Frightfest 2023 – CINEWORLD LEICESTER SQUARE
EMPIRE STUDIO SCREEN (721)
THURSDAY AUGUST 24 17:45
OPENING FILM – SUITABLE FLESH (European Premiere)
Director: Joe Lynch. With: Heather Graham, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Davison, Johnathan Schaech. USA 2023. 100 mins.
Just days ago, Elizabeth Derby was a successful psychiatrist with a loving husband and the world at her fingertips. Now, she finds herself locked up inside a psych ward after the murder of a young male patient to whom she had an inexplicable, almost otherworldly attraction. Hoping to clear her name, Elizabeth confides in her doctor and recounts what happened, giving way to a bizarre and disturbing tale of sexual madness, supernatural horror, and homicidal rage. From Joe Lynch comes a gory, horny, and outlandish love letter to the late, great RE-ANIMATOR director Stuart Gordon; a new body horror take on H.P Lovecraft-minded cosmic mayhem that’s a must-watch for fans of raunchy 80s horror.
20:25 THE DIVE (UK Premiere)
Director: Maximilian Erlenwein. With: Sophie Lowe, Louisa Krause. Germany 2023. 100 mins.
Experienced scuba divers May and Drew are two sisters with a close but complex bond who go on a deep sea diving trip to a beautiful but remote beauty spot. During their dive, May is struck by a rock from a landslide above the water, leaving her trapped on the seabed 28 meters below the surface. With dangerously low levels of oxygen and cold temperatures taking their toll, it‘s up to Drew to fight for her life, which in turn puts her own in jeopardy. It’s the suspense action adventure of the year based on the 2020 Swedish thriller BREAKING SURFACE.
22:50 CHEAT (World Premiere)
Directors: Nick Psinakis, Kevin Ignatius. With: Corin Clay, Mick Thayer, Danielle Grotsky, April Clark. USA 2023. 85 mins.
On the surface it’s believed to be another urban legend – a supernatural being from the afterlife, Clara Miller, is violently killing anyone who cheats on their significant other in the small college town of Silvercreek, Pennsylvania. But the town’s unusually high suicide rate is finally convincing both locals and college students that everything is not as it seems. When student Maeve sleeps with Charlie, the married man of the host family she is staying with, both senses the deadly curse is closing in on them. For in Silvercreek your sins are not forgotten.
FRIDAY AUGUST 25
10:45 IT LIVES INSIDE (European Premiere)
Director: Bishal Dutta. With: Megan Suri, Neeru Bajwa, Mohana Krishnan, Betty Gabriel. USA 2023. 99 mins.
An impressive directorial debut from Bishal Dutta reveals chilling allegories for identity crises told through a unique diversity lens. Indian-American Samidha is at that point where her culture and hanging out like a normal teenager collide. She has supportive parents, a teacher ally and she’s interested in a boy named Russ. But none of this matters when her estranged friend Tamira breaks a jar she claims houses an ancient demon. When the evil force kidnaps Tamira and starts targeting her friends and family, Samidha must acknowledge that some legends are true as she tries to end the reign of terror.
13:10 CREEPING DEATH (World Premiere)
Director: Matt Sampere. With: Monique Parent, Scott Lea, Matt Sampere, Delian Lincourt. USA 2023. 93 mins.
While trying to enjoy a peaceful Halloween with his mother Linda Garner (cult icon Monique Parent, also star of THAT’S A WRAP), Tim is paid a visit by his rambunctious, up-for-anything friends. After reluctantly letting them inside the house he becomes intertwined with the circumstances of their Halloween pranking. One it turns out that that has broken a sacred tradition kept between humans and otherworldly deities known as the Aos Si. A call back to terrors birthed in the mythology, lore and atmospheric dread behind the Halloween traditions based in an ancient Celtic past.
15:30 WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (European Premiere)
Directors: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser. With: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser. USA 2023. 90 mins.
FrightFest welcomes back The Adams Family who brought their acclaimed chiller THE DEEPER YOU DIG to us in 2019. Composed of John Adams, Toby Poser, and their daughter, Zelda, the family of filmmakers also hit big in 2021 with HELLBENDER and now unveil their latest creation set in the harsh Depression era America exploring a dark, eerie journey filled with suspense, thrills, and chills. Venture into a nightmare alley with the Adams pack as they trace a family of murderous sideshow performers traveling around the world on the dying carnival circuit on a bloody search for eternal life.
