Last week we brought you the impressive lineup for this years Film4 Frightfest and now the fest has revealed a ton of new images from some of the selected films. The Film4 FrightFest is returning for its 15th year and will run from Thurs August 21 to Monday August 25, hosting some of the most anticipated films of the year. So let's get to it – check out the images from some of the selections below!
HOUSEBOUND (UK Premiere)
Director: Gerard Johnstone. Cast: Morgana O’Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru, Cameron Rhodes, Millen Baird. New Zealand 2014. 109 mins.
Kylie Bucknell is forced to return to the family house when the court places her on home detention. Her punishment for a botched ATM raid is made all the more intolerable by the fact she has to live with her over-bearing motor-mouth mother Miriam who’s convinced the house is haunted. But after dismissing Miriam’s superstitions, rebellious Kylie too starts hearing unsettling whispers in the dark, creaking floorboards and strange bumps in the night. Find out in this TALES OF THE CRYPT-style Kiwi comedy chiller sporting a great sense of humour, a very creepy atmosphere and a good deal of splatter mayhem.
SHOCKWAVE DARKSIDE 3D (World Premiere)
Director: Jay Weisman. Cast: Bill Sage, Mei Melançon, Sonequa Martin-Green, Rich Ceraulo, Alexander Cendese. USA 2014. 92 mins.
From THE BANSHEE CHAPTER producers comes a space shocker with gravity. The nano-plague that poisoned Earth’s water supply has reached its 60-year critical mass. The Unlight enemy have launched from Earth and are amassing on the south-west sector of the darkside of the moon. It will be the last Great War and lunar troops are sent into battle for the precious resource. However one squad is shot down and the five surviving soldiers find themselves stranded behind enemy lines, with only 36 hours of oxygen left. As their numbers dwindle, they make an amazing discovery about Earth’s satellite that just might save their lives.
LATE PHASES (UK Premiere)
Director: Adrian Garcia Bogliano. Cast: Nick Damici, Ethan Embry, Tom Noonan, Tina Louise, Rutanya Alda. USA 2014. 97 mins.
From the director of PENUMBRA, COLD SWEAT and HERE COMES THE DEVIL, a freshly horrifying take on the werewolf genre. Crescent Bay is not the best place to live out one’s golden years. Once an idyllic retirement community, the gated hamlet has been beset by mysterious deadly attacks. So when blind, cranky war veteran Ambrose McKinley (the superb Nick Damici) moves in, the residents are put off by his abrasive personality, But it’s his grizzled take-no-prisoners attitude that’s needed to survive the sinister secret the secluded tight-knit neighbourhood is harbouring.
THE HARVEST (UK Premiere)
Director: John McNaughton. Cast: Michael Shannon, Samantha Morton, Peter Fonda, Natasha Calis, Charlie Tahan. US 2013. 98 mins.
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER director John McNaughton makes a welcome return to the genre with this eerie psychological thriller featuring two dynamite performances from Samantha Morton and Michael Shannon, as married medical professionals Katharine and Richard who keep their sick son Andy isolated from the outside world in their remote countryside house. When young Maryann moves in with her grandparents close by, her attempts to befriend Andy are met with vehement resistance by his over protective parents. Until one day she is forced to hide in the house and discovers the basement…
LIFE AFTER BETH (London Preview)
Director: Jeff Baena. Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Anna Kendrick, Molly Shannon. USA 2014. 90 mins.
Called one of the most emotionally credible zom-rom-coms since SHAUN OF THE DEAD after its Sundance Film Festival premiere earlier this year, director Jeff Baena’s stunning debut feature is a delightfully demented screwball slapstick shocker. Zach is devastated by the unexpected death of his girlfriend Beth. But when she miraculously comes back to life, he’s overjoyed.. However the newly returned Beth isn’t quite how he remembered her, especially her signature rotting corpse aroma and habit of chewing up his car upholstery, and before long Zach’s whole world takes a turn for the worse.
