FrightFest 2013 Recommendations

• 14th Aug 2013

So it is one week to FrightFest. As usual Filmwerk will be on site to report and review and do as much photography as possible.

We will be launching a podcast series for that week which will cover the festival itself.  We will be interviewing crew and onsite talent for this year’s festival as well as picking random members of the regular crowd to give us their thoughts on the festival.

We will also be running our usual website response to each day as well as various photo-galleries featuring talent, fans and as much of the fun as possible.

We do have a few recommendations to make for people going! Don’t worry we are not spoiling anything below –merely making recommendations from what we have manage to see in advance!

MAIN SCREEN

V/H/S 2  (WORTH THE WATCH)

The second helping of video segments right away is a step up, if not light years ahead of its predecessor. Flavour of the moment Gareth Evans joins the melee with perhaps the most exciting and also the most bizarre of the segments. We are putting in this recommend after the fall-out from the first film.

No One Lives (THE GUILTY PLEASURE)

Rising star Luke Evans takes the lead in this revenge-psycho thriller. To explain too much about the story would perhaps give away too much of the plot.  This is an engaging pleasure that will have fans rolling with laughter in some of the more gruesome moments, but also engaging the lead characters in this twisty turny thriller.

Cheap Thrills (THE ONE NOT TO MISS!)

Anyone who saw Ti West’s terrific The Innkeepers will be pleased to see his two leading actors Pat Healy and Sara Paxton back together for this darkly comedic thriller, albeit this time in very different roles.

Craig (Healy) is married with child, out of a job and out of luck.  A depressing visit to the bar finds him in a small reunion with a former close friend Vince (Ethan Embry), a down and out who works with his fists in order to make his bread. But then fates steps up when they are joined for drinks by the very loud Colin (David Koechner) and his wife Violet (Paxton). It seems these two have been handed every lucky hand you could wish for in life and are so bored with life in the fast lane that they do their drugs and pay off their mistreatment of others with their cash.

And it is cash that both Craig and Vince need, so both are drawn into a game that involves them accomplishing fairly simple yet sadistic tasks at the behest of Colin and Violet. The game though, and the urge for more cash, leads both men into darker territory and into competition with each other.

This is a superb premise that promises and deliver both the yuks as well as the blackest of comedic moments one could wish for.

Likely to be not only the comedy highlight of the festival, it is also devilishly dark and just as strong contender for one of the best films of the festival. Do not go home early and miss this!

DISCOVERY SCREENS

For Elisa (THE ALTERNATIVE)

This one is fairly short (around the 70 minute mark) but is wonderfully twisted and beautifully lensed from start to finish. A real side-treat for anyone looking for an alternative at the festival.

Daylight (THE HEAD SCRATCHER)

The town of Daylight it seems is victim to supernatural goings on in this found footage movie. Do pay attention to the quick set up of this found footage movie as you may find yourself getting a bit lost.

The film surprisingly goes all out bonkers in its last half hour. Don’t expect much to make a hell of a lot of sense by the end, but it’s a journey that is fairly well conceived in all of its madness, helped no end by a fairly decent editor.

Rewind this! (The Documentary)

Love the video era?  Well this documentary is for you.  What starts as an overview of various collectors of VHS tapes searching far and wide to add to their enormous collections– you get an awful lot of history of the tape, the revolution it started for home entertainment.

The documentary splits even time between various fan collectors and their extensive tape collections and how they went about accumulating and then how they have preserved and stored them (and in what order); but also the story of VHS – it’s longevity compared to the likes of DVD and Blu-ray.

Fascinating and recommended viewing!

Steven Hurst