August Bank Holiday weekend. While most people are fretting that the sunny weather won't hold, 800 clued-up film fans make the pilgrimage to Leicester Square's Odeon West End for the annual Film4 FrightFest horror bonanza.
The yearly five-day-diet of the best in horror cinema sends shivers down the spine for all the right reasons, but don't take our word for it, organiser and all-round movie know-it-all Alan Jones explains why this year's festival is the most deliciously fiendish yet.
"How can we top last year’s Film4 FrightFest? That’s always the question we face programming the next exhaustive line-up. In January - at least on paper - our August 2008 wish-list looked solid. As usual we waited until Cannes to ensure we didn’t miss out on those must-see items that always lurch into frame. Like Martyrs, the most controversial and provocative film we’ve ever shown in our nine-year history, and the ‘hoodie horror’ Eden Lake.
We’ve always prided ourselves on assembling a current ‘snapshot’ of the horror fantasy genre and this year we’re on-trend in a variety of ways. Most importantly we focus on the new wave of British nightmares, and are delighted to be showcasing a six-pack of homegrown horrors – Eden Lake, Mum & Dad, The Broken, The Dead Outside, Freakdog and The Disappeared – each distinctive in their own right, each set to put their directors on the map.
Discovering new talent is what our loyal audience expects, demands actually. And we’ve done pretty well up to now with Eli Roth (Hostel), Chris Smith (Severance), Adam Green (Hatchet) and Phil Claydon (Lesbian Vampire Killers). On the strength of The Disappeared, Johnny Kevorkian could easily be tomorrow’s Peter Jackson. There’s no doubt either that Adam Gierasch’s Autopsy signals a unique voice on the American front: he co-wrote Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears and certainly learnt lessons from the Italian maestro.
Showing a broad range of movies the die-hard fan will have to see (Death Race), those they are gagging to see (Alex Aja’s Mirrors, and the sensational Let The Right One In) and the one’s they don’t know about yet (From Within and Trailer Park of Terror) is what makes us a not-to-be-missed experience. It’s often hard to get that mix right but this year we’ve cracked it.
One thing we’ve learnt is that vital as the films are, it’s the unique atmosphere that makes the Film4 FrightFest what it truly is - an important haven for our diverse community to meet each other again, make new friends, greet their idols and just have fun.
We’ve chosen the movies we know they’ll love and the rest is up to them. Year after year, the devoted descend on Leicester Square bringing newcomers with them because they have such a great time. For some it’s their annual holiday. For others it’s their life, the most important weekend of their year. So we must be doing something right. If I have any nerves going on stage to open the festival, they disappear the moment I see the crowd so psyched up and ready to be scared.
The moment the August Bank Holiday is over we literally have to start planning for the next year. And 2009 is a biggie because it will be our tenth anniversary in a new, even larger venue. The question how we can match this year’s Film4 FrightFest will be raised again. And that’s what I call really scary!"
Alan Jones