THE BABADOOK (UK Premiere)
Director: Jennifer Kent. Cast: Essie Davis, Daniel Henshall, Noah Wiseman, Hayley McElhinny, Benjamin Winspear. Australia 2014. 92 mins.
REPULSION meets ‘The Gruffalo’ in writer/director Jennifer Kent’s Sundance acclaimed debut feature as the unresolved traumas of a conflicted mother and disturbed son manifest as a malevolent entity threatening to consume them both. Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son, Sam (Daniel Henshall), have had a raw deal in life. Her husband Oskar died six years prior while driving her to the hospital pregnant with Sam, and his birthday is a particularly painful reminder. But now things worsen dramatically. Samuel’s been having nightmares, and when a mysterious pop-up children’s book appears on his shelf titled ‘Mister Babadook’, he is finally able to put a name to the terror.
FAULTS (EUROPEAN PREMIRE)
Director: Riley Stearns. Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Leland Orser, Beth Grant,
Chris Ellis, Jon Gries, Lance Reddick. USA/ 2014. 89 mins
A subversive, psychologically disturbing back comedy marking the feature film debut of director/writer Riley Stearns, who cleverly employs the considerable talents of his wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead to play Claire – a young woman who appears to be under the grip of a mysterious new cult called ‘Faults’. After a divorce that has left him without any money, cult expert Ansel (Leland Orser) is on tour giving seminars about brainwashing. Approached by Claire’s distraught parents, he agrees to help them, and their daughter’s de-programming seems to run smoothly enough. However, the more Ansel spends with Claire, the more the question is raised, just who is being deprogrammed?
HOME (UK Premiere)
Director: Nicolas McCarthy. Cast: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Naya Rivera, Ashley Ricklands, Ava Acres, Wyatt Russell. US 2014. 93 mins.
From Nicholas McCarthy, director of THE PACT. comes a starkly suspenseful, grippingly atmospheric demonic horror. When real estate agent Leigh goes to asses a new property in the highly sought after Greenville area, little does she know the appalling impact it will have on her entire existence. For the house was once connected to a series of mysterious incidents ending in teenage tearaway Hannah White committing suicide unwittingly welcomed the devil into her life The problem is, Satan is still looking for a new home in this twisting tale of nerve-jangling and bone-shivering terror.
NYMPH (UK Premiere)
Director: Milan Todorovic. Cast: Kristina Klebe, Franco Nero, Natalie Burn, Dragan Micanovic, Miodrag Krstovic. Serbia 2014. 90 mins.
This is a Serbian film from celebrated ZONE OF THE DEAD director Milan Todorovic. Featuring Franco Nero, the original Italian DJANGO, as Niko, a fisherman with a haunted past and HALLOWEEN and PROXY star Kristine Klebe, who is on vacation in Montenegro with a group of friends. They decide to visit an abandoned military fortress on the remote island of Mamula. But what they discover there goes beyond all frightening insanity. For it’s the home of a Siren, a mermaid creature of Greek myth, lying in wait to lure men to their death with her enchanting beauty, entrancing song and razor-sharp teeth.
I SURVIVED A ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (UK Premiere)
Director: Guy Pigden. Cast: Harley Neville, Jocelyn Christian, Ben Baker, Mike Edward, Andrew Laing. New Zealand 2014. 100 mins.
From the land of early Peter Jackson comes another Braindead movie in bad taste. It’s the third day of shooting the low budget horror ‘Tonight They Come’ on location in the wilds of New Zealand and a new runner joins the set – wannabe screenwriter Wesley Pennington, who falls head over heels for Susan, the set caterer. But something nasty has entered the local water supply and suddenly the zombie extras start acting like genuine members of the living dead, gore stunts looks even more authentic and actual severed limbs fly. Reel life turns real as Wesley attempts to save the day while ensuring his latest script will get made.
