Film4 FrightFest took over London's Leicester Square over the August Bank Holiday weekend featuring five days of wall-to-wall terrifying thrills, gory chills and fun surprises. So, here are five hat I recommend you look out for…
1) Candyman director Bernard Rose gives Frankenstein heart, soul and an existential twist, with Twilight's Xavier Samuel bringing pathos and humanity to his rejected creature seeking out his 'mother' (Carrie-Ann Ross) and creator (Danny Huston) on the mean streets of LA. Genre favourite Tony Todd, meanwhile, steals the show as a blind hobo.
2) Maidstone in Kent masquerades as the French countryside in debut director Abnor Pastoll's murder mystery Road Games, which echoes Robert Fuest's 1970s thriller And Soon the Darkness and the cinema of Britsploitation maestro Pete Walker. TV's The Returned actor Frederic Pierrot stars alongside Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator), with Nick Nickleby actor Andrew Simpson as the mysterious hitchhiker trying to get to Calais.
3) James Wan (the bloke behind Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring) serves up another slick supernatural shocker with Demonic (watch out for our competition coming soon).
4) The Nightmare is a truly frightening documentary about sleep paralysis that's guaranteed to freak you out, and comes from Rodney Ascher who shone a light on the hidden meanings embedded in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining in Room 237.
5) Dominic Brunt (aka Emmerdale's Paddy Kirk) serves up the blistering, suspenseful and well-crafted thriller Bait, about two friends (Victoria Smurfit and Joanne Mitchell) who find themselves targeted by a vicious loan shark (played by a slippery Jonathan Slinger). A smokey-voiced Rula Lenska pops up as Mitchell's pushy mum. Watch the trailer, below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YGZ0YZFxwo
