Glasgow Film Festival 2015: FrightFest

The UK’s favourite splatter institution returned to its second home of the GFT for Glasgow Film Festival’s final weekend, and delivered a solid lineup. There may not have been the headline draws of previous years – heavyweights such as I Saw the Devil, Byzantium, Killers, The Bay, The Sacrament and Gareth Evans' mighty The Raid have all screened as part of the FrightFest offshoot recently – but there’s an argument for this 2015 edition being the most consistent in quality for quite some time.

After a Thursday opener of Kate Beckinsale and Ben Kingsley-starring spook story Eliza Graves, the full event kicked off in surprisingly strong fashion with Chris Sparling’s The Atticus Institute, a faux-documentary of possession in a 70s parapsychology lab. The recent raft of acquisitive demon flicks – ranging from the stupid-but-fun (Deliver Us from Evil) to the downright awful (The Devil Inside, The Devil’s Due, well, loads, really) – gave cause for concern, but Sparling’s picture is fresh, fun, and no little creepy. The talking heads device allows for elegant and economical exposition, but also compliments excellent use of unsettling still photography and is delivered with wonderful stoicism by a convincing cast. Some knowing references to legendary horror cinema curses associated with Poltergeist, The Omen and The Exorcist add another cheeky layer to this smart effort.

Up next was Matt Winn’s less successful The Hoarder, a serial killer/monster mash-up set in a labyrinthine storage unit. It was hamstrung by a lack of invention and an astonishingly uncharismatic performance from Mischa Barton (whom the eloquent Winn, during his post-film Q&A, was eager to point out as not the easiest star to wrangle). Still, there were enough jolts and laughs to keep the crowd happy. And they were about to get even happier with Kiah Roache-Turner’s bonkers Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead. This Antipodean zombie apocalypse hoot splices the zany, lurid grue of Peter Jackson’s Braindead with the DIY grime and tech of Mad Max, then filters it through that inimitable Aussie deadpan delivery. No one takes things in their stride quite like the Australians, and it’s a trait which lends itself perfectly to horror-comedy. Wyrmwood brought the house down.

The crowd-pleasing continued with April Mullen and Tim Doiron’s grindhouse revenge pic 88. Starring festival favourite Katherine Isabelle (as well as Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd, having fun in a scuzzy role, and genre king Michael Ironside) and with a trashy, flashy aesthetic, this was always going to go down well. And so it proved. This was no doubt aided further by the presence of the charming and enthusiastic writer/co-star Doiron, who was milling about throughout the weekend and delighted whenever approached with praise for his film, which looked to be happening quite frequently. The day finished as it began, with another pleasant surprise in the form of Backmask (AKA The Asylum, AKA Exeter – all equally dreadful titles), a genre-savvy teen pastiche of the aforementioned wildly-saturated demonic possession market from Marcus Nispel. It unravels a bit towards the end, but for the most part this is top stuff, with a crackling script featuring great allusions to the pervasive social media/online dependence of the yoof and some superior gags. Those who had stayed to the wee small hours were rewarded.

And there were similar goodies for those who made it back early. Saturday's lineup began with Clown, co-written and directed by Jon Watts and produced by Eli Roth. Now, The Skinny has previously approached the words ‘Eli Roth presents’ with levels of enthusiasm normally reserved for a Bank Holiday trip to Ikea, or a Gwyneth Paltrow cook book, but Clown managed to confound our expectations, mainly by being completely un-Rothian. Cronenberg looms large as a real estate agent is slowly transformed into a child-munching mountain goblin (because that’s what clowns actually were in olden times, apparently) after putting on a cursed costume for his kid’s birthday. Again, this is funny and icky – not pulling any punches in depicting the realtor’s developing dietary requirements – with an added strain of melancholy that serves it really well in the final act. Plus, it has Peter Stormare being all doolally as a pseudo-Van Helsing, so can’t really fail.

A classic was then in store, with a beautifully remastered version of Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, courtesy of Arrow Films. It’s always a joy to listen to festival co-director Alan Jones introduce movies about which he is passionate, and it was no different here as he expounded Black Lace’s importance to not only the genre but him personally. Jones’s words, and the film, were a real treat. Bava’s masterpiece was then followed by Russ Gomm (long involved with FrightFest) and The Woods, his documentary on the making and marketing of The Blair Witch Project. Pieced together from footage shot by the crew at the time, then passed to Gomm by Blair Witch co-director Eduardo Sánchez and producer Gregg Hale, The Woods does feel a bit like a DVD extra and lacks a critical gaze, but is still an intriguing look behind the scenes of a horror phenomenon. A touch more judicious editing was maybe required though.

After that, Belgian director Hans Herbots was on-hand to introduce his adaptation of Mo Hayder’s novel, The Treatment, which he unfortunately chose to do by saying how excited he was to screen the film “for the first time in England”, with predictable results. Good natured jeers and boos rained down on the filmmaker, who took it in equally good spirit. And that was the end of the lolz for a while, as his unrelentingly grim serial child abuser drama unfolded. Ambitious of theme and brilliantly played, The Treatment raises almost unbearable moral dilemmas in the darkness of its subject matter, but disappointingly pulls away from them to put more emphasis on shock. It doesn't quite hang together, and is hampered by a televisual aesthetic. It's almost like Gaspar Noé Inception-ed an Inspector Morse writers’ room then fucked off and left them to it. Certainly gripping and admirable in many ways, it falls just short of being a complete success for us, but gained huge praise from the crowd in general.

Some levity was then restored to the room with Rec 4, for many the anticipated highlight of the weekend. The latest instalment in the Spanish zombie/infected/whatever saga plays out in similar fashion to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s appalling Alien: Resurrection – if Alien: Resurrection weirdly sidelined its heroine for most of the runtime, and somehow still wasn’t shit. Director Jaume Balagueró (returning to his franchise after having nothing to do with the third instalment) survives a bizarre misuse of charismatic lead Manuela Velasco (in most scenes, but seldom even in the frame as men-folk bicker about and around her) by staging some smashing zombie/infected/whatever action, and delivering some genuine laughs as things get sticky on a quarantined ship. Not least of all with the cause of the outbreak this time: an escaped zombie/infected/whatever rage monkey who attacks the boat’s chef, only to be sautéed in self-defence then accidentally served to the crew for dindins. And Velasco gets stuff to do eventually, doing it predictably well. Overall, really good fun.

The event then drew to a close with There Are Monsters, an often inspired Bodysnatchers update from writer-director Bryan Bertino. There’s loads of wit and some real frights in the early stages of this – a pre-credit sting brought by miles the biggest scare reaction of the weekend – and it's maintained for the most part. But Bertino’s frankly infuriating camerawork and editing takes its toll eventually, and it definitely outstays its welcome with an increasingly dopey denouement. Still, for an hour or so There Are Monsters is fantastic, and perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the festival: innovative, experimental and self-aware. It was short on big names this year, but some unexpected gems more than made up for that. A really enjoyable couple of days for the loyal FrightFest fanbase.