FrightFest 2023: 'Monolith', 'Cobweb', 'Pandemonium', 'Herd', 'Farang', 'Transmission'

Director: Matt Vesely.
With: Lily Sullivan, Ling Cooper Tang, Ansuya Nathan, Erik Thomson.
Australia 2022. 94 mins.

Although conveyed only through telephone calls to a journalist seemingly willing to compromise herself when desperate, the mystery is riveting. Her investigation of sinister “bricks” is bizarre enough material to be gripping. Is she falling for a conspiracy or mass-delusion? Like 'Void of Night' or 'Pontypool' for example, a film that demonstrates that spoken-word genre storytelling can still work as a dominating factor is cinema. Down-the-rabbit-hole horror with an excellent Lily Tyler where all the clues do add up, there’s a little class commentary, lots of creepiness and a conclusion that, even if it goes in the direction you anticipated, still offers a few surprises to satisfy.

Director: Samuel Bodin.
With: Lizzy Caplan, Anthony Starr, Cleopatra Coleman, Woody Norman.
USA 2023. 88 mins.

Above average studio fare, there enough feints and genre-play to make horror fans laugh with recognition (oh, home invasion masks now?). The FrightFest audience also chuckled away at the scenery-chewing of Caplin and Starr as the parents who evidently neighbour ‘The People Under the Stairs’. Thoroughly entertaining. Cannier than you might expect with a genuine underlay of fairy-tale nastiness.

Director: Quarxx.
With: Hugo Dillon, Ophelia Kolb, Arben Bajraktaraj, Manon Maindivide.
France 2023. 95 mins. 

Excellent start with two guys accepting they are ghosts now, post car crash; but then it goes into twisted fairy-tale land about a bullying preteen girl whilst still seemingly referencing the first tale … and then there’s the tale of a mother not coping with the suicide of her daughter… and although always fascinating, not initially recognising this was a portmanteau meant I was mistakenly trying to find links and continuity where there was none. This also speaks to a confused conception when gluing these tales together, a lack of clarity. The first segment has a wit and promise that the rest doesn’t follow, so however interesting it may continue to be, whatever play and despair it may have with devils and damnation, it never recaptures it and a feeling of disappointment remains.

Director: Steven Pierce.
With: Ellen Adair, Mitzi Akaha, Jeremy Holm, Corbin Bernsen.
USA 2023. 96 mins.

 A gay couple just need a zombie threat to sort their issues out. Despite interesting-enough exploration of toxic masculinity in a militia context, it lets its insistence on being a mundane romance drag it into ridiculous and then redundancy - another film that doesn’t seem to realise how selfish and stupid the protagonist is, getting people killed - as long as they’re doing it for love. And when you’re screaming out in emotional pain, the zombies passing right by don’t notice.

Director: Xavier Gens.
With: Nassim Lyes, Olivier Gourmet, Loryn Nounay, Vithaya Pansringarm.
France 2023. 96 mins.

Action movie cliches perfectly intact: when you go a new city (in this case: Bangkok), find a high building, go to the rooftop and take in the panorama. There’s not the social commentary you might have expected/hoped for, and there’s probably too much ticking of tropes, but when it finally gets to the hallway and elevator fights, that’s everything. A film like Choi Jae-hoon's 'The Killer' and even 'Extraction 2' know to get on with the fights and play cursory attention to predictable, familar set-up, but 'Farang' is happy to wallow in comfort-action.  Nassim Lyles is magnetic enough presence and the fights look visceral and painful. And then it’s just silly season.

Director: Michael J. Hurst.
With: Vernon Wells, Felissa Rose, Dave Sheridan, Sadie Katz.
USA 2023. 73 mins.

Admirably ambitious in telling its tale through channel-hopping, providing a jigsaw narrative, but the core story of a filmmaker pursuing occult fascinations for apocalyptic ends is old hat and not distinctive enough. It can be hard to distinguish between the intentionally and unintentionally bad acting and the digital sheen does not suit all formats being homaged, so despite some impressive sci-fi effects, it occasionally looks unintentionally cheap.

The Devil Rides Out

 

Terence Fisher

UK, 1968

Screenplay: Richard Matheson

A Hammer highpoint, from its vivid opening credits ‘The Devil Rides Out’ hits the ground running and careens along with the pacing of a tense thriller. Richard Matheson – always a reliable voice – streamlines and improves on Dennis Wheatley’s original tale of the diabolical (he even sent Matheson a thank you note). 

Christopher Lee as Duc de Richleau presides over all, such a mammoth presence that they have to send him off for research just to let the other characters do their thing. Lee’s air of superiority and arrogance remain, as with any of his villainous roles, but here every “You fool!” is offset with a little doubt and vulnerability too. There’s the aura of a repressed warmth. It’s there from the first scene where he smiles to himself when watching his friend fly in, or the simple fact that he does all this to save his friend. Whereas Peter Cushing’s earnestness is casually convincing and brings gravitas and credibility to the absurdities, Lee seems like he would slap it into you. He is hellbent that you take this seriously, even as some of the dialogue, out of context, could be unintentionally funny; even when a shocking reveal is chickens in a basket, or trying to stave off the apparition of a black man, and even when the effects are less than stellar. For every telling delivery of a line about how his friend should take any of his cars, there’s Lee barking when answering the phone.

To counterpoint, Charles Gray is great casting as Mocata, Richleau’s flipside who oozes privilege and arrogance and carves his place as Lee’s superior effortlessly, as sinister as Lee is brash.

The classism and patriarchy are deeply ingrained in everything. Every man speaks to the women with a certain condescension. The accent of the English gentry is good for that. This is about two men of a certain age and class playing out their games of Good and Evil on the younger generation (Youth: don’t meddle with adult things you can’t hope to understand). But it’s the innocence of childhood that thwarts the forces of darkness, however much the adults flounder about. However, Sarah Lawson does get a central celebrated scene, dealing with a visit from Mocata, and Nike Arrighi as Tanith has all the mystery as a seeming conduit for Morcata. It’s decidedly old-fashioned and as Patrick Mower says (in the Studio Canal release’s extras) they felt it was so at the time, but he now sees it as aging well. It’s become a cult classic.

 

It has several memorable set pieces: the rescue from the Black Mass; the car chase in antique vehicles; Mocata’s hypnotism attack on Marie Eaton in a plush lounge;, and, of course, a night spent in a protective circle enduring a supernatural assault. And of course, the reputation of ‘The Devil Rides Out’ is that the effects let it down, but the strength of the story and execution makes the imagination compensation for what’s lacking. For my money, The Goat of Mendes hits the mark: simple but eerie.

And it has an ending that kind of ignores all the bad that’s gone on so that things can be idyllic again, which certainly seems in keeping with religious denialism. It’s a bit of an anti-climax: Richleau really doesn’t do anything, and the devil worshippers just wait for the recital that’ll bring about their demise to finish. But it’s true that the Hammer Horror feel, which Terence Fisher established from the start with ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’, is that the excellent production and art design by Bernard Robinson, James Bernard bombastic score, some old-fashioned Englishness and the pure insistence of moodiness overcomes any obvious weaknesses. (I like the observatory.) With a swift pace and consistently dispensing with memorable set pieces, ‘The Devil Rides Out’ is great occult entertainment.