FrightFest 2023: 'It Lives Inside', 'Creeping Death', 'Where The Devil Roams', 'New Life', 'Faceless After Dark', 'That's a Wrap'

 

Director: Bishal Dutta.
With: Megan Suri, Neeru Bajwa, Mohana Krishnan, Betty Gabriel.
US 2023. 99 mins

Yes, it’s tropey, but with a little Hindi twist and a decent lead character conflicted between her heritage and forging her own identity, there’s enough to keep this fresh. But mostly, an endearing practical monster makes up for a lot.

More alarming is the apparent conclusion that, although the malevolence is imported from the old world, if you don’t absorb and follow it, swallow it down and keep feeding it, it will destroy all your loved ones.

 

Director: Matt Sampere.
With: Monique Parent, Scott Lea, Matt Sampere, Delian Lincourt.
USA 2023. 93 mins.

 It is quite hard to review a film when increasingly it is impossible to see what's going on, the editing makes it unintelligible, and the music stings blare out seemingly at random at everything.

Directors: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser.
With: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser.
USA 2023.  90 mins.

Indie-low/no-budget filmmaking at its best. Sideshow sinister stuff and Depression era family murder road trip, with a big topping of body-horror. Often resembling a story told through vintage photographs, a film that looks the part while embracing its anachronisms without forfeiting mood (the wonderful rock music!).  Fascinating faces and black humoured morbidity abound, but when asked in the Q&A what this film might says about the Adams family, Toby Poser elucidated that she felt it was concerned with the question of children facing their parents' mortality. Might be the Adams family’s most ambitious and accomplished.

 

Director: John Rosman.
With: Sonya Walger, Hayley Erin, Tony Amendola, Ayanna Berkshire.
USA 2023. 85 mins.

 Not quite what you might think initially, this impressive debut has two excellent lead performances that effortlessly guide through the myriad genres to discuss the issue of failing bodies. Rarely do we see the subject touched with such focus in this way in genre. There's character drama, chase thriller, horror, sci-fi - a heady mix. It's the stuff that inspires body-horror (indeed, the film says this very thing), but the empathy and humanity that guides this right to the end is quite unique.

 

Director: Raymond Wood.
With: Jenna Kanell, Danny Kang, Danielle Lyn, Michael Aaron Milligan.
USA 2023. 86 mins.

 Impressively mounted, acted and stylish. 

It turns out to be another tortured-artist-makes-murder-art scenario with a little feminist anger and social media disgust. The very smart filmmakers in the Q&A seemingly want their protagonist to be an anti-hero and/or ambiguous, but when all is supposedly muddied, she’s a torturer and murderer seemingly motivated by her envy of her more successful (?) friends even more than online misogyny and a home invasion. And smirking to camera never quite does it for me.

 

Director: Marcel Walz.
With: Cerina Vincent, Monique Parent, Sarah French, Gigi Gustin.
USA 2023. 94 mins.

Another Murder-Art scenario. Camp, daft, meta, exploitative, occasionally funny, with one unforgettable murder moment; tries to have its cake and eat it by flirting with real motives, and anyway undoes any goodwill by an untenably long revelation denouement.