FrightFest '24

FrightFest ‘24

 

 

Oh, is it that time of the year again? It seems to come around so quickly. The films and friends are equally part of it, and it’s hard to convey to non-goers just how much fun FrightFest can be. But: down tothe serious business of lording my humble opinions on the treats on offer.

Beginning with a live organ performance for us to settle down to, and...

 

Broken Bird

Director: Joanne Mitchell.

Cast: Rebecca Calder, James Fleet, Jay Taylor, Sacharissa Claxton.

UK 2024. 96 mins.

 

Intriguing from the start, then stumbles with its rhythm as it takes a little too long for its various elements to click, rambling its focus. But Rebecca Calder’s highly affected performance keeps it compelling until a satisfying grand Gothic finale. Calder’s Sybil is the unforgettable villainess-cum-anti-hero, ripe and deluded in a humdrum world. She certainly makes her marks in the gallery of eccentric, fantasist psychos. With particularly British black humour and loneliness, the film aims for pathos, themes of loss and trauma stretching across characters, and mostly hits it mark.

 

Test Screening

Director: Clark Baker.

Cast: Chloë Kerwin, Drew Scheid, Johnny Berchtold and Rain Spencer.

USA, 2024, 92 mins.

 

Set in and playing off of that particular 80s Satanic Panic and church-fuelled fear of anything not ultra-conservative, ‘Test Screening’ benefits from superior performances. It generates a real Dead End Town claustrophobia, some ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ eeriness and po-faced satire before going for broke. The influences are obvious and even if nothing new, it means what it says, even up to its final imagery. It may err on the side of earnestness, but there’s real attention to the hurt social repression causes, even if it secretly wants body horror fun.

 

The Invisible Raptor

Director: Mike Hermosa.

With: Mike Capes, Sean Astin, Sandy Martin, Chad Bullard.

USA 2023. 112 mins.

 

Well firstly, to reveal how gullible I am: this screening came with “Invisible Raptor” action figures… and I looked at it, and I almost went back to say that I had picked up an empty one… then: *Oh*.

 

Silly, funny, a little overlong and a little clever, it’s a fun romp with committed performances. The threat is kept real – the bathroom attack is genuinely tense – even whilst having chicken-fucking jokes, and there are many Spielberg and a ‘Goonies’ easter eggs. It stretches too long until it tries to have genuine emotional character resonance, losing some comic propulsion, but there are many funny lines and gags that keep it afloat.