Football might be coming home, we’ll find out for sure this weekend, but one thing that we do know that is definitely coming home is Arrow Video FrightFest. The event, which went online last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, finally returns to London’s Leicester Square, this August. Being held once again at the Cineworld Leicester Square, the film festival will take place from Thursday 26th August – Monday 30th August 2021. Over the five days the event will screen a specially curated selection of the very best of global genre cinema.
Today the four horsemen of horror FrightFest organisers – Alan Jones, Gregg Day, Ian Rattray and Paul McEvoy – have revealed the first wave of titles that will be traumatising the rabid audience. These twenty-five films that have been announced will form the programme for this year’s Main Screen, with the Discovery Screen and Short Film Showcase selections to be revealed in the coming weeks. News will also follow about special events, this year’s guest list, and a small scale digital event that will take place the weekend after, running from Wednesday 1st September – Sunday 5th September.
Neill Blomkamp will open the festivities with the European premiere of his new film, Demonic. The director, best known for creating District 9, shot Demonic in secret last summer, and it sees Blomkamp shift his focus from science-fiction to horror, for what promises to be a devilishly dark drama. The closing night film will be the UK premiere of Rob Jabbaz’s feature debut, The Sadness, an instant cult classic that is relentless, merciless, and already being hailed as a bloody masterpiece. After a year of combating a pandemic with relatively benign symptoms, a frustrated nation finally lets its guard down. This is when the virus spontaneously mutates, giving rise to a mind-altering plague. The age of civility and order is no more. There is only ‘The Sadness’.
Gunslingers, ghosts and cults…welcome to the insane visual madness of a Sion Sono movie and the latest memorable slice of Nicolas Cage rage in the UK premiere of post-apocalyptic Grindhouse classic Prisoners of the Ghostland. Another independent-spirited actor firmly established within the genre is Elijah Wood and he is on top form as an FBI profiler assigned to interview Ted Bundy in No Man of God, which will receive its European Premiere.
Comic book icon Alan Moore was last at FrightFest in 2014 with Show Pieces and he and director Mitch Jenkins team up once more to present the UK Premiere of mystery fantasy The Show. Then there’s the world premiere of British chiller The Kindred, with many of the stars attending, including James Cosmo, Steve Oram, April Pearson and Samantha Bond. Other World premieres include the shellshock creature feature Crabs!, the hilariously gory crowd pleaser The Retaliators (featuring cameos and music by Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, Five Finger Death Punch and Papa Roach) and FrightFest favourite Dominic Brunt is back with Evie, his thrilling and frighteningly sinister take on the shape-shifting Selkie myth, co-directed with Jamie Lundy and starring Michael Smiley.
Broadcast Signal Intrusion, the first feature to proudly spring from FrightFest’s innovative ‘New Blood’ initiative with Queensbury Pictures / MP Media, will receive its UK Premiere, as will the unbearably tense, electrifying thriller Coming Home in the Dark, the one-take time travel suspense comedy Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes and from Kazakhstan, the cruelly comic misadventure Sweetie, You Won’t Believe it.
Other UK premieres include ‘sonic slasher’, Sound of Violence, Alex Noyer’s extraordinarily eye and ear-opener, supernatural Thai slasher The Maid, the South African fantasy Gaia, the award-winning boy meets monster indie sensation Slapface, The Advent Calendar, which heralds the return of outré French horror and the oddest US genre entry for years, the extreme comedy King Knight from Richard Bates Jr. director of the brilliant Excision.
A prime example of the Mexploitation New Wave is The Exorcism of Carmen Farias and FrightFest will be presenting the International premiere of Rodrigo Fiallega’s blood-drenched shocker. There are also International premieres for Julien Knafo’s mutant-tastic Brain Freeze and Offseason, director / writer Mickey Keating’s quantum leap into the big time with an astonishing slice of Southern Gothic,
There are also European premieres for Edoardo Vitaletti’s gripping period occult drama The Last Thing Mary Saw, starring Rory Culkin, the German 70s nostalgia-fest Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes and Rob Schroeder’s startling puzzle box Sci-Fi mystery, Ultrasound.
Finally, as part of the main Arrow FrightFest line-up, three sensational shorts will be screening: the World Premiere of Mask of the Evil Apparition from Alex Proyas (The Crow) part of his Dark City cinematic universe, Stuffed from Theo Rhys, a fantastic full blown musical extravaganza, and the World Premiere of Scott (Sinister) Derrickson’s Shadowprowler, a distinctive take on the home invasion thriller.
We can’t wait to get back to our annual pilgrimage to Leicester Square, to curl up in the dark, and consume all these delicious delights.
Arrow Video FrightFest 2021 will take place at Cineworld Leicester Square from Thursday 26th August – Monday 30th August 2021.
