I’d heard a lot of hype about GRIND from its American festival run, and as someone already a fan of Brea Grant’s directorial work, I went in curious but without fixed expectations — anthologies haven’t exactly been in their halcyon era lately. What I got was one of the most […]
Movies & Documentaries
Drag (Frightfest 2026)
Like all the best discoveries at a film festival, I went into Drag with no expectations whatsoever, and whether that helped or not, this ended up being the most fun I had at FrightFest. Directed by Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, with Danny DeVito as co‑producer, the film constantly shifts […]
What to look out for at Fantastic Fest 2026
Born at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, Fantastic Fest seems to spread its geographical and cultural remit a little further every year. There aren’t many genre festivals that can boast an advance screening of a likely Oscar contender, as well as restored silent movies and new films from Venezuela, […]
Invoking Scream (Frightfest 2026)
Invoking Scream does something immediately helpful: it explains the plot of Invoking Yell in its opening minutes, and as someone who hasn’t seen the first film, I appreciated the clarity. The original was shot to look like it was made in 1997, full of found‑footage visual degradation, grimy textures, and […]
Binding Eva (FrightFest 2026)
For a small island, there’s a pretty substantial division between the British countryside and its urban neighbours. You can see it reflected in our film genres. Barring one brief flurry of rural realism about ten years ago (The Levelling, God’s Own Country etc.) most kitchen-sink dramas are set in towns […]
The Death of Us (Frightfest 2026)
One of the films featured in this year’s Fresh Blood slate, The Death of Us marks festival regular Annabella Rich’s directorial debut. It opens in a heightened dramatic register that leans into melodrama, a deliberate pitch that has become increasingly common in modern horror, and Rich embraces a mode where […]
Big Baby (Frightfest 2026)
The tagline for SCREAM warns that ‘Someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far’. With BIG BABY, the love for scary movies is clear from the filmmaker, while the participation of the protagonist in the genre is what goes too far. Despite this apparent convolution, BIG […]
Welcome to G-Town (FrightFest 2026)
For all it’s a major horror festival, FrightFest always finds the space for little low-budget oddities, and sometimes these can be the most rewarding films on the schedule. A case in point is Welcome to G-Town, directed by twin brothers Nathan and Ben McQuaid. It opens with a caption explaining […]
Nervous (Frightfest 2026)
One of the opening‑night main‑screen titles, Nervous set the tone for the sheer number of Korean projects at this year’s FrightFest. It’s the latest from Abner Pastoll, director of A Good Woman Is Hard to Find, and reunites him with Sarah Bolger. Here, Sarah (Sarah Bolger) and Sungsoo (Sungsoo Yune) […]
The Flesh Itself (Frightfest 2026)
Brazilian cinema is having quite the moment, with not one but two wildly different horrors arriving at FrightFest. One is a gross‑out comedy of insane-o escalation; the other, Ian SBF’s The Flesh Itself, is about absolute desperation. Three soldiers, deserters fleeing the horrors of the Paraguayan War have abandoned the […]