JULIA (World Premiere)
Director: Matthew A. Brown. Cast: Ashley C. Williams, Jack Noseworthy, Tahyna Tozzi-MacManus, Brad Koed, Joel de la Fuente. US 2014. 95 mins.
Julia Shames (THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) star Ashley C. Williams), is a meek and mild clinician at a thriving plastic surgery business, who dates the wrong guy and ends up being drugged and gang-raped by his friends. Catatonic after suffering such brutal trauma she hears about a new kind of therapy practised by the mysterious Dr. Sgundud. What the restorative cure entails takes Julia into a whole new shadowy area of her personality, one that transforms her into an empowered Angel of Vengeance. This is a neon drenched film noir thriller in the post-modern LADY SNOWBLOOD tradition.
THE FORGOTTEN (World Premiere)
Director: Oliver Frampton. Cast: Shaun Dingwall, Clem Tibber, Elarica Gallacher, Lyndsey Marshal, James Doherty. UK 2014. 90 mins.
When his mother suffers a nervous breakdown teenage Tommy is sent to live with his father in a tower block squat gripped by poverty and violence. In his rundown bedroom Tommy is woken each night by strange noises coming from the boarded-up flat next-door. Is someone – or something – trying to get his attention? Who – or what – is his neighbour? Confounded by increasing terror, Tommy has to confront not only Mark’s growing disturbed behaviour but also an unseen raging force about to change his life forever. From the producer of THE BORDERLANDS, a tensely plotted, superbly acted, gritty urban supernatural horror.
THE CANAL (English Premiere)
Director: Ivan Kavanagh. Cast: Rupert Evans, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Steve Oram, Hannah Hoekstra, Calum Heath. Ireland 2014. 92 mins.
Film Archivist David Williams and his wife, Alice, move into a beautiful period house by a scenic canal with their small son. But it turns out the house was the scene of a ghastly turn-of-the-19th century murder. David then discovers actual news footage of the chilling events just as he suspects Alice is cheating on him and having a torrid affair. Soon David starts to have nightmarish visions of an evil presence he believes inhabits his home. And in his drive to unveil the shadows hidden in the walls, David begins to descend into madness. This Irish ghost story is dark, disturbing and scary and the midnight hit at Tribeca.
WHITE SETTLERS (World Premiere)
Director: Simeon Halligan. Cast: Pollyanna Mcintosh, Lee Williams, Joanne Mitchell, James McCreadie, Dominic Kay. UK 2014. 80 mins.
Young couple Ed and Sarah are set to begin a new life when they move from London into an isolated borders Scottish farmhouse. In bed on their first night Sarah thinks she can hear noises in the darkness but Ed is disbelieving. Persisting in her fear they are not alone in the house, she forces Ed to investigate. When he doesn’t return, she investigates, only to be confronted by a welcoming committee of masked intruders. As she desperately searches for Ed, a terrifying game of cat and mouse ensues with the mysterious assailants. But what do they want and what horrors do they have planned for the two newcomers?
SHOW PIECES (World Premiere)
Directors: Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins. Cast: Darrell D’Silva, Siobhan Hewlett, Robert Goodman, Andrew Buckley, Alan Moore. UK 2014. 71 mins.
Alan Moore, the genius 2000 AD writer behind WATCHMEN, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, FROM HELL, CONSTANTINE and V FOR VENDETTA invites you into his extraordinary world with a new motion picture experience. While several of Moore’s stories have become Hollywood blockbusters, he has never previously written specifically for the screen. Until now. Created with his close friend and internationally acclaimed photographer Mitch Jenkins, comes an interconnected trilogy of terror. ‘Act of Faith’ finds a young woman looking for the next step in sexual excitement and unfortunately finding it. ‘Jimmy’s End’ tails a serial philanderer down a dark alley into a very unusual club where the top-billed attraction is The Bad Brides and their Danse Macabre and ‘His Heavy Heart’ reveals the horrifying price paid for his adultery. Alan Moore will be our special guest at this prestigious world premiere event.
