frightfest showcase 1 and 2

Frightfest showcase short films 1 and 2

It’s a high bar with a sense of production. A running theme in the makers has been horror and folk fear, with one or two drawing on ‘the event’ where none of us had fun.

Here are the highlights I need to pursue with the first two batches if you can.

THE CRITIC

It would be remiss of me not to mention it, at the same time, possibly making the movie unreviewable. It touches initially on Kermode’s issues, such as in ‘Hatchet Job.’ Do they WANT reviews or just vitriol? We have a charming lead, flawed and anxious and a great leer in the mystery you can’t help but be unnerved by. It’s a taut satanic flick and brisque, making it shar in keeping to the remit despite the old lady who keeps flickering on my monitor….

THREE DOORS DOWN.

Christmas horror and frantic and fantastical s in a home invasion. Gr s outs and Guffaws are thrown at you thro; picture the kitchen fight in Gremlins getting its spin-off and ramping up the threat and stake. One to put on your Santa streaming list.

YOU’RE OUT

“Do it, or I will put you to your Dad!” This single lifeline is the biggest clash of all my experiences, parallel to being a gay man. As a mixed-race man who passes, I have always been vocal and, in the past, critical of putting myself in a closet despite the choice being there. But that statement and sentiment Jars me out of that comfortable armchair judgement , Society may treat me better if I lie, but my family has been there for and with me every day. I am taking the campness of SCREAM and ensuring it’s never shrill with a knife twist into personal identity. It is the conflict, guilt, and comfort our lead undergoes with great range. Media likes to pretend ‘everything is okay’, and this incision into personal life and identity challenges it and shows us how it isn’t even on the most intimate levels. Check it out.

OLD FLAMES

It is more of a musical meditation as we follow the consequences and impact of intergenerational trauma. It portrays the filter of disconnect with one’s legacy and heritage that impacts so many of us by the very society we are part of. We share an experience of absence and loss while navigating a world brimming with a culture capital we may never feel we can attain. Yet this film shows how we are still whole and make peace with what we can. Let’s cut to your reading  ‘The Irish Indian Times’ not ‘My hot take because of algorithms.’ If you think I’m biased…well…yes…now watch this. Idiot.

THE LURE

A simple taut line breaks clear with a clean sweep, and the lead is quite a prize in his way. Reels you in.

RED LAKE

I am an Irish citizen by my mother. I qualify for the status of Person of Indian Origin if I do the admin by my father. Through this, I am a literal product of partition in every sense, including familial.  Red Lake takes the wounded heart of many relationships because of this. It brings them to the fore while keeping the stakes about commitment, compassion and the legacy of sacrifice in contrast with an evolution of agency and destiny. I see strong futures from this creative team and hope to see more soon.

DEAD SKIN

e. We follow the self-conscious girl going through her anxieties and fears. At the same time, her mother tries to encourage her ‘normal development’ as she sheds the skin of expectations and the sense of inadequacy to empowerment. It’s a significant aspect of what being young can be as you change in self and assertion. A great dynamic and pace. With a payoff that will pull on the hairs of your skin. Look out for it.

FUSE

I’ve never seen a Johnny Vivash film I didn’t like. Still, as the relatable leccy in the halfway haunted house, we see the intertwining with modern life, old tech, and eldritch fears blend understandably while proving a simple story can be told expertly to captivate with craft.

VIRTUOSO

My brother Mycroft is a grade 8 Pianist. We moved into a house with a piano left behind when I was four, and he was 11. He is incredibly gifted on several levels, having his PhD as I type this. But there has also been an element on the sidelines of his talent. The idea that his auto-didactic training and supported education compared to the clinically classical was about making him ‘as good as’ providing everything’s done a certain way. We see the pressure on our female lead as she faces similar impositions and finally realises how to embrace her wildness to their diligence, leaving her and the film hard to surpass.