A Bloody Good Weekend

I’ve spent this past weekend in the company of Nazi zombies, crazed killers and some mutants from another dimension. While that may sound like a normal Saturday down the Grassmarket, it was in fact Dead by Dawn, Scotland’s biggest horror film festival at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse. 

With [REC] and The Orphanage still fresh in my mind I thought it was only right to continue on my own personal horror journey. 

Things kicked off on Thursday night with Outpost, a new Scottish feature starring Rome’s Ray Stevenson. It tells of a wartime Nazi experiment gone badly wrong, leaving zombies to inhabit an Eastern European bunker and reign terror on modern day soldiers.  

This was a cracking start to the weekend, with some great performances from a small cast. Yes, there’s a bit of blood and gore in there too, enough to make the squeamish feel a tad queasy, but I’d recommend it to both hardened and rookie horror fans. And it’s got Tires from Spaced in it. Out on May 16, check out the trailer: 

Another new film was Five Across the Eyes, an American slasher-type movie shot on a budget of $4000 over 12 days. 

Five teenage girls are driving home from a night out and take a wrong turning before crashing their people carrier into a stranger’s car before scarpering without swapping insurance details. Sadly of all the cars they could have chosen to dent, they’ve gone for a homicidal maniac. Nae luck. 

It doesn’t take long for Five Across the Eyes to get going, and it takes even less time for all five girls to get hysterical. Being trapped in a car for 90 minutes with five screaming – make that SCREAMING!! – girls as they are chased, attacked, chased again and attacked again is a pretty unique experience. 

There’s probably a great film somewhere in here, but it could do with losing another 15 minutes and giving the mad knife woman a bit more motive. Still, this is an intense ride that has some standout moments, so all is not lost. Prepare for more SCREAMING… 

The other main attraction for me was The Mist, Frank (The Shawshank Redemption) Darabont’s latest Stephen King adaptation.  

Movie poster artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) is working on his latest job at his New England home when a storm suddenly brews up and causes much destruction to his house and the surrounding area. 

Heading into town to buy supplies, Drayton stops off at the local supermarket, where he is soon trapped with various residents as a mist starts to roll in off the nearby lake and things start to go badly wrong outside.  

Monsters, religion, politics and more monsters are all present in this superb film which falls squarely into the list of great King adaptations, sharing it with The Shining, Carrie and Misery and a few other classics. 

Fine support from Marcia Gay Harden as a bonkers religious nut and Toby Jones as heroic Ollie help lift this film up from the level of a standard B-movie, though there’s still blood, pan dimensional beings and nasty deaths to keep the body count healthy.  

There’s also one of the most un-Hollywood endings that you’ve ever seen. Without giving anything away (and avoid spoilers at all costs) this gives new meaning to the word bleak – you’ll laugh at the sheer audacity of it before what’s just happened sinks in. Fantastic. Tragically there’s no sign yet of a UK release, though the Region 1 DVD is out now. 

Take a peek at the (spoiler-free) trailer to see what you’re missing: 

There were numerous other films on offer but the above stood out for me on a weekend with too much to choose from – roll on 2009! 

Did you see anything better at Dead by Dawn or have you got a favourite horror film that more of us should be searching out?