FrightFest 2011 Review: Saint

• 26th Aug 2011

If you are attending FrightFest looking for a Euro-Comedy horror ala Dead Snow/ Rare Exports – then Saint could be for you.

 Basically we find out that old Saint Nic was a bit of a bad fella back in the past. So bad he had his followers sack up the naughty children, massacre the families, eat the food left out and then ship off after a good plunder and pillage was over. Well that is until the village folks in one settlement decided to go after him, Kill a bunch of his men and set fire to the holy mans ship, burning him to death in the process.

Cut to the 1960’s Netherlands and we see that Old Nic is back at it again, in ghostly fashion as he takes out an entire family, save for one young lad who will grow up to modern day as a disgruntled and paranoid Police officer who steadily opens fire on any Presents he receives on his desk at work.

Also into the present day mix we get a slight assortment of youngsters all ready to celebrate 5^th December. Goert (a very unlikeable man who seems to only want to bed down as many women as he can – and isn’t having much luck on that front) is pretty much the protagonist of the story who gets reeled into the evening’s madness as the murdering Bishop comes a slaying.

The parallels to John Carpenter’s the Fog is evident, as much as the tongue thrust not so much in the cheek as it is thrust through it. The blood effects are all great fun making this film one of the potential comedic highlights of FrightFest. It won’t stand out much more than as a well made giggle fest, but festival-goers will be thankful for the levity before they go directly into watch kill list afterwards!

Saint is screening at FrightFest on Sunday 28^th August at 18.35pm.

Steven Hurst