doesn’t Know. It is technically a chamber horror with three young actors and a sporadically appearing Denise Richards, however, the chamber is a little larger given in that it’s a modernist Los Angelinos Mansion. With a cold open that apes the Scream bit – phone call with modulated voice – and murder of a high school aged girl, events then move to the aforementioned mansion in the hills where Indy (Siena Agudong) & Brynn (Jessica Belkin) hole up with vaguely platonic boy friend, Jordan (Conor Husting). Just the three of them in this massive mansion. eating, hanging out by the pool and getting drunk, while they hide from the genesis killer. Denise Richards turns up every now and again, becoming increasingly violent in her search for Brynn’s dad. There are some nicely shot sequences away from the main living quarters, but ultimately it spends far too much time with the CW-style teenage dramatics for it have any real impact. That alone is enough to prevent me from recommending this one, furthermore the twist isn’t all that surprising – sure, the paranormal aspect is unexpected but the hows and whys of getting there become crystal clear around 15 minutes in.
The next movie in the main screen was probably the weirdest of the weekend, Toshiaki Toyoda’s Transcending Dimensions. I’m a fan of Toyoda from the boxset third window put out a few years ago, and through that set it became apparent that there’s two modes the directors operates in: one is akin to Miike, Sono and that entire V-Cinema generation, the other creates deeply experiental oddyssey’s that evade conveniental logic whilst engaging in surrealist studies on theology. This is technically both, it goes from Toyoda regular Ryuhei Matsuda being charged to murder the enigmatic supernatural sprititualist (brilliantly acted by) Chihara Junia to Jazz implied to be played through Conch Shells, God and transcendental adventures in the furthest edges of reality and space. It’s a lot. Everything that is good about Toyoda is present here, including his sense of humour, woozy zooms and ability to edit any music into his work beautifully. At the same time, his worst excesses are here too, namely going off the deep end and feeling like you are watching the product of someone who made this while huffing paint fumes. Glad I have been in on a big screen, I’m just not sure what it is yet.
At this point in time, I was lugging my suitcase around, including carrying it up four flights of stairs for the press screen – the cardio of this weekend was no joke. After Transcending Dimensions it was time to head over to the capsule hotel to check in. And it was at this point where I was met with my great nemesis of Frightfest, ascending those steep, shallow steps to drop my stuff off. Sure, I could’ve left my luggage on the ground level of the 5th floor, but come on, this is London we are talking about. Leaving luggage out on the open like that would be far too trusting of anywhere, even with the security measures and other people doing it – I wouldn’t do that in my sleepy home town never mind crime capital of the UK. After which I was beaten by my second nemesis of the weekend, food, I went looking for somewhere reasonably chilled and utterly failed. Maybe next year I’ll crack that nut.
After that I headed to one of my rare Discovery screenings for the final movie of my first day with the World Premiere of Eric Owen’s In a Cold Vein. Opening with Evan Gamble battered and tied up in the back of a van as two sardonic would-be hitmen ponder where they can dump his body after they kill him. They don’t succeed in their attempt, now a visible injured Gamble dusts himself off and kickstarts a journey of vengeance to find out who wants him dead and kidnapped his young son. The director in the introduction described his work as “savage noir”, which is quite the fitting epithet for his micro-budgetted production. While it doesn’t do anything especially new, that is no reason to mark it down, what with it being impossible for any revenge thriller to feel fresh. That being said, Owen’s sense of humour, character work and contrasty cinematography displayed an upcoming director of immense promise. Call me a romantic, but I am far more interested in discovering new voices and potential than the prospect of a Macon Blair blair directed (the) Toxic Avenger remake. I like Blair’s work a great deal, yet seeing something that will hit the cinemas in a few days will always come second to taking a chance on something and someone new – especially when UK distribution is no guarantee for the latter.
After that, I was utterly spent, that hateful climb and bed was the only answer. Stick a fork in me, I was absolutely done.
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