GFF 2012 - Frightfest highlights
A round up of the best films showing as part of the Glasgow Film Festival's horror strand
FrightFest is back once again to terrorise the Glasgow Film Festival. Now taking over the GFT for two full days, this year (as with every year) it’s a vibrant snap shot of the state of horror cinema. It’s been so successful the organisers have launched a FrightFest Extra fringe programme with a chance to catch some old Hammer Horror classics on the big screen as well as Livid (pictured, Wed 22 Feb 4.20pm; Thu 23 Feb, 9.15pm, Cineworld), Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s psychedelic follow up to French shocker Inside.
Unsurprisingly this year’s programme has been infected by the outbreak of ‘found footage’ films that are so virulent in the genre at the moment. Over a quarter of this year’s offerings are filmed in the fake home movie shockumentary format. It’s rapidly becoming a cliché but when someone gets in right (think [Rec] or Paranormal Activity) it’s an incredibly efficient and cost effective way of building tension. Tape 407: The Mesa Reserve Incident (Fri 24 Feb, 4pm) takes the shakycam onboard a flight and subsequent crash, while Evidence (Sat 25 Feb, 11am) is a camping trip gone wrong (strange noises, weird carvings on trees, etc). There were also plans to show American possession movie The Devil Inside, but that's now been dropped in favour of slasher/ghost story Cassadaga (Sat 25 Feb, 9pm), perhaps because of the former's notoriously controversial ending. We won't spoil that for you here – rather, we'll let Wikipedia do it.
The programme has also been widened in scope to include several titles that aren’t strictly horror films, but do contain horrific elements and ample gore. There’s über violent Indonesian action flick The Raid (Sat 25 Feb, 11.15pm), dark claustrophobic noir Crawl (Fri 24 Feb, 6.30pm) and post-apocalypse survival tale The Day (Fri 24 Feb, 9pm) alongside the more obvious horror fare of War of the Dead (Fri 24 Feb, 11.15pm) and Wang’s Arrival (Sat 25 Feb, 6.30pm).
And finally we need to doff our cap to the king of the Bs, Roger Corman, as new documentary Corman’s World (Fri 24 Feb, 1.30pm) makes it’s Scottish debut. Mr Corman we salute you, cinema would be a far duller place without you.
All FrightFest screenings are at the Glasgow Film Theatre.