Halloween FrightFest 2024

Bull’s Eye

Halloween FrightFest 2024
ODEON Luxe 1st and 2nd November 2024

Well that rolled around quickly again... as the years frequently do when you get to my age. The Halloween edition of this year's FrightFest was held over two days again, the first day starting around 6pm and finishing just after midnight and the second starting at 11pm and finishing around the same time as the first day. So three new movies on the first day and six on the second. As usual, these were all either UK premieres or world premieres of the films in question and some of them are still waiting for distribution deals to be inked out (or whatever the digital equivalent of that is these days). And, also as usual, this is going to be a series of very short capsule reviews (not really even reviews, probably, more quick sketches) of the films in question, just to give a flavour of the tone of the festival (which I’m glad to say was, once again. all over the place... good for them). If I revisit any of these at a later date, I’ll review them properly then.


DAY ONE

Magpie
Directed by Sam Yates
UK/USA
First up was Magpie, starring Daisy Ridley (and based on her story which was written as a screenplay by her husband, Tom Bateman), Shazad Latif and the absolutely brilliant Matilda Lutz (who top-lined Revenge, reviewed here). This is a somewhat dark tale of marital erosion as Ridley plays the housewife looking after one of the kids while her writer husband takes the other kid to work, shooting a major movie. It’s pretty intense and features a lot of close ups of Ridley as we study the emotional turmoil within her (which is a good thing, she’s always worth a watch). It reminded me a just a tad of Polanski’s Repulsion, to be honest. It’s not really a horror movie, more a thriller but it’s got beautiful cinematography and is only let down a little, perhaps, by the obvious twist which I suspect most people will see coming from about a third of the way into the picture. But a pretty good movie, nonetheless. It was nice seeing Ridley and a few others in person too... almost all the screenings had cast and crew intros and Q & A sessions this year. 

Parvulos
Directed by Isaac Ezban
Mexico
Directed by Isaac Ezban, the incredible Mexican genre director behind the likes of The Incident (reviewed by me here) and The Similars, Parvulos was one of the two really stand out films of the festival this year, for me. A post-apocalyptic zombie tale about three brothers (two of them very young) trying to get food to survive after everything has ended while keeping alive two zombies in the basement, for reasons which will be made clear as you get into the narrative. Visually, the colour palette is so knocked back that most of the time it feels like you are watching a monochrome movie, apart from the odd smudge of strong colour deliberately placed here and there. As usual, Ezban pulls no punches and you won’t see every beat coming as the tale develops.  Another outstanding film from this director. 

 

Advent
aka The Krampus Calendar
Directed by Airell Anthony Hayles
UK
This movie has a similar central idea to the far superior French movie The Advent Calendar (reviewed here) and is told in a fake documentary using ‘found footage’ style. Alas, although a couple of the main performances are nice, the film seemed a little badly executed and, I dunno, just felt like it could have used a lot more money pumped into it to make the central idea work better. Kinda cheap and tacky, I thought. I hate typing that because I know these movies are hard to make and there are some nice moments but... it just didn’t work too well for me, I guess.

DAY TWO

The Bitter Taste
Directed by Guido Tölke
Germany
Well this was kinda interesting. A well made action adventure, sc-fi, horror movie that was well shot, had some great performances and went along at a fair lick. It was certainly a rich and diverse movie but, yeah, that’s a double edged sword for this production, I reckon. It felt like everything and the kitchen sink had been thrown into the film to make a very dense narrative which I feel isn’t easy to process in one go. I honestly felt that this story would have been better served as either a serialised comic or a TV mini series. I also thought the score could have been dialled down in the sound mix just a little in a couple of places. However, it was certainly an ambitious project and you have to admire a lot about the end result, even if it doesn’t all jell well in one installment.


Alien Country
Directed by Boston McConnaughey
USA
Directed by Boston McConnaughey and starring his wife Renny Grames and K.C. Clyde, this one is a comedy ‘aliens in the desert town’ movie as a bunch of people are thrown together trying to stop an alien invasion force consisting mostly of big, insect like predators. This was pretty entertaining, had some good jokes and some nice visuals. Can’t fault this one... would play well as part of an all-nighter with your mates with liberal doses of alcohol on a Saturday night.

The Draft!
aka Setan Alas!
Directed by Yusron Fuadi
Indonesia
Five students go to a remote location from which they can’t escape while they slowly get picked off by a killer. I won’t reveal too much about this because they don’t want spoilers going out ahead of its release but this didn’t quite make it for me. When I noticed a large, seeming ‘continuity error’ involving a suddenly appearing bunch of tea cups early in the picture, I got kinda interested because I knew it must be there deliberately. Unfortunately, the film tips its hand too early on in the process and, again without giving too much away, sometimes a joke can go on forever and lose its power completely. Not a good one for me.


Time Travel Is Dangerous
Directed by Chris Reading
UK
This is another one which didn’t really work for me. A ‘fun comedy’ with two leads who get next to last billing because they’re shop owners and not actresses and are essentially playing themselves (and doing a very good job of it) this one has a huge support by British comedy A listers. About two ‘retro store’ ladies who go back in time to get brand new historical artefacts to sell, it kinda falls flat and dull fairly early on, I think. I know I’m not alone in thinking (the guy sitting next to me reacted similarly) that it just went on too long and, to paraphrase him, fun should not be this much hard work. Would have made a great short film though... which apparently it was at some stage.


