Glasgow Frightfest 2022 – A Film Festival in Review

Glasgow FrightFest 2020 was one of the last film festivals to take place in BC (Before COVID), and the subsequent two years saw film festivals along with so much more turn online. In March 2022, FrightFest Glasgow returned with a vengeance, screening 12 films over three days at the beautiful Glasgow Film Theatre, including various premieres. The festival offered a range of folk horror, vampire comedy, zombie apocalypse and macabre families, enough to serve any discerning horror fan. There were also lively introductions from the festival organisers as well as the filmmakers themselves, who also stayed for Q&As so as to allow greater insight into their creative processes. Great times were had on the screens as well as the surrounding bars, but what about those films?

After world events led to a change in the programme, the festival opened with the world premiere of NIGHT’S END, a claustrophobic shut-in horror from Jennifer Reeder who previously delivered the dreamlike KNIVES AND SKIN. Then the followed day provided a full run of ghoulish delights. First up was the Scottish premiere of LET THE WRONG ONE IN, a gloriously silly and gleefully gory horror-comedy that offered bloody fun, the re-evaluation of life and some amusing points about brotherly love. If you have ever had a difficult relationship with a sibling, count yourself lucky it’s not as awkward as that of Matt (Karl Rice) and Deco (Eoin Duffy). Deco had a typically rough night on the town, but less typical are his fangs, allergy to sunlight and hunger for blood. Caught between loyalty to his brother and a sense of self-preservation, Matt finds himself highly conflicted. Matters escalate when vampire hunter Henry inserts himself into proceedings, played by the inimitable Anthony Head that will delight many a fan of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Head provides a wonderfully dry contrast to the bewilderedness of the ‘boys’, and in the Q&A writer-director, Conor McMahon clarified that Head was dream-casting for the role. Much hilarity ensues throughout the film, with the perils of direct sunlight, sudden blood eruptions and garlic mayonnaise all providing sources of humour. And yet at its (bloody) heart, LET THE WRONG
ONE IN never fails to be warm and affectionate towards its very messy characters.

LET THE WRONG ONE IN proved to be the first of a strong Irish contingent, as Friday also featured possibly the highlight of the festival with YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER (review forthcoming), in its UK premiere. This moody, crawling, atmospheric and melancholic folk horror blended familial troubles, mental health and untrustworthy bodies. Debut writer-director Kate Dolan deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as filmmakers like Jennifer Kent, Rose Glass and Prano Bailey-Bond, demonstrating that the future of horror truly is female. Hazel Doupe is Char, a teenage girl whose mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) struggles with mental health issues, goes missing and then returns somewhat different than Char and her grandmother Rita (Ingrid Craigie) remember. Earlier events in Char’s life prompt Rita to suspect the supernatural, and despite her scepticism, Char also comes to suspect that something is very wrong. Mixed in with these otherworldly concerns are very relatable issues of family illness, bullying and community attitudes, the Dublin locations lending a wonderfully lived-in environment. Occupying a rich liminal space of both social realism and folk horror, YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER is a modern gem.

Terror from the Emerald Isle continued on Saturday with MANDRAKE, an initially clammy and atmospheric folk horror that unfortunately escalated into less convincing territory (full review available here). Saturday closed with possibly the scariest film of the festival, the UK premiere of the Irish-based THE CELLAR, a drip-feed delivery of dread with gothic spaces, occult terror and malevolent mathematics. That may sound like an unlikely combination, but a genuinely terrifying experience that includes a very simple yet viciously effective version of Hell. When the Woods family move into a new home, teenage daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) disappears in the titular subterranean room, counting as she does so. Her parents Keira (Elisha Cuthbert) and Brian (Eoin Macken) have little to go on, other than strange markings over various doors and an equation carved into the cellar floor. From here, writer-director Brendan Muldowney delivers an atmospheric and thoroughly chilling blend of dimensional equations, terrifying shapes and social media algorithms to create a traditional horror in a thoroughly modern setting. Family is also the source of horror in HOMEBOUND, a tense, taut, claustrophobic mystery of paedophobia, isolation and true domestic horror. The full review of this UK premiere from Sebastian Godwin can be found here.