Prt-2:Frightfest 2005

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

Part 1/Part2

Hey guys Arrow here; Bradley Porter’s

LONDON FRIGHTFEST 2005
adventures continue with Part 2
of his report. Have a blast! You can

Read Part 1 here

The Frightfest Movie theatre!

Sunday August
28^th

11.00am The Collingswood Story (2005)


(Read The Arrow’s Review Here)

Experimental horror. Didn’t see it but
heard it was like a low rent Blair Witch. So basically Blair Witch 2 then?

12.55pm – Marebito (2003)

Again experimental horror examining the
nature of fear from the director of the Grudge. Again, didn’t see it.

3.00pm – Boo (2005) OR SO WE WERE
TOLD!!!!!!

Well this was a disappointment…. The
reason we couldn’t get up to the festival till 6 on Sunday is because one of the
three of us in our party couldn’t get the day off work so while Boo looked cool,
we weren’t too fussed about missing it…until we got there at 6 and found out it
had been replaced by RED EYE, with a possible introduction from Wes Craven
himself. Apparently they announced this before Do You Like Hitchcock? WHILE
EVERYONE WAS AT THE ROMERO SIGNING! Luckily, Craven didn’t turn up and as the
film comes out here on Friday, I wasn’t too fussed about missing the film….
Still… would have been nice to know about it!

Ian, Paul and Alan… The Frightfest Organizers! Great
Men!

6.30pm – Night Watch (2004)

(Read The Arrow’s Review Here)

This got off to a bad start when 20^th
Century Fox insisted everyone hand over their mobile phones before the film
started to security, which help everything up, so no-one could film could film
the movie with their phones… that’s right… a whole bootleg copy of a film that
can be bought on Russian pirate anyway… who in their right fucking mind would do
that?!?! (Bit stressed out… just got home from the shittest club EVER!)… Anyway,
the film itself was a bit disappointing in that it had clearly been cut for
western audiences, and it seems to have that air about it that it expects you to
have read the book, as certain things don’t make sense at all, and others just
don’t have the impact it’s felt as though they should. The effects are great,
and so are the characters, and some of the ideas (although some feel as reheated
as Grandma’s cottage pie) are well executed… but it just feels like the director
had too many ideas and shoved them into one (short) film.

The last scene was awesome, knowing that
this is the first part of a trilogy (slightly Star Wars-esque) but if the
average audience viewer doesn’t know this is a trilogy they will be SERIOUSLY
disappointed. The subtitles were very cool, although the film itself had a
terrible final battle scene and I guess my main gripe is that the film had no
set piece whatsoever (even shit like Matrix Reloaded has one good set piece) so
the film left you wanting more. And don’t get me started on the relevance of the
neighbours and the climax of the blonde girl’s storyline! If I were Fox
Searchlight I’d be badgering the director for a trailer of Day Watch to attach
to the end of this one to let people know this isn’t the end! 6/10

Zombies seeking flesh-snacks!

9:00pm – Dominion: Prequel to the
Exorcist (2004)

Disappointing. As much as I love Paul
Schrader, you can tell his heart wasn’t in this one. Three guesses as to why?!?!
The film had a superb screenplay, but unfortunately 2 of the main performances
from Stellan Skarsgård and the leading lady were sub-par. Billy Campbell was
scarily effective as Cheche, but the overuse of the Pazazu face that scared me
so shitless in the original ruins the impact. In fact, the best performance came
from Gabriel Mann… unlikely but true!

I can forgive the effects being a bit
shoddy because of obvious budgetary issues when finishing the film, but the
hyenas were still shit. There was one chilling scene with a mad native and the
deaths of children, but unfortunately the film as a whole was slow, and
unintentionally funny. Still better than the Harlin version by an length
conceivable by the imagination, but in my mind, Exorcist III is still the
scariest of the 5 films. 4/10

Monday 29^th
August

10.45am – Born to Fight (2005)

Imagine the spirit of Chuck Norris,
re-envisioned in a poverty stricken Thai village and you’re pretty damn close to
how much fun Born to Fight was. Obviously the work of a stunt co-ordinator
turned director, this director turned out to be the stunt guy who did Ong Bak
and it shows. Death by Football (a proper football, not that shitty nerf shaped
thing you crazy Americans use), Death by little 6 yr girl doing martial arts,
Death by rocket launcher, Death by Thai national flag… you get the picture! If
there’s ever a film screaming out to be dubbed badly it’s this one… 8/10

1.05pm – Day of the Dead 2: Contagium
(2005)

We got food during this film, but as one
guy put it, he’ll forever refer to the film as Contagium, and cutting all ties
to DOTD. Apparently it was that bad it wasn’t even funny.

