FrightFest 2025 - Day 4

 

 

 

FrightFest 2025 - Day 4

 

 

 

213 BONES

Director: Jeffrey Primm

Cast: Colin Egglesfield, Dean Cameron, Toni Weiss, Liam Woodrum.

USA

 

At first, there’s the promise of a straightforward non-postmodern slasher providing horror comfort food, but it becomes quickly apparent that this has all the subgenre’s weaknesses too. Predominantly, it hinges on a thoroughly unconvincing bunch of college student victims, and its not clear how they managed to get this far in their studies as they don’t appear to have any critical thinking at all. It goes through the motions, the kills are humdrum and then the killer with the ridiculous motivation is unmasked and the audience goes “Wha?”

 

 

TOMB WATCHER

Director: Vathanyu Ingkawiwat

Cast: Woranuch Bhirombhakdi, Thanavate Siriwattanagul, Arachaporn Pokin Pakor.

Thailand

 

It has the chief elements to appeal to the Gothic sensibility: a big remote house, portraits of the dead wife and the corpse of the dead wife itself on the grounds. All the couple have to do is put up with the husband devoting to the dead body for one hundred days. The trouble is that the husband was cheating on the wife, and she wants the hundred days to exact her revenge from beyond the grave. Cue the long-haired Asian ghost and no one believing the haunted wife driven to near-insanity. It is a standard, traditional ghost story, but it looks good and carries out its tropes with elegance rather than excess, at least until its ending where it goes a little loopy. 

 

 

The DESCENT

Director: Neil Marshall.

Cast: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, MyAnna Buring.

UK

 

Even after all this time, you’ll be likely to jump at least once again. Perhaps the attacks are edited to the incoherent side, but what mostly struck me once more this time is how much David Julyan's forewarns the tragedy from the very start. You are so invested into the girls foolishly going deeper and deeper underground that you almost forget that they’ll be monsters. Marshall has so far never captured this classic status again.

 

 

BONE LAKE

Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan

Cast: Marco Pigossi, Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe, Andra Nechita.

USA

 

Perhaps the opening promises something less graceful, just to get the attention, but what follows is a slick, silly and thoroughly entertaining romp. The great performances are essential to above-average characterisation, which is important when the fragility of couples is the whole discourse: Diego and Sage are thoroughly convincing as a decent couple struggling to get over themselves. Perhaps not quite as twisty and surprising as it thinks, but its thoroughly engaging, gorgeously shot and played and all you have to do is sit back and enjoy.

 

REDUX REDUX

Director: Kevin McManus, Matthew McManus

Cast: Jim Cummings, Derick Alexander, Raphael Chestang, Debra Christofferson

USA

 

Emotion-led lofi scifi is often a good place to find something fresh in the genre, and this excellent multiverse tale impresses with how packed with emotional grounding it is. From grief making our protagonist pursue a hellbent mission to visit all the dimensions to kill her daughter’s murderer to a streetwise brat finding her limitations, the measured pace allows the loneliness to surface even when foregrounded and tent-poled by action set-pieces. Although mostly a two-hander there’s uniformly great acting, lowkey and immersive atmosphere, pleasingly clunky dimension-hopping freezer unit, a script only interested in the characters with little need to linger on backstory, allowing the existential and relationship questions to dominate. Proof again that an indie film with single well written conceit and a solid agenda of investigating the human condition can generate full-blooded, unsettling and rewarding entertainment.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

 

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Directors ~ John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein

Writers ~ Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gilio

2023, United States-Canada-United Kingdom-Iceland-Ireland-Australia

Stars ~ Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis

 

That this feels like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy: fantasy version’ only goes to show the James Gunn template is now the one everyone tries to follow: it’s easy to forget how fresh Gunn’s original ‘Guardians’ felt at the time. But actually ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ was a property long in development and the witty-banter ensemble dynamic is already embedded in the D&D gameplay, so it’s perhaps unfair to relegate its essence as bandwagon-jumping.

The narrative ~ script by Goldstein, Francis Daley and Michale Gilio ~ apes the more improvisational We Need A Plan! progression of the game. BrianTallerico sees this as a chief failing, but improvisation is the crux of the source material, and demands for more nuanced artistry surely shouldn’t get in the way of something so good-natured. Embraking on a quest and being dumped into chaos is a standard and familiar narrative ~ after all, the game drew upon and generated many archetypes and tropes ~ so much so that it won’t alienate non-D&D audiences, and there’s Easter Eggs here for the fans.

It's just plain enjoyable without the sense of neediness that most films of this trend have. Pine can do this in his sleep (solid, charming without being overbearing), Michelle Rodriguez offers some substance to her archetype of a Barbarian Amazon. With Regé-Jean Page as the saintly but humourless good guy, the film pokes fun at the po-facedness of many fantasy films. Playfulness is the watchword, not earnestness. Hugh Grant enjoys himself and surely has charming-slimy-selfish-articulate-plotting villainy down pat by now (that accent goes a long way). In fact, everyone appears to be having a good time and it is never left limping with seriousness. Oh sure, we get lessons on self-confidence, working together, accepting yourself and your mistakes, etc, but mostly these are fleeting character-colouring rather than doorstopper performative.

