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FrightFest has been terrifying UK films fans since the ’90s and it’s back for another pant-wetting go-round this August.
Taking place at London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Square and Odeon Luxe West End between August 22-26, the festival’s newly announced programme feels especially exciting this year.
It opens with ‘Broken Bird’, a debut from actor-turned-filmmaker Joanne Mitchell that stars Rebecca Calder as a mortician whose desires spiral out of control.
Cannes body horror sensation ‘The Substance’, starring Demi Moore as a faded Hollywood star trying to claw back her youth, is closing the festival on August 26.
Look out for the first Irish-language horror film ever made, ‘An Taibhse’ (This Ghost), ‘The Dead Thing’, an intriguing-sounding neorealist riff on ‘The Invisible Man’ for the online dating age, and ‘The Bunker’, a sci-fi horror with Jigsaw himself, Tobin Bell.
Other programme highlights to look out for include comedy-horror ‘Saint Clare’, in which US singer-actress Bella Thorne plays a teenage serial killer, and Elijah Wood’s more family-friendly ‘Bookworm’, which reunites him with ‘Come to Daddy’ director Ant Timpson.
The programme includes 69 feature films from across the world, including 25 premieres, as well as retrospectives and restorations. Showcasing new voices in genre cinema is always big at FrightFest, and the ‘First Blood’ strand is again packed with newbie filmmakers and fresh tales of weirdness and wonder.
‘FrightFest, the Dark Heart of Cinema, has been beating loud and proud now for an amazing 25 years,’ says co-director Alan Jones. ‘FrightFest [is] in a state of continuous evolution, something we are determined will never, ever stop.’
Festival passes go on sale at 12pm on Saturday, July 13, with single tickets available to buy a week later on July 20. Head to the official site for all the info.