18:15 NEW LIFE (European Premiere)
Director: John Rosman. With: Sonya Walger, Hayley Erin, Tony Amendola, Ayanna Berkshire. USA 2023. 85 mins.
From writer/director John Rosman, a deadly cat and mouse game based in the Pacific Northwest. Elsa is a brilliant ‘fixer’ assigned to capture a mysterious woman on the run. As the snare of the pursuit tightens, Elsa must fight her own secret battle with the deadly disease ALS to stay on top of the explosive case, before it reaches an apocalyptic endgame. As their two stories interlink, the stakes ratchet up, and their journeys uncover the deep truths of what it means to be alive. And that can only come through the power of acceptance and hope.
20:30 FACELESS AFTER DARK (World Premiere)
Director: Raymond Wood. With: Jenna Kanell, Danny Kang, Danielle Lynn, Michael Aaron Milligan. USA 2023. 86 mins.
Following her breakout success as the star of a killer clown horror flick, Bowie finds herself struggling to capitalize on its success. But when she’s suddenly held hostage by an unhinged fan posing as that same killer clown, horror becomes her reality as she fights to survive the night and escape before he completes his sinister plan to recreate the film’s fatal plot. Masquerading as a home invasion thriller before switching gears to a grisly, vitriolic feminist revenge-fantasy, a clever exposé on how the anonymity of the Internet empowers ill-intentioned, abusive people with the ability to show their true colours.
22:45 THAT’S A WRAP (International Premiere)
Director: Marcel Walz. With: Cerina Vincent, Monique Parent, Sarah French, Gigi Gustin. USA 2023. 94 mins.
Marcel Walz, the cult director of BLIND, PRETTY BOY and the BLOOD FEAST remake, is back and up to more splatter mischief. Mason Maestro has just directed what he considers to be his masterpiece, ‘That’s a Wrap.’ All the cast arrives at the studio excited to celebrate what they just created. But they aren’t the only ones there. Someone has dressed up as Mistress, the central slasher, and has decided to make the art real by staging personal and highly stylized kill scenes. One by one, the cast disappears until the true nature of the evening is revealed.
SATURDAY AUGUST 26
10:45 MONOLITH (UK Premiere)
A FrightFest Presentation by the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival Director: Mark Vesely. With: Lily Sullivan, Ling Cooper Tang, Ansuya Nathan, Erik Thomson. Australia 2022. 94 mins.
A disgraced journalist (EVIL DEAD RISE star Lily Sullivan) attempts to salvage her career with the ‘Beyond Believable’ podcast geared to solve mysteries and uncover hidden truths. She hits on a story about a strange object suddenly ruining people’s lives and the more she deep-dives into the origins of the black brick artifact she becomes convinced it’s evidence of an alien conspiracy and government cover-up. Then a package arrives on her remote doorstep and her research becomes terrifyingly personal. One superb actor, one amazing location, one brilliant director, one darkly claustrophobic chiller, one world class science fiction masterpiece.
13:10 COBWEB (International Premiere)
Director: Samuel Bodin. With: Lizzy Caplan, Anthony Starr, Cleopatra Coleman, Woody Norman. USA 2023. 88 mins.
From Samuel Bodin, director of the acclaimed Netflix horror series ‘Marianne’, comes the US box-office hit inspired by the short story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allen Poe. Eight-year-old Peter is plagued by a mysterious, constant tap, tap from inside his bedroom wall – a tapping his parents insist is all in his imagination. His concerned schoolteacher starts making enquiries after Peter shows clear evidence of trouble at home. But as Peter’s fear intensifies, he believes that his parents could be hiding a terrible, dangerous secret and questions their trust. And for a child, what could be more frightening than that?
15:30 PANDEMONIUM (UK Premiere)
Director: Quarxx. With: Hugo Dillon, Ophelia Kolb, Arben Bajraktaraj, Manon Maindivide. France 2023. 95 mins.
From the creative mind of artist Quarxx comes an aesthetically stunning and relentlessly macabre tale. Nathan and Daniel wake at the scene of a car crash, confused and seemingly unscathed. The two men begin to understand that they did not make it after all. They are dead. Nathan’s previous acts will now determine his fate, however reprehensible they might have been. He will have to leave this earthly world and enter the depths of Hell that await him for all eternity and be confronted with other tormented souls whose pain he will be forced to experience by the demon Norgül.
