‘The horror we are showcasing this year is interior, intelligent, engaged and explosive. It delights in the genre as much as it bends and redefines it. We are so proud of our 2023 lineup and so excited to share it with you all.’ (Acting co-director Leonie Rowland) Manchester’s International Festival […]
Pop Culture
Transmission (Frightfest 2023) (Review)
The “lost media” trope, a centrally important one in online horror fiction, seems to have had its old-media coming-out party this year, with lost episodes and unfinished films turning up in everything from Boots Riley’s Amazon Prime series I’m a Virgo to Graham Hughes’s new film Hostile Dimensions (also showing at FrightFest 2023). Now […]
The Moor (Frightfest 2023)(Review)
The landscapes of Britain can suggest a rustic charm and beauty, but they’re also ripe for folk horrors like The Wicker Man and Enys Men. Some of the most evocative locations are the various moors scattered across the land, which can be everything from the setting of Sir Arthur Conan […]
Trim Season (Frightfest 2023)(Review)
Cannabis and horror have a complicated relationship that should be no surprise considering that the drug has been the focus of conservative moral panic from the reefer madness of the ‘30s to the D.A.R.E. campaigns of Reagan’s America. The genre has a history of playing on and exploiting the cultural […]
Werewolf Santa & Cold Meat (Frightfest 2023)(Review)
In Werewolf Santa we follow Lucy, the host of a YouTube channel called Monster Hunters that’s not doing too well. Returning to her hometown for Christmas only emphasises all the ways her life is going off the rails, and after a tense Christmas Eve with her mum (Carol), Lucy and […]
Sympathy for the Devil (Frightfest 2023) Nicolas Cage finds a new vehicle for his insanity (Review)
Every fresh Nicolas Cage film comes with a rare weight of expectation, and 2022 saw that come to a head with a film whose title and content seemed to embody that thought. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – where the image of Nicolas Cage embraced its own meme – […]
T Blockers (Frightfest 2023)(Review)
Alice Maio Mackay is a horror phenomenon. At 18 years old she has already directed three genre features in the span of three years, with another two pictures in post-production at the time of writing. More importantly, she’s an out-and-proud transgender woman who isn’t afraid to let the world know […]
Minore & The Weird Kidz (Frightfest 2023) (Review)
MINORE The poster for Minore promises a ‘new Greek monster movie’, and while that’s exactly what this film is, it is perhaps more interesting in its build up to the arrival of said monsters. The movie follows a sailor on shore-leave who visits a small Greek coastal town looking for […]
Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow (FrightFest 2023) (Review)
Jake West’s new documentary, Mancunian Man, opens with a quote from its subject, the late director, actor, bouncer and bodybuilder Cliff Twemlow: “It is far better to be a resident on the brink of hell than spend a whole life in pursuit of a mythical heaven“. Which is an odd […]
The Black Mass & Black Mold (Frightfest 2023) (Review)
The Black Mass January 14th, 1978. While a mysterious man shaves, a warped voiceover explains how murderers have no identifiable features, which means that anybody in your life could be demonic. That chilling realisation lingers as the unnamed man (Andy Sykes), walks into a store intending to charm people, pick […]