Lore had its world première on Thurs 24th Aug at FrightFest Four friends who regularly attend weekend events together – Mark (Dean Bone), Dan (Miles Mitchell), Donna (Sally Collett) and Sally (Samatha Neale) – get a bit lost as they hike to a ‘creepy forest’. They are greeted by their host Darwin (the ever amazing…
In Charly Goitia’s Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker, during the witching hour, disc jockey Candy Blue (Paula Brasca) spins some tracks and exchanges spooky stories with her callers, all for her show Nightmare Radio that she describes as the place “where horror stories never end…for insomniacs who want to stay insomniacs”. Yet as she smokes…
V/H/S/2 first published by Grolsch FilmWorks “Most of his collection I would say was snuff and CP, but he had at least one that was the real thing. I don’t even think he knew what it was.” So says missing student Kyle (L.C. Holt) in a webcam recording that a pair of camera-toting private investigators…
Isolation has its world première at FrightFest 2021 Conceived by Nathan Crooker, Isolation is a nine-part anthology film whose episodes were made in different parts of the world – mostly in or around American cities, but also taking excursions further (e.g. London in Alix Austin and Keir Stewart’s It’s Inside) – during a global pandemic…
Dark Stories first published by Through the Trees Single mother Christine (Kristanna Loken, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 2003) comes under attack from a psychopathic Chucky-like semi-animated doll that has just been delivered to her home. Bound to a chair in the basement, she tells the knife-wielding mannequin a series of five ‘scary stories’…
Dark Place first published by VODzilla.co While there are plenty of horror anthology films, far fewer are made by, and concerned with, indigenous Australians. Joining Tracey Moffat’s ghost story triptych BeDevil (1993) and Warwick Thornton’s The Darkside (2013), Dark Place is a collection of five tales by five different directors, all refracting Aboriginal experience through a genre prism. First…
“Maria tells me you write,” says Hans (Eric Godon), some way into Chino Moya’s feature debut Undergods. “What about?” “Possible worlds,” replies Johann (Tadhg Murphy) “I don’t think you’ll get it. Maria says you don’t read much.” What neither of these two men – nor indeed Hans’ daughter Maria (Tanya Reynolds) – quite realises is…
A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio (2019) first published by SciFiNow Strap: Luciano and Nicolás Onetti play DJ, appropriating and remixing eight festival-wowing short horror films to tell their own story All alone in his studio/home (and dressed in a jacket with the same striped pattern as that on the Beetlejuice figurine that decorates his…
The Mortuary Collection first published by SciFiNow “Raven’s End – Where Your Story Begins”, reads the sign marking the entrance to the mist-shrouded coastal town, as a little boy cycles by with an old analogue camera over his shoulder. This boy is looking for a story alright. With aspirations to become an investigative reporter, he…
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark first published by Sight & Sound, October 2019 Review: The frightening tales promised in the title of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark are told and retold, reconstituted, rewritten (in blood) and recycled. It has been adapted from some of the creepy contes (Harold, The Big Toe,…
The title of For We Are Many is a quote from Mark 5.9, where a man said to be possessed by multiple demons tells Jesus: “My name is Legion, for we are many” (text at the beginning of the film ascribes the quote to the equivalent episode from Matthew 8.28-34, in which version curiously those…