Annoyingly, I had started to write reviews of each day at Frightfest but my iPod Touch Wordpress app messed up when it tried to get online partway through writing the posts and refused to work until I was on a wifi connection. So, here we are a couple of days later and I hope I don’t miss anything!
Frightfest 2009 is the third Frightfest I’ve been to, and the first I’ve attended the whole event. It’s definitely a different, much better, atmosphere when you go for the full festival, and I highly recommend it to anybody. As usual, most of the movies had some kind of added extra, be it a Q&A with the director or cast & crew, sneak previews of upcoming movies like Vincenzo (Cube) Natali’s Splice or T-shirt giveaways. There was also the return of Adam Green & Joe Lynch’s (a.k.a. The Douche Brothers) Road To Frightfest shorts, this time utilising footage from An American Werewolf In London to hilarious effect. The crowd were friendly as ever, and it’s great to be in the same seat for the whole fest, especially as you really get to know the people around you for that length of time.
As with last year, there was a goodie bag given away to all weekend pass holders and it was fantastically full of decent stuff. I got 2 t-shirts (one of which I gave away as it was too small for me!), 4 DVDs ( a trailer disc, B.T.K., 20th Century Boys and the Children Of The Corn trilogy box set!), as well as various leaflets posters and other things. Great stuff, though the bag itself seemed of lower quality than last year I can’t really complain.
The Empire was an excellent location for the movies to be shown – massive screen, and it seemed easier to movie in and out of the screenings than it was before. Thanks to the way things were scheduled, and the fact that there wasn’t anything I was massively excited about watching on the Discovery screen, I stuck to the main screen. This meant that I only missed 2 of the movies being shown, making a total of 24! The movies I missed were Dead Snow and Millennium: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I should have a review of Dead Snow by the time I upload my reviews of Day Four, since it’s out on DVD now.
As it’s the first day, there were only 3 movies shown (Triangle, The Hills Run Red and Infestation), along with the short film Deadwalkers. Reviews after the jump.
Triangle
Director Christopher Smith’s 3rd movie after Creep and Severance is a strange time-shifting movie with a lot of neat ideas. It follows Jess, a young woman who takes time out from looking after her young, learning disabled son to go with friends on a yacht named Triangle. However, something is just not right. Jess can’t put her finger on it, but she’s not feeling good and she’s has an overwhelming sense of deja vu.
A storm suddenly appears and capsizes the yacht, killing on of the group. After drifting for a while, they come into the path of a luxury cruise liner. But, the ship seems deserted and appears to have been built many years ago. The survivors split up to look for signs of life, but there seems to be somebody on the ship trying to kill them – a copy of Jess herself. The original Jess manages to defeat her doppelgänger, but not before the other survivors are dead. Looking over the bow of the ship, she sees herself board the boat again with copies of the others, and the cycle begins again…
Triangle is a movie that’s both unique in certain respects and annoyingly familiar in others. For Frightfest regulars, the looping time aspect was annoyingly familiar to last years’ popular entry Timecrimes. The way the whole time aspect was introduced was interesting but quite confusing – we never know how the event is happening, nor is there ever an answer given to how to stop it other than a vague “kill all the survivors”, which may not be true.
This lack of explanation makes the film both intriguing and annoying. It’s a while before any kind of resolution is offered to any of the many plot threads. Some of Jess’ actions seem rather counter-intuitive (e.g. at one point, she can easily stop her double from killing a previous incarnation of one of the survivors, but doesn’t), and there’s at least one incarnation of Jess whose origin we don’t see. The ending is also rather strange, lending a kind of looping structure involving an incident shown during the opening credits, but steering well clear of any kind of resolution.
So, it’s a flawed movie with a number of fantastic images – such as a new incarnation of one of the survivors crawling through the rotting corpses of her own doubles – but ultimately a very unsatisfying one. It’s definitely worth a watch, but I’d recommend also checking out Time Crimes and Retroactive if you want to see a more tightly controlled movie on similar lines, as well as the similarly set Death Ship.
Rating: 
The Hills Run Red
A film student is obsessed with finding an obscure movie named The Hills Run Red, a slasher movie whose director disappeared shortly after filming. There is a trailer available online, but nobody knows where the movie itself is. He locates the director’s traumatised daughter who featured in the movie, now a junkie working as a stripper, and gets her cleaned up. He then convinces her and two friends to come with him to the places where the movie was shot, to get clues about the movie’s origins. However, they’re no alone in the woods and soon realise the movie’s not over yet.
The Hills Run Red is one of those movies that’s caused a few disagreements at this year’s festival. A lot of people thought it was terrible, but I really liked it. The script, while disjointed in places (why exactly does the daughter choose to go along with them after she’s basically been kidnapped?) and lacking a final polish, is quite sharp and enjoyable. The acting’s pretty good, especially from William Sadler as the director.
There’s a lot of sharp observations about the genre – especially with the pitch-perfect depiction of the trailer for the movie – but a lot of it’s rather contradictory. For example, there’s comments about how superior film is compared to digital, but the movie itself i filmed in digital. In another scene, some anti-”torture porn” comments are made, but a following scene could almost be an out-take from Saw.
But, I enjoyed the hell out of this film, and would recommend checking it out. The “Babyface” mask is a classic design, and if nothing else I hope to see this in more movies.
Rating: 
Deadwalkers
For various reasons, this year’s Frightfest omitted the traditional run of short movies and this year featured only three. This first one was introduced by its Canadian director, Spencer Estabrooks, and led into the final film of the evening.
Deadwalkers is the simple story of a bounty hunter who enters a strange town with two prisoners in tow. The town seems deserted, but it’s infested with zombies, who soon try to attack and eat them. Teaming up with a tough bride whose new husband has been killed and an Indian woman, the group are forced to team up and defend themselves from zombie attack.
It’s a decent short film, obviously hyper-stylised and intentionally campy. The sets and costumes are great, though the zombie make-up is almost Halloween costume quality. However, it’s only around 10 mins long and is a decent time-passer.
Rating:
Infestation
Just after getting fired, a loser office worker falls unconscious and awakes in a cocoon. After fighting off a giant man-sized beetle, he awakes other people who are wrapped in similar cocoons. It looks like the entire town is infested with massive insects who can turn human beings into mutated hybrids of themselves.
Now, for some reason I have a problem with comical big bug movies. For example, I was initially disappointed by Eight Legged Freaks, even though I grew to really love the movie later. So, I’m not sure how my reaction here is compared to what I’ll think on a second or third viewing, but I’m lukewarm right now.
Partly this is because I didn’t quite buy into the characters. The central love story element was unconvincing, some characters were actively annoying. The CGI was also a little underwhelming, though it did serve the piece quite well. On the other hand, Ray Wise was great in his cameo, and there was certainly enough action from the start to engage to a certain extent. I have a feeling I’m going to love this movie quite a lot more on the next viewing, but we’ll see how that goes. To anybody else who doesn’t have the same bizarre relationship with the subgenre that I do, go see this movie now, you’ll love it.
Rating:
Hey mate I’ve really had a blast reading up your posts I’ve found them awesome, Can’t wait for your next post! Speak again soon =]