Clark Baker’s Test Screening was one this year’s most popular films to play at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest. Now over a week since the 25th edition of the festival finished, attendees continue to share their highlights across social media and Test Screening consistently appears in many top ten and five lists. Screening during opening night, Test Screening took the FrightFest family back to the 80s for a practical effects driven sci-fi story about small town America. Tapping into the era of the 80s without milking the nostalgia for the decade, Test Screening positions a dynamic young cast in a nightmarish environment, and despite its older setting, holds plenty of resonance for modern audiences.
Test Screening is set in the summer 1982, in a small declining Oregon town, wherein excitement has been building for days. A Hollywood studio is holding a test screening of a new blockbuster movie in the local cinema. Could it be the new John Carpenter, the latest Steven Spielberg, or another Star Trek? Four lifelong friends (including The Passenger’s Johnny Berchtold) can’t wait to take their seats for the preview. But rather than a toe-dip screening, the film they watch is a mind-control experiment with terrifying and devastating effects on the community. Get ready for the sci-fi high of the year as The Thing meets Society in a ‘Stranger Things’ universe.
In attendance at Test Screening’s world premiere was the film’s writer, Stephen Susco, and ahead of Test Screening’s debut on the main screen, he swung by the media wall to answer some of THN’s burning questions about the movie. We spoke of the prestige of being at FrightFest’s 25th anniversary, why the 80s was the perfect setting for Test Screening’s story, and exactly what it’s like working with practical effects on set.
Test Screening screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest.