Catch A Killer
Directed by Teddy Grennan
USA
This was a kind of fun one for fans of American horror and also slasher movies, with lots of references which are actually built into the DNA of the thing and which an ex-police inspector uses to try and catch the killer. It’s a bit obvious (really no surprises here) but it’s a solid, consistent movie which is rather well made and lands its ending nicely. Not a bad little thriller... very entertaining.


Animale
Directed by Emma Benestan
France
Animale was the other outstanding movie of the festival. Absolutely brilliant with a knockout performance by Oulaya Amamra as Nejma, the film’s central protagonist who wants to work with bulls. Now, it was the last film of the festival and I was exhausted and sleepy but this one transported me, dream-like, to another level. I definitely need to research and pay more attention to both the lead actress and director. A real high to end this year’s festival with.

Heretic

Die Agnostic
Evaluation

Heretic
Directed by Scott Beck
and Bryan Woods
USA/Canada 2024
A24
UK Cinema Release Print.

There are a couple of things that bother me about the new movie Heretic and I’m going to mention those first to stop them getting in the way of what should be a, mostly, very positive review.

Firstly, well... regular readers will probably remember I have quite rigid ideas about what makes a horror genre movie and so... I don’t appreciate going out on Halloween night to see a preview of a new horror movie (I would be at FrightFest for the next two days so it was the only day I could fit it in) only to find out by the end that it wasn’t a horror movie at all... just a thriller (albeit a very good one).

Secondly, the title is a bit of a nonsense because a ‘heretic’ is, by dictionary definition, somebody who disagrees with beliefs that are generally accepted, in this case religion but, honestly, the beliefs of the main antagonist, played brilliantly by Hugh Grant, do not define him as a heretic because, well, I think a large amount of people on the planet would probably have come to the same conclusion about just what organised religion is from an early age. And to just underline my own conclusion of these things, which pretty much mirrors Grant’s in the movie but I won’t reveal what his ‘one true religion’ is in case it’s a spoiler... I’ll just acknowledge that, religion doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the belief in God (whatever that is for you), it’s something else very much man made... so it’s possible to believe in God without being in any way religious, I suspect.

Anyway, other than those two points... Heretic is a mostly cracking movie with, perhaps, just a little of a disappointing denouement but it was still an okay enough ending. It’s not, as I said, really a horror movie, although various genre trappings are brought into play because, right from the offset, the directors certainly seem to want you to think it is.

It opens strongly with two mormons, Sister Paxton (played by Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (played by Sophie Thatcher, who was so good as the young version of Juliette Lewis’ character in Yellowjackets) talking about an amateur porn film. Around them... and this is the best part of the film for me... is some superb typography showing the title, cast and crew etc, creeping around the edges of the frame as the two talk. They then go on with their chores which involves checking their list and going around town, knocking on the doors of people who have expressed an interest in joining their religion and trying to convert them. The last stop on their journey tonight is the house of Mr. Reed, played by Hugh Grant.

Once they’re inside his home, however, it soon becomes clear that he’s a religious scholar and that he has them there for a purpose... he’s not letting them go anytime soon. And the majority of the film is fairly slow paced but that’s okay, it’s pretty riveting dialogue and the discussions around religions and Reed’s metaphors likening the various religions as a series of boards games is all pretty great (and I seriously have to check up on the origins of Monopoly now... that’s just so wrong). As the girls are taken down a winding, conversational path, it isn’t too long before they find themselves in the first of a series of lower levels to the house, as they try and find a way out of their situation (I’m pretty sure something important about the layout of this area may have been cut which was in one of the original trailers but I think I’ll need to revisit those trailers again to make sure).

And that’s where I’m leaving the story dangling... like I said, I don’t want to get into any spoilers past what you know from the trailer. But I will say that the movie is less like the horror film it’s trying to fool the audience into thinking it is and much more like one of those small scale, two hander plays/movies such as Sleuth and Deathtrap, albeit this involves a few more characters at various stages. Now, the cinematography is great and I’ve mentioned the strong, typographically excellent opening (which feels more like something Wes Anderson might use). There are also some outstanding shots such as the way the directors play with the syntax of the visual language by, at one point, showing one of the girls running through a scale model of the house from above in a room as a short hand metaphor and, when she reaches that specific room with the model in it, the camera just pans up to show her arriving in that room.

However, the film’s power comes from a well written script and the powerful performances of the three central characters, all of whom work really well together. Especially Grant... I’ve seen him playing comic villains before such as in films like Dungeons And Dragons - Honour Among Thieves (reviewed here) but he really does have a chance here to remind the audience about just how good an actor he can be and he certainly seizes the opportunity.

Now, the ending, which I will try and discuss but not spoil, does seem to me like it’s totally not horror but, it has to be said, there is more than a hint that something supernatural does occur by the movie’s end but, it’s more of a choice on the behalf of the particular viewer, I believe... and could be interpreted a number of ways. It could be argued, for example, that a certain ‘deus ex machina’ moment in the movie is just exactly that, in the literal translation of the phrase but, I personally didn’t necessarily plump for this ‘is it or isn’t it a miracle?’ moment myself... especially considering the aftermath of the moment. But it doesn’t matter because, I’m sure some people will take certain things as a positive message about religious faith and others will, I suspect, not even realise that it’s built into the DNA of the movie as a possible ingredient.

Either way, although I felt the ending was a little lacking I certainly enjoyed the journey and, despite it not really being a horror movie, I think fans of that genre will still certainly get a kick out of Heretic. So, yeah, I’d happily recommend this one to people although, I’m not sure I’d buy it on Blu Ray because I don’t know if I could sit through it a second time. Very good movie though.