Fun is the agenda here, and it offers it with fat but formidable dragons, some crunchy fight scenes that follow the contemporary accent on choreography rather than brute-force, and (my favourite) questioning revived corpses. Initial word-of-mouth was that it was better than expected, as general anticipation was low, but it’s surely one whose reputation will grow. A film that is fun without being stupid.

 

Big Trouble in Little China

Big Touble in Little China

Director ~ John Carpenter

Writers ~ Gary Goldman, David Z. Weinstein, W.D. Richter

1986, US

Stars ~ Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun

 

Certainly, when I first saw it, I didn’t get the joke. Oh sure, ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ was amusing, but I was in my later teens that the mainstream and VHS were saturated with American super-machismo: Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, Segal, etc. This is before I got any nuance from the first two. This film seemed of a piece with scene and I didn’t register the satire. Certainly Kurt Russell knew the assignment and pushed more and more for this to be a send-up of the Swagger Saviour that he himself had earned a reputation with. Not least of all, with Carpenter himself, having played Snake Plissken and MacReady in ‘Escape from New York’ and ‘The Thing’.

 

It becomes apparent that there are two films going on: firstly the wuxia homage taking place in an American city with a huge heap of the supernatural where Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is the hero; and then there’s the film that Jack Burton thinks he’s in, being the John Wayne star when actually he’s a truckin’ blowhard that is culturally out of his depth. This where the film’s longevity and cult status comes from, as it wasn’t originally much thought of due in part to a studio that didn’t get the joke and, surely, some audiences too. If the portrayal of Chinese culture is a little broad, well this is broad strokes humour and homage and there is no meanness or condescension here. The humour is almost exclusively at the expense of the Jack Burton, although it is neither mean nor condescending towards him either. It feels more like the gentle ribbing between buddies rather than derisive mocking.

James Berardinelli’s review seems confused at the film’s irreverence and that Burton seems to get more screen time in the service of the joke; actually, he’s just louder and wants to make it all about him. Similarly Kathleen Carroll seems bewildered by its scatological nature, resorting to descriptions such as culturally specific cuisine  zingers as “stir-fried mess” and “as impenetrable as chop suey”, whatever that means. Hal Larper is more on-the-ball with “A campy, convoluted series of outrageous adventures that careens through an imaginary world for two hours before depositing you, breathless, back in your seat.”  Nobody familiar with the likes of ‘Mr. Vampire’ or ‘House’ will be surprised at the bonkers silliness, although its monster inflections and tone are more in place with the likes of ‘Ghostbusters’ .

The dodgy/dated 80s effects, ludicrous street tuff posturing and wuxia pile-ups has proven ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ more a cult favourite with time, its mash-up aesthetic sustained by a concentrated satire which perhaps proves more in tune with later zeitgeist further attuned to genre and culture medleys. Distinguished by its refusal to be mean-spirited, ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ remains happily irreverent and fun.

 

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Sinbad and the Eye of the tiger

Director ~ Sam Wanamaker

Writers ~ Beverley Cross, Ray Harryhausen

1977, UK

Stars ~ Patrick Wayne, Jane Seymour, Taryn Power

 

Both the characterisation and dialogue veers between bad and bland, and often the story depends upon stupidity (“Are you looking for THIS? And THIS?” “Let me try this magic potion on a mosquito that looks like a bee!…”) and there’s a streak of inconsistency and daftness, as if this is just a first draft script.

 

“Best to keep him caged,” then he’s playing chess on deck, etc).

Or:

“Sounds like an earthquake!”

“There can be only one possible answer!”

“The witch…!”

Oh, so “earthquake” wasn’t the logical answer?

Or:

How does he think he’ll win the fight on the stairs?

Or:

One minute Trog fears the temple entrance; the next he’s helping them lift the lock on the door.

            Or:

The gull-foot seems to be forgotten about.

 

And a little casual sexism and racism and full of both impressive and bad matte work. But you don’t really go to a Harryhausen film for the script (by Harryhausen and Beverley Cross) we’re here for Harryhausen creations and in that we can be satisfied. The opening ghoul attack is promising, but mostly it’s oversized animals rather than monsters. The Minaton radiates inhuman menace (apparently Patrick Mayhew was the stand-in, having just been ‘Star Wars’ Chewbacca) and the Trogolyte and the baboon out-act everyone else. Whereas Margaret Whiting gives the hammiest villain she can ham, the subtlety and nuance of Harryhausen’s amazing work on the baboon is perhaps lost because it is not making realistic the fantastic but realising something more recognisable and by extension, less magical.  Of all the sets, it’s the journey through the ice tunnels with all the frescos of frozen victims that impresses most.

 

 

It's then a weaker work ~ yes, the Minaton creates a bit of a shudder of intimidation although its demise is a bit ignoble; the baboon is a fascinating achievement, but we live in a time w

here realistic sci-fi talking racoon is just a standard and one of a rash of CGI realistic critters on offer at any cinema season. Of course, ‘Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger’ came out the same year as ‘Star Wars’ and a new age was obviously being ushered in. The realism given a fantastical dinosaur in ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ is astonishing, and yet there is always a place for going back to old-school stop-motion, because being aware that it is the work of one man’s dedication is still thrilling and jaw-dropping. So there is still awe and pleasure in Harryhausen’s effects work, but it is a shame that more strength of story doesn’t ward off datedness.