Film4 FrightFest Review Thursday (Day 1)

• 2nd Sep 2010

London’s Film4 FrightFest 2010 finally came about over a long weekend stretching from Thursday evening right through to the Monday Bank Holiday night. From that time this reviewer was subjected to some visions of terror, beauty, majestic quality and depravity on a regular basis that only people on the fetish scene would dream about.

But like any festivals many things can go right, as well as wrong and this year was no less difficult for the organisers on their 11^th year of FrightFest in a weekend that was not just full to the brim with blood but also a lot of controversy.

The setting of the scene is the Empire cinema, Leicester Square where the festival is now housed for its second year. They have taken over the large Screen one as well as the little Discovery Screen for some of the smaller films they wanted to give exposure to.

Festival goers have either been buying singular, daily or weekend tickets ranging from £11 to £150. The Main Empire Screen listed 25 films as well as a quiz, main interview and many small surprise featurettes in-between. The Discovery Screen showed 10 films (each screened twice over the weekend).

The weekend was kicked off with long-time FrightFest affiliate Adam Green’s sequel to his own slasher film, Hatchet II. Green along with fellow director Joe Lynch have also bandied together for a third year to make what is called The Road To FrightFest which is a series of shorts that they show at random moments of the festival of the two trying to make it to the festival. Funny and gamely out together they act as co-host to the festival alongside the four founding members.

Tony Todd eyeballs a cheeky journalist.

In attendance for Hatchet II along with Green were the three principal cast members Danielle Harris (from the Halloween series), Kane Hodder (best known to some as Jason Voorhees from the latter end of the original 10 films) and Tony Todd (Candyman).  Watching Harris stand next to a couple of really tall and big guys at the press wall only makes the film seem more impressively shot as she in no way looks as small on screen as she is in real life, but then that’s what this reviewer thought when he saw the female cast of The Descent: Part 2 at the close of last year’s festival.

The film itself is an unapologetic, yet vastly improved on the first, slasher picture with a group of disposable characters out to get a swamp dwelling mutant by the name of Victor Crowley. Of course things don’t go quite that simply as Crowley makes all sorts of different meat pates out of the group.

FrightFest is the place to be if you want to hear a lively crowd cheering and laughing at every kill on screen and Hatchet II was the perfect model for such united thrills.

Being an international festival, the next film on the bill was Primal all the way from Australia  and then we came back home for the close of the opening night with the UK’s Dead Cert.