FrightFest

2/10 - Drab. Or at least, the first hour was... at which point I decided that sleep was the better option.

It was about an hour in that a dialogue exchange took place between four of the characters that involved them saying words in sentence form that I kind of recognized as a conversation of sorts. But it was so brain numbingly bad and delivered in a such a clueless manner by those onscreen (almost as if they knew what they had to say but they weren't sure why) that my brain almost caved in from the sheer god awfulness of the whole thing. Yup, 2/10 is about right. Makes David Hess similar Smash Cut from a few years back look like a masterpiece by comparison). Alas I somehow managed to stay awake throughout And the irony is it followed on from the festival's best movie so far (the awesome Upgrade... 9/10. And yay, we finally got a Q+A!)

This looked to me like a movie that made it onto the running list because of the title rather than any inherent value. I decided that sleep was more important and it should like that was the right decision!

Some potentially interesting ideas, but ultimately poorly executed, coming over as one of those cheapo horrors on the Sy-Fy channel. Could've been a fun slasher, could've been a dark one played entirely straight, but instead it failed on both counts, with mostly forgettable characters. 5 / 10

If ever a film was made to star the latter-day Robert Englund, this was it. But it still would've been shit...

Complete and utter rubbish from beginning to end. The plot was as weak as could be* but the director was most to blame - any moment which should have had some impact (like the fate of the mayor or the revelation that escaped prisoner Mason really was a nutter after all) just sort of flopped out in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of way, or even took place off-screen. Not funny, not scary, not gory, not anything. Just inept.

The one thing films set in abandoned lunatic asylums should have going for them is that they at least look creepy. Even the most ropey found-footage efforts manage that. But it was way beyond these guys.

(* Sorry Mr Writer who came all the way from New York to find there was no Q&A, but I think you can forget about those two sequels...)

2/10. Made Rob Zombie's 31 look like a cinematic masterpiece. A darkly lit, shoddily edited mess with undifferentiated characters, uninspired kills and nothing resembling a plot that I could discern. It's like the filmmakers threw a bunch of slasher ingredients into a location and shut the doors hoping something coherent would emerge from the other end. I'm not sure another month in the editing suite could salvage a watchable film from this crock.