Frightfest 2022 Day Two - Friday

The Breach

 

A catalogue of missed opportunities might be the best way to describe THE BREACH, a film in which there are weird goings-on in a weird isolated house where a weird scientist has been creating weird creatures. Unfortunately the pace is glacial to the point where you want to shout at the screen and there's far too little explanation as to what's actually going on. Peppering your dialogue with terms like 'particle accelerator' and 'Cerne' won't fob us seasoned veterans off, you know, it just confirms that your film is essentially an empty collection of cliches, right down to a love triangle that's ultimately as pointless and boring as the rest of the film. Some excellent makeups effects are squandered and even the music score (by Slash) could have saved some of this but it doesnt feel as if he thought it was worth the bother either. 

Hounded

A gang of crooks breaks into a country house to steal a valuable knife at the request of dodgy antiques dealer Larry Lamb. But they've only just started prowling around when the family that lives there knocks them out with tasers. Soon they're dumped in a field and the subject of a hunt, complete with horses and hounds. HOUNDED deals with its subject matter in very broad stokes, with its examination of class differences little more than perfunctory. Adam Levins' 2015 ESTRANGED tackled the class issue  much better, while Craig Zobel's THE HUNT is a better and more complex exploration of the basic idea. Finally, it's always awkward when a film requires you to root for criminals and while HOUNDED tries hard it's an uphill struggle to feel any sympathy for them. 

HOUNDED is getting a release from Signature Entertainment in October

Orchestrator of Storms

An ORCHESTRATOR OF STORMS is how French director Jean Rollin described what he wanted to be when early on in his life he decided film-making was the career for him. And what a bumpy, poorly-budgeted, often even more poorly received (critically at least) career that turned out to be, with formal appreciation of his work only coming quite late in life. Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger's nearly two-hour documentary covers the entirety of Rollin from birth to death, with plenty of interviews from the like of stars Brigitte Lahaie and Francoise Pascal and distributor Nigel Wingrove, whose Redemption Films was the first time many of us in the UK got to experience a Rollinade. There's plenty of time spent on many of the films we all know and love him for, although some do get skipped over, while the part about his death could perhaps have done with editing down, but overall this is a solid, thorough  piece about a vital contributor to horror, art house and European cinema as a whole and Ballin and Ellinger have done an excellent job of documenting the life and career of this unique and, now, deservedly much-loved and respected genre auteur.

ORCHESTRATOR OF STORMS will be coming out from Arrow Films

Night of the Bastard

A glorious grindhouse tribute with a grim and grisly prologue set in 1978 before we flash forward 40 years to enjoy some naked devil worship ih the desert and a good old-fashioned siege as the satanists' intended victim escapes and ends up at the house of a local eccentric whose only friend is a terrapin. Shot 'off grid' this was everything that's right about low-budget independent film-making - tightly editedm action-packed and with moments that made the audience roar with applause.

Final Cut

Who would have guessed that the French would remake the Japanese hit ONE CUT OF THE DEAD? And who would have guessed that it would be done so successfully? Even if you are more than familiar with the original FINAL CUT offers plenty of laughs, a few surprises and even goes a little bit meta. Not the week to give up watching remakes.

Midnight Peepshow

An anthology horror film with three stories from three different directors, but always intended as a single movie (rather than the unsavoury practice of welding three unrelated short films together). This gives MIDNIGHT PEEPSHOW a definite coherence but also means the three tales of sex and horror are possibly a bit too similar, all of them crossing elements of HOSTEL with SAW. They are also surprisingly coy when it comes to nudity. Jake West has improved as a director since the days of RAZOR BLADE SMILE and EVIL ALIENS and his closing segment is the most extreme, so things do climax on a suitably gory note, with the wraparound also having a satisfying payoff,

Frightfest 2020 Day Five - Monday

Enhanced

If you hang around at Frightfest for long enough, sooner or later a version of the kind of movie Empire Pictures used to do so well back in the 198os will turn up. Unfortunately ENHANCED is nowhere near as good as the films Charles Band and Co. used to turn out, saddled as it with a derivative script, uncharismatic performances, and a dead serious po-faced approach that makes the whole thing feel very much like a sub-par X-Men knock off.

AV The Hunt

Brutal and uncompromising, this Turkish film is the kind of thing that Frightfest showcases so well. As a result of an affair a woman finds herself on the run from the male members of her family who are determined to kill her to avenge the honour they feel has been besmirched by her act. Action packed from the off with plenty of nail-biting suspense as well as social commentary this could be the film of the festival. And of course I'm not going to tell you if it has a happy ending or not. 

Dark Stories

The final film for this year's August Frightfest is a French anthology picture with five stories and a bizarre (and at the same time somewhat perfunctory) wraparound where Kristanna Lokken tells stories to a talking doll that has her tied up in her basement. The first story is set in an art gallery and has a fantastic central idea about ghouls hiding in paintings. Other stories include a park filled with ghosts and a splendid tale of a girl who unwittingly brings a Jinn back from Morocco. The final story boasts Dominique Pinon (DELICATESSEN) and Michelle Ryan (COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES) and while pleasant enough doesn't really have the punch to end a horror anthology. Still, DARK STORIES was a decent festival closer.


And that's it! The first ever digital Frightfest! Somehow here we still feel almost as exhausted as if we'd been to London anyway. Huge thanks to the organisers, and to all our new friends on social media in the Frightfest and Phoenix groups who provided thoughtful discussion and barrels of laughs where appropriate. It looks like there are more digital festivals on the horizon, but until then I have to give special shout outs to star Tyler Gallant, screenwriter Joe Knetter, and director Marcel Walz who have demonstrated tremendous good humour in showing their appreciation for the tribute video we made to their film BLIND. Gentlemen we salute you! As it seems like a good note to go out on, here it is:

BLIND (not this one) is out on Digital HD from Signature Entertainment on their Frightfest Presents label on Monday November 16th 2020. 

House of Mortal Cinema will be back after a nice lie down