Frightfest 2022 Day Two - Friday

The Breach

 

A catalogue of missed opportunities might be the best way to describe THE BREACH, a film in which there are weird goings-on in a weird isolated house where a weird scientist has been creating weird creatures. Unfortunately the pace is glacial to the point where you want to shout at the screen and there's far too little explanation as to what's actually going on. Peppering your dialogue with terms like 'particle accelerator' and 'Cerne' won't fob us seasoned veterans off, you know, it just confirms that your film is essentially an empty collection of cliches, right down to a love triangle that's ultimately as pointless and boring as the rest of the film. Some excellent makeups effects are squandered and even the music score (by Slash) could have saved some of this but it doesnt feel as if he thought it was worth the bother either. 

Hounded

A gang of crooks breaks into a country house to steal a valuable knife at the request of dodgy antiques dealer Larry Lamb. But they've only just started prowling around when the family that lives there knocks them out with tasers. Soon they're dumped in a field and the subject of a hunt, complete with horses and hounds. HOUNDED deals with its subject matter in very broad stokes, with its examination of class differences little more than perfunctory. Adam Levins' 2015 ESTRANGED tackled the class issue  much better, while Craig Zobel's THE HUNT is a better and more complex exploration of the basic idea. Finally, it's always awkward when a film requires you to root for criminals and while HOUNDED tries hard it's an uphill struggle to feel any sympathy for them. 

HOUNDED is getting a release from Signature Entertainment in October

Orchestrator of Storms

An ORCHESTRATOR OF STORMS is how French director Jean Rollin described what he wanted to be when early on in his life he decided film-making was the career for him. And what a bumpy, poorly-budgeted, often even more poorly received (critically at least) career that turned out to be, with formal appreciation of his work only coming quite late in life. Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger's nearly two-hour documentary covers the entirety of Rollin from birth to death, with plenty of interviews from the like of stars Brigitte Lahaie and Francoise Pascal and distributor Nigel Wingrove, whose Redemption Films was the first time many of us in the UK got to experience a Rollinade. There's plenty of time spent on many of the films we all know and love him for, although some do get skipped over, while the part about his death could perhaps have done with editing down, but overall this is a solid, thorough  piece about a vital contributor to horror, art house and European cinema as a whole and Ballin and Ellinger have done an excellent job of documenting the life and career of this unique and, now, deservedly much-loved and respected genre auteur.

ORCHESTRATOR OF STORMS will be coming out from Arrow Films

Night of the Bastard

A glorious grindhouse tribute with a grim and grisly prologue set in 1978 before we flash forward 40 years to enjoy some naked devil worship ih the desert and a good old-fashioned siege as the satanists' intended victim escapes and ends up at the house of a local eccentric whose only friend is a terrapin. Shot 'off grid' this was everything that's right about low-budget independent film-making - tightly editedm action-packed and with moments that made the audience roar with applause.

Final Cut

Who would have guessed that the French would remake the Japanese hit ONE CUT OF THE DEAD? And who would have guessed that it would be done so successfully? Even if you are more than familiar with the original FINAL CUT offers plenty of laughs, a few surprises and even goes a little bit meta. Not the week to give up watching remakes.

Midnight Peepshow

An anthology horror film with three stories from three different directors, but always intended as a single movie (rather than the unsavoury practice of welding three unrelated short films together). This gives MIDNIGHT PEEPSHOW a definite coherence but also means the three tales of sex and horror are possibly a bit too similar, all of them crossing elements of HOSTEL with SAW. They are also surprisingly coy when it comes to nudity. Jake West has improved as a director since the days of RAZOR BLADE SMILE and EVIL ALIENS and his closing segment is the most extreme, so things do climax on a suitably gory note, with the wraparound also having a satisfying payoff,