FrightFest 2025 - Day 3

 FrightFest 2025 - Day 3

THE RED MASK

Director:

Ritesh Gupta

Cast:

Inanna Sarkis, Helena Howard, Kelli Garner, Jake Abel

UK-USA

 

 Written as a love letter to fans, which means we get a lot of meta genre content - going from self-referential slasher rules and filming in a cabin from the ‘Friday 13” franchise - but also critical of narrow and obsessive fandom. The romance is belaboured and ultimately just a platform for a a protagonist to become a kick ass bitch by means of montage for revenge. Again, a lot of emoting instead of storytelling. For a film protesting about something new, this is pretty standard, including the meta.

 

MARSHMALLOW

Director: Daniel DelPurgatorio

Cast: Kue Lawrence, Giorgia Whigham, Corbin Bernsen, Alysia Reiner

USA

 

Appealing summer camp kid’s anxiety horror, more in the line of “Goosebumps” than, say, “Class Trip” (1998). There are the archetypes without making them annoying, a slightly intrusive score, nice crisp photography, a reliance on nightmares, one of those premises that isn’t going to stand thorough scrutiny and the sense that the film only just got started when it ends.

 

SELF-HELP

Director: Erik Bloomquist

Cast: Jake Weber, Madison Lintz, Landry Bender, Amy Hargreaves.

USA

The anti cults-run-by-conman is a good target, but gets more hung up on its family angle. Which is strange as the film is seemingly confused about its protagonist being both the wronged innocent and a potential serial killer. There's an interesting film about manipulation and trauma lost in here somewhere.

 

 

CRUSHED

Director: Simon Rumley

Cast: Steve Oram, Nattapohn Rawddon, Margaux Dietrich, Sahajak Boonthanakit.

UK

 

One of those films that makes you feel you’ve visited somewhere very, very dirty, despairing and depraved. A witless teenager shows his young sister’s friend a crush video (animal cruelty is the instigating outrage) and traumatises her into thinking her beloved missing cat has also been a victim, setting off a horrendous chain of events. The almost slideshow means of presenting the story fragment by fragment without a score for guidance is reminiscent of, say, Thai director Edward yang, allowing the breadth of the societal repercussions from schoolboys to sex tourists to emerge. If it doesn’t quite land, the moral dead-ends and failures, the theological questioning, the hopelessness of finding existential certainty, the trauma caused by such dark business leaves this film haunting and bothering the mind long after, even if you feel you won’t want to watch it again.

 

 

JIMMY AND STIGGS

Director: Joe Begos

Cast: Joe Begos, Matt Mercer, Riley Dandy, James Russo.

USA

 

The opening POV long take is impressive and shows that Begos has innovation and vision: it’s also impressive that he conjured such a neon trip solely from his apartment. But then unfortunately it’s just Begos shouting FUCK every second and fighting either aliens or his pal who also shouts FUCK every second. One note, repetitive and consequently hard work.

 

 

HOLD THE FORT

Director: William Bagley

Cast: Mark Ashworth, Julian Smith, Chris Mayers, Michelle I Lamb

UK

 

 Fun and silly horror comedy, reminiscent of Joe Dante or even a daft "The Mist", if you will. If it does seem to run out of steam and errs on the side of slightly lingering emoting instead of bringing in more genre absurdity, its good nature and brevity make this thoroughly endearing. Absolutely, you're left with the certainty that there was far more in the premise.

FrightFest 2025 - Day 2

 

APPOFENIACS

Director:Chris Marrs Piliero

Cast: Sean Gunn, Jermaine Fowler, Aaron Holliday, Michael Abbott Jr

USA

 

If you liked "Lowlife", like hard-boiled crime fiction by the likes of Gifford and Leonard, this is sure to float your boat. Pulp ensemble, criminal and broad characters verging on the cartoonish and intersecting subplots may wear its Tarantino love too conspicuously on its sleeve, but there's plenty of escalating misunderstanding and mayhem of its own to carry you along. Mostly, all the foreshadowing pays off to a full-blown ending to leave you giddy with its excess. Also, its a film that highlights how terrifying AI in the wrong hands could be by not even exaggerating by much. Again, it's the people who are the problem.

 

 

 

WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW

Director:

Juan Pablo Arias Munoz

Cast:Sienna Agudong, Jessica Belkin, Conor Husting, Denise Richards.

USA

 

Despite nice performances and a big house, this is built on spoilt brat worries and all the emoting becomes tedious as the mystery becomes just as you suspect and offers nothing new. There’s meant to be a tale of friendship here, but stretched too thin and with too little payoff.

 

 

 

TRANSCENDING DIMENSIONS

Director: Toshiaki Toyoda

Cast: Chihara Jr., Masahiro Higashide, Haruka Imô, Yôsuke Kubozuka

Japan

 

Where straightforward narrative gives way to the opaque spiritual ramblings about reaching across the universe in your little finger and ghosts hiring assassins, the sensation and kaleidoscopic achievements of the visuals and dominance of the music make for a compelling if baffling journey. The meaning and intention may be hermetic, but the experience is a genuine trip.

 

 

 

A SERBIAN DOCUMENTARY

Director: Stephen Biro

Cast: Srdjan Spasojeviċ, Aleksandar Radivojević, Srdjan Zika Todorović, Sergej Trifunovć

USA

 

With access to a shipload of behind-the-scenes footage as well as interviews with cast and crew, Biro's documentary makes the best argument for this most notorious of films, "A Serbian Film". Watching the effects work is a real treat. It helps that the filmmakers are the most eloquent and understanding of their intentions: if you aren't convinced by this of their most punk disgust at exploitation and the human condition, then you are doubtlessly the closed minds they're outraged by. Five years in the making, Biro spoke on stage of how inflammatory the film and its reputation still is. Perhaps the most shocking conclusion made is that the director Srdjan Spasojevic now feels he didn't go far enough.

 

They fuck you when you're born, they fuck you when you're living, they fuck you when you're dead - indeed.

 

 

THE TOXIC AVENGER

Director: Macon Blair

Cast: Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon

USA

 

It may want to rest on its sentimentality unironically and Macon may not want to rest on Toxie's puerile nature to carry it through, but there's enough gore and gags to make this an audience pleaser. And funny how CGI bloodletting, whilst hitting the mark, still isn't as satisfying as DIY practical. Dinklage gives heartfelt, Bacon and Wood give sleazy, Tremblay gives trembly teen. Perhaps this is slicker but the original remains the real shocker.

 

 

FLUSH

Director: Gregory Morin

Cast: Jonathan Lambert, Elodie Navarre, Elliot Jenicot, Rémy Adriaens.

That a guy trapped in a Turkish toilet cubicle scenario can turn into a litany of disgust and end up a gorefest is testimony to its sheer invention. And it is funny. Wisely keeping brevity, there's no fat involved as details like drug-addict rats and trying to use ear pods while head-first in a toilet escalate into belly-laugh absurdity without ever losing its nastiness. A crowd-pleaser.