Frightfest 2013 Reflection

My third full Frightfest and this time it was like slipping on an old, comfy hoodie.

 

This year I managed to run a full gamut and see 26 films across the five day festival, though not all on the main screen. For the first time I had a go at venturing into the Discovery screens, this involved extreme queueing/sleep deprivation on the Saturday due to the Willow Creek effect but on the other days was just a case of rocking up at the counter. On the main screen I missed Hammer Of The Gods (by all accounts not up to much), I Spit On Your Grave 2 (by all accounts apalling shit) and the We Are What We Are remake (by all accounts one of the best films of the festival, can't win 'em all).

 

The festival was introduced by Bobcat Goldthwait further confusing the decision to put his film into the tiny Discovery screens, a decision righted by changing Willow Creek's second screening to a screen roughly five times the size. Other assorted guests accompanied the films as usual, some enlightening (Chucky 6, Dark Tourist), some just shuffled about looking confused (In Fear) and some bought massive entourages from around the world (Dead 2, Big Bad Wolves). They all had Q&A's as usual though this year people reined in their stumbling nonsense and the questions were usually of interest. Then there was they guy who explained that Child's Play 3 was his all time favourite movie, he's got an awful lot of cinematic discovery head of him, makes me feel slightly jealous.

 

There was an extended interview with Ben Wheatley, which was incredibly illuminating and showed just how much boring as fuck, hard graft the man has done to perfect his craft. There were previews of a few films, most interesting of these was Glazer's Under The Skin of which we only saw 2 mins of clips but plenty of weirdness, The Raid 2 of which we saw a girl with a pair of claw hammers and plenty of violence and the upcoming 2000AD documentary of which we saw a bunch of talking heads and plenty of awesome comic art.

 

The short films this year were split up and redistributed about at the start of features, presumably to get them exposure denied to them when they were lumped together on a Sunday afternoon. The best of these was an animation called Chuck Steel: Raging Balls Of Steel Justice which came off like Wallace & Gromit if they'd been intravenously fed Chuck Norris' entire back catalogue whilst having Red Bull injected into their eyes. Also worth mentioning were Shell Shocked, a neat WW2 Boys Own tale with a twist introduced by director Paddy from Emmerdale and Crazy For You which managed to turn the gouging out of one's eyeballs into a happy ending.

 

And the films. Standards were higher again than years gone by with nothing plumbing depths like last year's After or Night In The Woods from the year before. The flipside though was that there wasn't a great deal of epoch making genius going on either. Found footage continues to dominate and continues to be a crutch for film makers to direct without having to consider shots, framing, lighting etc. just stick a camera in an actor's hand and get them to do it. Most galling of all is there are now films that are shot like a found footage movie despite not being found footage at all (Banshee Chapter), for fuck's sake film makers - MAKE SOME FILMS. I'm not suggesting all found footage is thoughtless crap mind, there's plenty of directors still using it effectively and finding new ways to scare with it, something which is reflected in this years lists:

 

5 favourites;

1) Big Bad Wolves

2) Cheap Thrills

3) Willow Creek

4) V/H/S/2

5) The Last Days [Los últimos días]

 

5 not favourites;

1) Dementamania

2) Banshee Chapter

3) R.I.P.D.

4) No One Lives

5) The Dead 2: India

 

Thanks to Joe, Ted, Ali and newcomer James for prodding me from cinema to fast food joint to pub and back again. Now back to reality, ho-hum.