Day 1 of this style of article will always have the most storytelling, after all, transport and the stories therein have more meat on the bones than me regaling you, repeatedly, about my sleeping arrangements, recalling how battered and bruised I am from climbing down from and up to my coffin in the sky. That being the case, this diary entry will be more laser focused on the movies.
Yet, before I get there I have to comment on the notion that Frightfest is welcoming to newcomers. I don’t think it’s true, but at the same time I’m not about to throw the idea out with the bathwater. First, it is a lot, it takes place in Leicester Square which is one of a handful of spots in central London that has the greatest pull on tourists from across the world. Second, people have been coming for years and years as they treat it like the centrepiece of their annual horror experience: a weekend holiday away. To dig deeper into that idea, people have been having conversations with frightfest and the fellow attendees for years, conversations that you are joining very late – you can’t be expected to jump in and immediately be up to speed. Then there’s the protocol of how you attend each event and the ticketing system, it is a lot to process, especially when you factor in the insane footfall from people passing the cinema by. It’s no wonder I was so thoroughly overwhelmed. So I’d like to position it a different way, it’s not welcoming to newcomers as the whole event is so much to take in, and being so community based, it’s only in repeated attendance that you can really become part of that family. Now, when I return next year, understand the community, the cliques (there’s a lot of them), the way things work, and the location – then, I think you can feel truly welcome. Which is a long way around to say, I think a person’s second frightfest is their first true experience.
After a lovely breakfast, where I met the Adams Family – a real imposter syndrome moment, we all have them – I headed back to the main screen on Saturday morning for the Red Mask. Ritesh Gupta’s debut is a very bold take on the idea of legacy sequels and modernist slashers, in that it imagines a legendary slasher franchise “the red mask” and has an LGBTQ+ woman (Helena Howard) hired to write a new movie for it, and that’s where events unfold. She’s staying in a cabin in the woods with her girlfriend, and together the pair roleplay the final act over and over in an attempt to try and offer something new for the slasher sickos. This all takes place to a backdrop of online hostility directed to towards Allina (Howard). And then two people who have double booked this utterly isolated Airbnb turn up, and I’ll leave it there. Some people adored this movie, whereas I run a bit more tepid. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine and fun enough while it lasts, but I have never been much of a slasher fan. Yes, there’s a great final kill and the location is visually appealing, but at the end of the day there’s a very low glass ceiling for modern slashers and all the meta-twisting and turning can’t save a movie from that fate. Maybe your mileage will vary if you’re more onboard with the Scream, I know what you did last Summer and Halloween legacy “requels”.
Staying at the main screen was one of the treats of the weekend in Marshmallow. Here’s the issue though, Daniel DelPurgatorio’s latest movie is next to impossible to talk about as it has a huge twist in act three, one that I don’t think it negotiates entirely smoothly as finding out what has just occurred deflates it posthumously as a horror movie, and the Black Mirror style final 5 minutes don’t really change that fate. Before that, however, we have a super-rare summer camp horror movie – complete with visually arresting dream sequences – that focuses its horror on the children attending the camp. Plus, the threat upon the camp is not wielding blades as their weapon of choice, rather they carry tasers, lending a unique visual identity. Beyond that, all the kids are wonderful. DelPurgatorio has a wonderful gift for directing young actors, making each one feel lived in real thanks to Andy Greskoviak’s bold script which evades the all-too-common sin of having their young cast speaking like a 30-something screenwriter.
Today was a main screen day, save one later exception, and next up was Erik Bloomquist’s Self-Help. Despite a cold open with a child accidentally but bloodily killing their promiscuous mother’-in-law’s latest conquest, horror doesn’t feel like a natural home. Many years later, that little girl has now grown up to be Landry Bender, and she receives rare correspondence from her absent mother summoning her to her side. Once there she is met with a cult-like set up led by a charismatic leader wearing a Jesus mask (it looks more like Nicolas Cage, let’s be honest) who happens to be her new Father-in-Law, and a group of other people wearing masks, masks that need to shed in order to combat their greatest mental health ill. This cult like set-up, ran by Jake Weber, uses therapy speak as a narrative impetus to challenge this group of troubled sycophants, with things escalating along the way. Escalating for sure, but horror never feels like the right destination; for example, there’s a scene where the oldest patron gouges out his eyes and this instance didn’t shock me, it made me laugh. The horror and violence is all like that, it feels like it belongs to a different movie. Don’t get me wrong, there’s potential as a dark drama about cult-like personas that deconstruction of the near mythical role therapists have in North America – but as a horror movie? No, not really.
My first Simon Rumley movie was next with Crushed. In which, Steve Oram is a priest operating in Bangkok, Thailand, where he and his Thai wife decide to get their daughter a kitten, when that goes missing their daughter gets kidnapped after she snoops around in the wrong part of town. A part of town that is home to a South African businessman who creates videos on the internet with a woman in her underwear crushing small helpless animals under foot. I don’t want to kink-shame, but that’s a line that should always be questioned. Anyway, when this young girl rocks up in his business, he decides that he can make some quick money by selling the young, innocent girl off to a paedophile. And while we don’t see anything, the off-screen dialogue of what that monster says to the young girl, and later a young boy, is far more upsetting and haunting than any of the much more traditional genre pictures showed this weekend. Eventually being reunited with their living child, the movie recalibrates to be both a theological discourse on tested faith and a light satire on the ineptitude of the justice system – especially in large cities like Bangkok. While well-made it skips a beat in its conversation about religious colonialism, it does make up for that will kill of the weekend: death by steamroller. Apparently this bleak nightmare is typical Rumley, as I heard from other frightfest attendees, still Crushed is about the truest example of a movie I never need to think about again, never mind see again.
It was time now for something away from the main screen, so off I trundled for something a little less upsetting in the shape of Andrew Mudge’s The Arborist – a misguided decision as it starts with infant death and has a central event of even more child death – oh well, it’s a horror film festival, there’s no real light relief. Inaccurately advertised as a folk horror, this was a simple historic ghost horror about a family’s legacy of death – that’s right, it’s a movie about familial grief and generational trauma. Another mild annoyance was the trope of one character questioning, gaslighting, the other’s experiences – in this case, a Mother questioning her Son. Personally I find both to be anathema to enjoyment as they have both been mined to the point of parody, but to discount every movie that hits those beats would be churlish. It would be especially foolish as the some of the horror visuals offered by Mudge count amongst the most memorable of the weekend, especially when he dips into the visual language of folk horror (it doesn’t really investigate any themes of the sub-genre). I’m a fan of the shots of a huge bindweed and a character dressed in black peering from behind it, and while it doesn’t build on that especially well, rather it becomes more of an action horror at times, that first appearance will always be powerful. A power that is embodied by the son, Wyatt (Hudson West) giving an incredibly committed, physical performance.
The final movie of the day was a movie I’ve already seen and sung the praises of, William Bagley’s Hold the Fort. Whilst I watched it for Fantasia, I will always pounce on the opportunity to see a movie I like on the big screen – especially when the big screen doesn’t have my name and email emblazoned over it as a watermark. I still enjoyed it a great deal, and I double down on the star turn being Julian Smith as HOA representative, Jerry – I hope this leads his to great places as his is an incredibly funny comic performance.
After Hold the Fort I slowly made my way to bed, blissfully unaware of the culture around the festival, where people go and when. However, this is my first time in London in half a life-time, my first film festival and my first frightfest, I’ll figure this stuff out next time and there will be a next time, The Geek Show have great plans for next year’s Frightfest.
