At some point during my experience at Frightfest, I began to lose my grip on reality. It might have been the moment in Pandemonium, a French psychodrama, where a character is introduced to hell by a towering mega-demon. Or maybe it was the excessive vomiting scene in Cobwebs, which was the third of its kind I had seen within 24 hours. Regardless, when the third day of the festival arrived, I knew it was time to call it quits. However, for the devoted horror fans surrounding the cinema, this was only the halfway point.
Frightfest, now in its 24th year, offers both new films, often premiering worldwide, and classic thrillers that span the entire horror genre, from slashers to avant-garde experiments. Over the course of five days, more than 70 films are screened across multiple venues, creating a sense of community among attendees. People wearing Evil Dead and Cannibal Holocaust t-shirts peacefully coexist with cosplayers dressed as mad scientists and vampires.
But I wasn’t there for friendly chatter. My goal was to watch as many movies as possible from Thursday at 5 PM to Saturday at 5 PM. As Joseph Conrad’s infamous character Kurtz famously said in Heart of Darkness, “The horror, the horror!” It all began with the absurd Suitable Flesh, a parody of 90s erotic thrillers featuring a demon who swaps bodies and terrorizes Heather Graham, the star of Boogie Nights, while engaging in soft-focus sex scenes. That same night, I watched the intense scuba diving thriller The Dive, similar to 127 Hours but set underwater, and the vengeful-ghost shocker Cheat, which surely holds the record for the most furious-looking Victorian ghost girl walking towards the camera.
The following day was an all-day horror marathon from 10 AM to 1 AM, featuring a diverse range of films. It ranged from the intriguing It Lives Inside, about an Indian American teenager hunted by a creature from Hindu mythology, to the intense and mesmerizing Faceless After Dark, which revolves around a horror movie actress seeking revenge on misogynistic fans who stalk and abuse her.
Surprisingly, the films I watched had minimal gore, although I heard from other attendees that Poundcake, shown in one of the smaller Discovery screenings, was genuinely horrifying. However, I did witness numerous peculiar deaths. Some of the most memorable included a man having his head crushed by a car repeatedly reversing, another man being castrated with rusty garden shears, and the parents of a gifted child being killed by rat-poison-infused pumpkin soup. My notes from the unsettling Where the Devil Roams, set in 1920s America and involving a murderous carnival family, simply state “Norwegian’s neck impaled with fire poker,” but that scene seems to have escaped my memory. In four films, characters were beaten to death with frying pans, making me ponder if this was a commentary on the recession and the desperation of sociopaths resorting to improvised murder methods due to financial constraints.
This experience affirmed that horror movies continue to prey upon our deep-seated fears. Throughout the 13 films I watched, there were numerous scenes of characters slowly approaching closed doors and reaching for the handle, eerie noises in the night, passing clouds obscuring full moons, and unsettling gatherings of black birds outside windows. These elements tap into and exploit legitimate fears, including the lurking predator in the woods, the fear of the unknown, and our ever-present awareness of mortality.
Oddly enough, after spending every waking moment immersed in horror films for two and a half days, I found myself hyper-aware of the eerie atmosphere in the real world. Leicester Square felt like a nightmarish depiction of hell, with zombie-like pedestrians shuffling past fire-breathing unicyclists, while street preachers proclaimed the damnation of humanity. As I made my way back to my accommodation in north London at 1 AM on Friday, everything seemed fraught with supernatural menace: the lone strangers on the night bus, the echoing subway, a shadowy figure lingering in an alley, and the creaking gates of the park. Even when I finally reached my destination, the malfunctioning elevators forced me to climb four flights of stairs in flickering lights and complete silence. London, reputedly the most haunted city in the world, truly lived up to its reputation.
Amidst this intense experience, I had the opportunity to appreciate some outstanding films. Monolith, an Australian existential thriller about a journalist investigating enigmatic black bricks sent worldwide, held my fascination, as did New Life, a poignant and contemplative take on the apocalypse. However, what struck me the most was the strangely comforting sense of watching horror films within a community of fans. I engaged in conversations with festival attendees who had been coming for over a decade. “It’s the feeling of being scared in a safe environment,” Dave from east London explained. “It’s the buildup of tension followed by release – a shared human experience.” Clare, also from east London, shared, “I was scared when I attended my first Frightfest, which is silly considering I served in the marines and witnessed real-life horrors. You know it’s not real, but during these five days, it feels that way.”
As I sprinted up the eight flights of stairs, a slight unease of being pursued nagging at the back of my mind, I realized one thing that night. My two days of consuming non-stop horror had only confirmed what I already knew: the most terrifying demons are the ones we bring with us into the cinema.
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