Each year at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest the organisers dedicate one of their Saturday screens to their First Blood strand of programming. Films picked for the First Blood selection highlight some of the best and brightest new talent within the UK genre scene. Whether first-time features, or first-time genre creators, the strand has a long history of getting in early doors with fresh talent. Previous filmmakers to have been selected for First Blood include Graham Hughes with Death of a Vlogger, and Chris Cronin whose film The Moor took FrightFest 2023 by storm. This year’s collection of titles provided another bounty of quality, with Tony Burke’s Protein just one of several standouts.
Based on his 2014 short film of the same name, award-winning film, content, and music video director, Tony Burke, makes his feature debut with Protein, a grim chiller about a traumatised ex-squaddie and serial killer returning to South Wales to escape his demons. There, Sion (Craig Russell, Canaries) becomes work-out and gym-obsessed and eats a local drug dealer for their protein. Compelled to kill again, he sends shockwaves through the local criminal underworld and inadvertently sparks a brutal and bloodthirsty tit-for-tat turf war between rival gangs. Soon the bloody events set Sion on an unlikely road to redemption.
After ten years in production, and having almost come unstuck by the pandemic, Protein finally screened at FrightFest. The response to the screening was overwhelmingly positive with the audience loving its blending of Dead Man’s Shoes and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Before the world premiere, writer and director Tony Burke, lead actor Craig Russell, and co-star Kezia Burrows took to the FrightFest media wall and spoke with THN about the project.
Protein screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest. A release date for Protein is still to be confirmed, but THN will update as soon as we hear any information.
