FrightFest 2020: October Edition Round-Up

FrightFest has quickly come and gone. Much like this entire shitshow of a year, time doesn’t really mean anything anymore. October’s follow-up edition was virtual, for ovious reasons, compiling countless full length features and bite-sized shorts. As evidenced by online chatter, it was largely a smashing success. If there’s anything we’ve learned in 2020, it’s that horror filmmaking is absolutely thriving this year, and we don’t need the big screen to tell gut-wrenching and compelling stories.

Earlier this week, we highlighted Final Destination creator Jeffrey Reddick’s directorial debut, Don’t Look Back, giving it a four star review. “[The film] quickly unravels a moralistic yarn, centering on karma’s dominating presence throughout our lives,” reads our, mostly positive, take. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Below, B-Sides & Badlands lassoes up capsule reviews for the remaining features we were able to consume ⏤ not as many as we would have liked, but there are plenty of gems to discover.

The World We Knew

A heist film far less concerned about any actual heist than its ramifications, The World We Knew ⏤ co-directed by Luke Skinner and Matthew Benjamin Jones, who also wrote the script with Kirk Lake ⏤ turns the caper into a bedeviling psychological thriller with enough stylistic pressure to numb the senses. When a robbery goes awry, leading to a deadly shoot out, the group holes up in a secluded house in the countryside, leaving them to taunt one another, snort cocaine, and confront their demons. While they face down what they’ve done, it soon becomes clear they might not be prepared to pay their overdue bill. Caked in fire-smoked tension, it’s a slow-burning ghost story hyper-focused on characters, their dynamics, and the blurred lines between reality and deep-seated trauma. The World We Knew rises tall with entrancing visuals, and directors Skinner and Jones deliberately peel back the layers only when they need to. It’s a surprising delight.

Dangerous to Know

Disclaimer: I “walked out” of this film 80 minutes in, so I’m only reviewing the first half.

Rarely does a film propose such a compelling premise and totallly botch it from the get-go. Written and directed by David Simpson, his feature debut Dangerous to Know possesses something fascinating about mental health and recovery at its unshakable core, but a bloated three-hour run time drains any and all potential. After Bridget (played by Bridget Graham) attempts suicide, she enters strict treatment and must finish counseling at a secluded cabin, with nothing but expansive farmland to comfort her. Perhaps that plot point is unrealistic ⏤ it’s not likely anyone who’s a danger to themselves would be instructed to isolate themselves further ⏤ but it sets up potential for Bridget’s gradual mental deterioation. If you can push past wonky, agonizing dialogue mixing (even if characters are outside, they sound like they’re buried in a closet), there really is meat to gnaw on here. Bridget contends with her guilt over her actions and tries valiantly to climb back out of her darkness. Reality begins to distort, and she even hallucinates a silent killer, ala I Know What You Did Last Summer, underscoring the notion you’re never supposed to really know what’s happening. And that’s as far as the story goes in the first 80 minutes. Little, if anything, actually transpires on screen, and it’s hard to imagine why the story has been stretched so thin and where it could possibly go. Is the pay-off even worth it?

Babysitter Must Die

Babysitter Must Die, directed by Kohl Glass, who co-wrote the script with Julie Auerbach and Kevin Tavolaro, is the love child of You’re Next and The Babysitter. It strives to be both serious horror and horror-comedy and never sticks the landing in either. From its Girl Scout-approved graphics to hammy dialogue, it simply stands in the shadow of far superior flicks its attempting to emulate. Riley Scott plays Josie Jane, your run-of-the-mill 20-something who still babysits, while getting her college degree. One evening, when she’s watching Sophia (Scarlett Hazen), the parents arrive home early from their Christmas party with their son Rick (Robert Scott Smith) and girlfriend Sadie (Kalli Therinae) in two. Things go quickly amiss when a trio of masked intruders take everyone hostage. Josie has been caught mid-game of hide-and-seek, so it’s up to her to utilize her survivalist skills to save the day. The villians are pretentiously theatrical, not slotting into the film’s largely straightlaced tone. The pieces are there, but it’s like Glass has made two different movies and spliced them together. The whole simply fumbles the entire way through.

The Nights Before Christmas

If you’ve got a bloodlust for high-octane camp, with a very Silent Night, Deadly Night perversity, Paul Tanter’s The Nights Before Christmas will have you absolutely drooling. With a script co-written with Simon Phillips, who also stars as the deranged psychopathic Santa Claus, the film pours thick grittiness over its jagged parts. Opening in a mental asylum, Santa and co-conspirator, Mrs. Claus (Sayla de Goede), wreck havoc on the other patients and the institute’s staff ⏤ perhaps, as we learn, as payback for severe mistreatment. Flash forward four years, and the maniac duo return to finish what they started, plotting out Santa’s List and picking off the names one by one. Even those marked as “Nice” must play a vital role in exacting their revenge. The story devolves into wobbly storytelling, but it’s always gleefully macabre. Where Phillips’ performance is downright chilling, de Goede toys with a child-like temperament in a similar way as Sherie Moon Zombie’s Baby in the Firefly Trilogy. We don’t get nearly enough Christmas-themed horror, and The Nights Before Christmas fits rather nicely in place.

CYST

Talk about the bigget surprise to come out of FrightFest this year (both August and October editions)! Cyst, directed by Tyler Russell, who co-wrote the script with Andy Silverman, feels ripped right out of the 1960s, immersing in the delight and allure of monster movies packed with gooey, shape-shifting creatures from another planet. When Dr. Guy (George Hardy, Trolls 2) cooks up a new contraption to help in his dermatology practice, he won’t stop until everything is fine-tuned just right. After a botched procedure with nurse Patricia (Eva Habermann) leaves a gnarly scar on her arm, she quits her post when she learns Dr. Guy is at it again, declaring today to be her last day. A group of investors pop by for a private showing, unconvinced of Guy’s claims of a cutting edge treatment, and when his assistant Preston’s (Darren Ewing, Trolls 2) back growth leaves them further unimpressed, Dr. Guy takes matters into his own hands. He smothers a weird yellow goo onto the lump, only to have it mutate into a giant, blood-thirsty cyst. Does it sound absurd? Yes, it is, but the film relishes in such an outlandish premise. It’s fun, sickeningly gorey, and a real treat.

Heckle

Heckle opens on a murderous flashback ⏤ setting the stage for a compelling premise about comeuppance, facades we don to the public, and lines between good and bad. Steve Guttenberg portrays Ray Kelly, a famous comedian who meets a grisly end on Christmas Eve in 1992. It’s quickly apparent he’s scum and has only been riding high on his popularity, and there’s at least one person who’s clearly not a fan. An unnamed killer arrives on his doorstep and fires a single shot into his chest, triggering a sequence of tragic events much later in the present. Joe Johnson (Guy Combes) admires everything about Kelly’s legacy and carves out his own place in the standup comedy space. He is an awful person, too, as is most of those in his inner circle. On Halloween night, Joe, his girlfriend Evelyn (Madison Clare), and a group of friends hang out, get high, and drink at the year’s most boring Halloween costume party. One by one, they’re picked off in gruesome fashion, leading up to several third act twists; it’s predictable but fine. Director Martyn Pick, on a script written by Airell Anthony Hayles, dishes up a weirdly hypnotic style, gritty, cool, and left-of-center ⏤ but the story spins its tires so hard and it never arrives on anything particularly interesting.

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