18:20 HERD (World Premiere)
Director: Steven Pierce. With: Ellen Adair, Mitzi Akaha, Jeremy Holm, Corbin Bernsen. USA 2023. 96 mins.
Jamie and her wife, Alex, try to save their failing marriage by taking an isolated canoe trip in rural Missouri. After Alex breaks her leg, the women find themselves trapped in Jamie’s small hometown overrun by virus-infected ‘Heps’. Worse, Alex gets scratched by one of the afflicted. After witnessing personal and gruesome horrors, she attempts to sneak away with Alex, only to be betrayed by one of her only connections. Now caught between the group that saved her, a competing militia, and the growing ‘Hep’ threat, is there any chance she will be able to save Alex and finally escape?
20:45 FARANG (UK Premiere)
Director: Xavier Gens. With: Nassim Lyes, Olivier Gourmet, Loryn Nounay, Vithaya Pansringarm. France 2023. 96 mins.
The latest French blockbuster from Xavier Gens, director of FRONTIERE(S), HITMAN, THE DIVIDE, COLD SKIN and ‘Gangs of London’. Sam is an exemplary prison inmate. But during a day of official leave, his past catches up with him and a fatal accident means only one choice: escape. Five years later, he has rebuilt his life in Thailand with the family he’s always dreamed of. But local godfather Narong forces him to plunge into crime again. When Sam wants to halt everything, Narong attacks his family… And Sam will stop at nothing to hunt his executioner down.
23:00 TRANSMISSION (World Premiere)
Director: Michael J. Hurst. With: Vernon Wells, Felissa Rose, Dave Sheridan, Sadie Katz. USA 2023. 73 mins.
TRANSMISSION is the world’s first channel-surfing horror film. The story unfolds on a television screen as we are switching between different channels and slowly realizing that each of these channels is actually telling different aspects of the same horrific narrative. From Michael J. Hurst, director of HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2, PUMPKINHEAD 4: BLOOD FEUD, PARADOX and the ‘Femme Fatales’ TV series, a stranger things movie way out of his comfort zone with familiar fun cameo appearances, wild science fiction, shocker pastiches and outstanding special effects. The cult movie of 2023 is here.
SUNDAY AUGUST 27
10:45 PIPER (UK Premiere)
Director: Anthony Waller. With: Elizabeth Hurley, Mia Jenkins, Jack Stuart, Robert Daws. USA 2023. 105 mins.
FrightFest welcomes back MUTE WITNESS director Anthony Waller to the genre. Liz Haines and her daughter Amy move to Germany where she takes up the position of history teacher at the Hamelin International School. The annual Pied Piper pageant is celebrated the day after their arrival, which Liz revels in, but Amy finds macabre. Soon Liz is plagued by nightmare visions and gradually a dark secret in her past is uncovered by the restless spirit of the Piper, the cruel and vengeful minister of harsh justice who seeks out the guilty and punishes them by taking away their children.
13:20 THE SEEDING (European Premiere)
Director: Barnaby Clay. With: Scott Haze, Kate Lyn Sheil, Alex Montaldo, Charlie Avink. USA 2023. 94 mins.
Take a nightmare journey into the darkest sides of nature and the primordial fears buried within us all. A hiker finds himself marooned with a mysterious woman in a remote desert canyon where a pack of feral boys have built a primitive society structured around a brutal coda of entrapment and procreation. A slow-burning survival thriller from prolific music video director Barnaby Clay, this stone-cold shocker confronts the dread of isolation and unchecked toxic masculinity head on. Boys will be boys, and in the terrifying vastness of the California arid region, their worst desires come out to play.
15:45 COLD MEAT (World Premiere)
Director: Sébastien Drouin. With: Allen Leech, Nina Bergman, Yan Tual, Sydney Hendricks. UK/Canada 2023. 90 mins.
David Petersen (“Downtown Abbey’ star Allen Leech) is passing through the Colorado Rockies. After saving a young diner waitress from her violent ex-husband during a break from driving, he hits the road again through a dangerous snow blizzard. But one false move behind the wheel has him waking up inside a ravine, and in the freezing eye of the storm. But the cold is the least of his worries. For a shadowy beast starts prowling around outside his car. How will he survive? The feature debut of French director Sébastien Drouin, VFX supervisor on 2046, BABYLON A.D. and ALEXANDER.
18:40 RAGING GRACE (English Premiere)
Director: Paris Zarcilla. With: Jaeden Paige Boadilla, Max Eigenmann, David Heyman, Leanne Best. UK 2023. 99 mins.