Random “girl with nice tits” shot!

3.05pm – P (2005)

Tied with 2001 Maniacs for film of the
festival, the only thing that lets it down is the ending… which worked for other
but not for me. The first Thai film to be made by a westerner (that would be
Brit Paul Spurrier) P follows a girl named Aaw who gets tricked into becoming a
child prostitute in a club in Bangkok when her grandmother needs expensive
medical treatment and gets renamed Dau. The film packed a hell of a visual, and
emotional punch for the first 75 minutes of it’s run time, and managed to be
funny, heart wrenching, and tasteful. The lack of nudity was surprising for a
film of it’s kind but worked in keeping the film as fascinating as it was, where
nudity would have cheapened the impact.

The acting was superb across the board,
and it’s a film I was willing to show to everyone I met…. Until the last half
hour. Now if you speak Thai you’d know already that the literal translation of P
is Ghost. And Dau uses black magic to go all possessed on her enemy’s ass and
then the gore starts to flow starting with a snake to the penis (yes you heard
me right). While the ghostly Dau is scary and very effective, and the gore
plentiful the effect is ruined by an exorcist played for laugh, and the feeling
that the last half hour is a brilliant ending to a different movie. Sometimes I
appreciate a shift in gears, such as From Dusk Till Dawn, but in this case I
loved it just the way it was. One thing I dug tremendously was the British sense
of humour throughout the film, obviously down to it’s director, and it was
refreshing to see Brit humour in a Thai film. Definitely see it if you get the
chance as it still gets a 9/10 from me, as it was still one of the better films
I’ve seen this year. 9/10

Paul Spurrier mentioned in his Q+A
afterwards that the film plays almost like a documentary to the Thai population
with whom these bars and dark witchcraftis commonplace. Interesting to note. He
speaks fluent Thai and the film was made for under £1 million! Amazing! He also
said he never visited the underage bars for research but that “he knew people
who had been”…yeah… my ass.

6.15pm – Antibodies (2005)

A German serial killer film which owes a
lot to Silence of the Lambs (due to the prison interactions between cop and
killer in which the killer is helping the cop find another) and Se7en (due to
the motives of the killer), which unfortunately has a German feelin’ of boredom
to it. Don’t get me wrong, about half the movie was brilliant, when it was a
straight forward thriller, but these moments (like the amazing opening, designed
to feel like the ending of a serial killer movie) were interspersed with scenes
of people pondering… a lot… mainly about faith, and the ending which was a real
disappointment (to me anyway, my neighbour seemed to dig it immensely) was far
too vague. When Christian Alvert (the director) came out to talk about the film,
he was just as unhelpful as the film was. Shame as I had high hopes for the flick. Killer sex scene
though. J
5/10

9.00pm – Wolf Creek

(Read
The Arrow’s Review Here)

Greg McLean (Wolf Creek
Director)

Introduced by the director Greg McLean
(who I have intense amounts of man-love for), and the two female leads and the
producer, Wolf Creek closed the festival. I loved the visual style of the movie,
and the two girls were extremely hot (coming off as kind of skewed versions of
Keira Knightley and Anna Friel) with the lead dude being likeable as well.
Following these three characters for the first hour of the movie, it got to the
point where you cared for them, and to know what coming gave that feeling of
dread that only a GOOD horror film can muster. Special Mention must go to John
Jarrett, who plays the villain as one of the most memorable killers of recent
times. I’ll never be able to watch Crocodile Dundee the same way again!

Cassandra Magrath (Actress/Wolf Creek)

Basically, what stops me from outright
loving this film, is it’s unwillingness to get as nasty as it should. For a film
that has been selling itself as unrelentingly brutal, it seemed as though many
times (especially in the already infamous “head on a stick” scene) that the film
wasn’t going as far as it possibly could off, always teetering on the edge of
being brutal then pulling back. And considering all but one death are by
gunshot, it did leave the gore-hound inside me a bit wanting. When is someone
gonna do a proper definitive 15-20 minute torture sequence with things that
would really hurt? Huh? I’m holding out for Hostel! The ending was also kinda
weak, but the film offered up mucho tension, and some amazing technical work
alongside likeable (but stupid) characters to create a film I can guarantee you
will be HUGE!

So there you go… Another year gone.

READ
PART 1 OF THIS REPORT HERE