FrightFest 2022: August Edition Round-Up

It’s hard to imagine August is now over, much less that FrightFest 2022 is officially in our rearview mirror. With the year’s summer edition, there were tricks, treats, and torments galore. I found myself unable to only peep a handful of films, but they certainly got my blood pumping for the next wave of horror.

Below, B-Sides & Badlands flips through four wildly-different films, two of which I absolutely loved and can’t wait to watch over and over and over again. These films screened as part of FrightFest 2022. For more information on the festival, please visit www.frightfest.co.uk.

New Religion

Director Keishi Kondo’s debut feature film New Religion hurls the viewer through a restoration of one woman’s soul amidst unimaginable tragedy. When Miyabi (played by Kaho Seto) suffers the death of her young daughter, she loses purpose in her life, finding herself replaying the tragic accident over and over again. In the wake of divorce, she begins a fresh new life with her musician boyfriend and works as a call girl. She wanders through existence and fails to forgive herself. Kondo explores the beauty of moths and their transformation in molting as the film’s central imagery, directly mirroring Miyabi’s own personal process through forgiveness and rebirth. Kondo mixes in mood-dripping reds and blues, as well as utilizing a camera’s exposing flash, to contrast the brightness of daylight. Such cinematography accentuates Seto’s performance, as cracks appear in her emotional veneer and splinter the further her story unravels. After another call girl Akari comes unglued and starts stabbing strangers on the street, Miyabi dedicates time to solving the mystery and eventually gets caught in the web of the last person Akari saw before her breakdown: a client with an insatiable lust for taking photos of women’s bodies. New Religion may have worked best with a shorter runtime and didn’t quite nosedive into bonkers territory as one might expect. Yet as far as debuts go, there is plenty to appreciate and admire in Kondo’s work.

Midnight Peepshow

Sticking the landing when it comes to anthology films is tough. Each installment must stand on its own, yet feel intertwined with the rest, or at least buried thematically in the same sour soil. Midnight Peepshow is a cohesive three-piece, even if its the kind of grimy, sickly sleaze that’s devoid of fun. In fact, the second and third shorts veer so deep into its meanness towards women that it’ll sure leave a bad taste in your mouth. A brief finale is just not enough to cleanse from what came before. The film — mounted with contributions from directors Jake West, Airell Anthony Hayles, Andy Edwards, and Ludovica Musumeci — follows a man named Graham White when he gets high on Valentine’s Day and stumbles upon an unsavory peepshow in a back alley. Once inside, he takes a seat for the ride of his life, finding himself venturing into the deranged underbelly of a popular sex fantasy website called The Black Rabbit. It’s real dark web stuff. A sex worker introduces herself and encourages Graham to get comfy, as she reveals not only her tragic story but those of other women. The anthology entries center around home invasion, Saw-light, and Hostel-approved grunge. The last is Graham’s story, the wrap-around in which we learn backstory about his wife and their failed marriage. Together, Midnight Peepshow works for what it is… but it’s little more than tepid fare we’ve seen countless times before.

Follow Her

Sylvia Caminer’s Follow Her is one of the absolute delights to come out of FrightFest this summer. Imagine Netflix’s Cam shot through with a Creep arrow, and then stitched up with an prickly Black Bear needle. Caminer peels back the curtain on the life of influencer Jess Peters (Dani Barker), who goes by J. Peeps online. In her online webseries, she answers job postings on Craigslist and films the experience. Most of them are weird, fairly innocuous, and totally not what was presented in the advertisement. But Jess goes along with whatever fantasies the clients want. It gets her clicks and has proven lucrative in leveling-up her social currency. When one of her videos goes viral, earning her a top-tier spot on Live Hive, users discover that the client’s identity has been revealed in a brief, mili-second moment when the identity-masking filter glitched. Jess’ credibility almost immediately goes out the window. She initially considers deleting the video, but it’s working out too well for her. So, the video stays. Meanwhile, she answers another add as an erotic thriller scriptwriter and ventures out to a secluded home in the woods. A rustic barn has been reworked into a house, and it’s serene enough, red flags aside. There, she meets a man named Tom Brady (Luke Cook), who actually hasn’t written a script yet. Tom is dashing, and he’s charming. But there’s something sinister lying in those pools he has for eyes. Jess can’t put her finger on it, but she stays to see what story he’s looking to write. Follow Her goes off the rails (in the best way possible) soon enough. The film’s commentary on accountability online is razor sharp, cutting deep and leaving long, oozing gashes. It’s a smash of an adventure.

Everybody Dies by the End

Shot in mockumentary style, Everybody Dies by the End opens with famed horror director Al Costella (Vinny Curran) being interviewed on a talkshow. The host has an obvious disdain for horror movies, spewing venom about moral responsibility and “artistic integrity” when making graphic cinema. There always those who look down upon horror as some vile creature; just look at how rare a horror film is nominated for an Academy award. Al steps away from the spotlight for a decade and finally decides to return, only if he can make a film as his farewell magnum opus. He reaches out to an up and comer named Calvin (Ian Tripp) to propose an idea of filming the entire creative process. Along with his sound tech Mark (Joshua Wyble), Calvin heads out to the shooting location to bring the mastermind’s genius to light. Well, it’s not so much genius as a disturbing rabbit hole, out of which they have no hope of escaping. Co-directors Ian Tripp and Ryan Schafer (also an actor in the film) rely less on Jack-in-the-box frights than scares that soak into your skin. Once the actors arrive on set, Al slowly descends into the darkness of his work, his mind growing cloudy and his demands becoming all-too-real. Al’s own crew seems to have a cult-like mentality and even dress in the same bright red button-up. It’s almost as though The Sacrament were rearranged to dissect the underbelly of Hollywood and pressures to make art. It’s moody, intense, and delightfully unhinged. Not to be missed.

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