A bold coming-of-rage story. Joy is an undocumented Filipina immigrant struggling to do the best she can for her daughter Grace when she secures the perfect job; taking care of an extremely wealthy but terminally ill old man. The position pays well and guarantees a roof over their heads but soon, Joy realizes everything is not as it seems. Something is festering beneath the surface, threatening all they have worked for. Deeply personal, striking a skillful balance between socio-political commentary and spooky scares, Paris Zarcilla’s breakout SXSW sensation is a nightmarish fever dream from an exciting new voice.
MONDAY AUGUST 28
11:00 MY MOTHER’S EYES (International Premiere)
Director: Takeshi Kushida. With: Akane Ono, Mone Shitara, Takuma Izumi, Shusaku Uchida. Japan 2023. 94 mins.
When FrightFest selected director Takeshi Kushida’s extraordinary debut feature WOMAN OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS as part of their Discovery line-up in 2020, we knew it would go the critically acclaimed distance. Forty festival awards and a release in seven countries later, the Japanese visionary now unleashes his latest amazing masterwork concerning the boundaries between truth and illusion in today’s world of new and ever-changing technology. Thrill to the psycho fantasy of a mother and daughter who achieve love and honesty through imaginary bodies when a futuristic contact lens device, with a built-in-camera and VR goggles, changes their lives forever.
13:25 FOUNDERS DAY (International Premiere)
Director: Erik Bloomquist. With: Devin Druid, Emilia McCarthy, Amy Hargreaves, Catherine Curtin. USA 2023. 95 mins.
From fraternal writing/director duo Erik and Carson Bloomquist who scored a big hit at FrightFest 2022 with the summer camp shocker SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS. Now they turn their focus on the holiday slasher with FOUNDERS DAY, a contemporary murder mystery set in the midst of a heated mayoral election on the eve of a quaint New England town’s tricentennial. A mischief-laden, blood-soaked splatter-fest in the tradition of the SCREAM and SAW franchises, this is a slasher for the world we are living in right now. Let the speculation on who’s behind the mask begin…
15:50 HOME SWEET HOME: WHERE EVIL LIVES (World Premiere)
Director: Thomas Sieben. With: Nilam Farooq, David Kross, Justus von Dohnányi, Olga Von Luckwald. Germany 2023. 84 mins.
Heavily pregnant Maria starts readying her fiancé Viktor’s rural family estate for bed and breakfast guests. Strange noises start occurring, the electricity keeps failing and she thinks she sees a prowler on the premises. Investigating the cellar she finds a secret room that hints at dark secrets in the Welling family past, linked to the brutal German colonial history of the Herero genocide in 1904. Soon she realises the haunted house has trapped her irrevocably in the claws of an evil family curse. A real-time, one-shot shocker unlike any other, featuring a tour-de-force performance from actor Nilam Farooq.
18:30 THE EXORCIST
Warner Bros 50th Anniversary Exclusive Screening, hosted by Mark Kermode Director: William Friedkin. With: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max Von Sydow, Jason Miller. USA 1973. 122 mins.
One of the most talked about, shocked about and controversial blockbuster horror shockers of all time turns 50 years old. And who better to host our celebration screening of ‘The Version You Never Saw’ than national treasure film critic Mark Kermode who knows more about director William Friedkin’s elemental demonic possession saga, based on William Peter Blatty’s bestseller, than anyone else on the planet. Revel again in all the head-turning, vomit-spraying, anti-religious obscenity that remains an assault on the senses retaining its hypnotic, powerful grip that transcended the genre and took this traumatic masterpiece into the terror stratosphere.
21:15 CLOSING FILM – THE SACRIFICE GAME (European Premiere)
Director: Jenn Wexler. With: Mena Massoud, Olivia Scott Welch, Chloe Levine, Gus Kenworthy. USA 2023. 90 mins.
It’s bad enough that elite boarding school students Samantha and Clara can’t go home for Christmas. But things take a deadly turn for the worse when a murderous gang of cult killers arrive intent on summoning a demon. What must the girls do to survive the night? The second shocker from director Jenn Wexler (2018 FrightFest smash THE RANGER) is another wild and thrilling ride offering fresh takes on timeless horror themes. A tribute to the beauty and boldness of classic 1970’s horror, anchored in an unlikely friendship between outsiders, its time to play THE SACRIFICE GAME.