DIGGING UP THE MARROW (World Premiere)
Director: Adam Green. Cast: Ray Wise, Adam Green, Tom Holland, Kane Hodder, Mick Garris. US 2014. 88 mins.
FrightFest favourite Adam Green gives us a documentary exploring genre-based monster art which then takes an odd turn into the blurring of fantasy and reality. As he and cinematographer Will Barratt are contacted by former policeman William Dekker who claims he can prove that monsters are indeed real. That they live in world just below our own named The Marrow and he knows where one of the entrances to this dark hidden universe is. Green of course is intrigued and so the monster hunting expedition begins… to become something else far more frightening than he ever imagined.
THE EXPEDITION (World Premiere)
Director: Adam Spinks. Cast: Sarah MacDonnell, Ben Loyd-Holmes, Daniel Caren, Neil Newbon, Simon Burbage. UK 2014. 100 mins.
In the heart of the rainforest, a team of researchers led by the respected Professor John Howson strived to protect endangered and vulnerable species from extinction. But their guides abandoned them after a series of strange and unexplainable events and the team soon got hopelessly lost in the jungle. When events took a horrifying turn, the team realized that they were in the hunting grounds of an apex predator. And now they were the ones on the endangered species list.
THE HOUSE AT THE END OF TIME (UK Premiere)
Director: Alejandro Hidalgo. Cast: Ruddy Rodriguez, Rosmel Bustamante, Adriana Calzadilla, Gonzalo Cubero. Guillermo Garcia. Venezuela 2013. 100 mins.
The first ever horror film produced in Venezuela to reach an international audience, director Alejandro Hidalgo’s heady mix of THE OTHERS, H.P. Lovecraft and old school Mario Bava was a big box-office hit in its home country. Thirty years after being put in prison for murdering her family, Dulce (Ruddy Rodriguez, a former Miss Venezuela) returns to the old dark house to try and understand the mysteries and tragedies that have tormented her life, This sci-fi tinged chiller has solid direction, convincing performances, wonderful cinematography and a unique South American style.
LEMON TREE PASSAGE (UK Premiere)
Director: David Campbell. Cast: Jessica Tovey, Nicholas Gunn, Pippa Black, Tim Phillipps, Andrew Ryan. Australia 2014. 84 mins.
An Australian urban legend comes screaming on the Ozploitation scene. It’s said that if you drive down the creepy road of Lemon Tree Passage, and witness a sudden flash of light in the trees, you’ll be forever haunted by the tormented spirit of a man killed by thrill speeding teenagers. Wanting to put this to the test, a car-load of non-believers take the supposedly cursed journey and do indeed see a strange manifestation. But it’s not the one of popular myth – this sudden possession of one of their number involves another altogether more shocking crime. That of a young girl raped and murdered on the same stretch of highway.
TRUTH OR DARE (UK Premiere)
Director: Jessica Cameron. Cast: Jessica Cameron, Ryan Kiser, Heather Dorff, Shelby Stehlin, Devanny Pinn. USA 2013. 89 mins.
Six college kids find Internet stardom when they make a ‘Truth or Dare’ reality video with a violent twist. After their ‘fatal shooting’ broadcast goes viral, they reveal on a talk show the filming was a complete hoax. Basking in their 15 minutes of fame, none of the Truth or Daredevils takes the waspish comments of a particularly impassioned audience member that seriously. To their cost, Get ready for the most realistically confessional, brutal and extreme ‘Truth or Dare’ game you have ever seen played.
THE REMAINING (UK Premiere)
Director: Casey La Scala. Cast: Alexa Vega, Shaun Sipos, Italia Ricci, Johnny Pacar, Bryan Dechart. US 2014. 88 mins.
It’s the day the Earth exploded as trumpets blow and the wrath of God unleashes the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The first of a series of religious-slanted horror movies aimed at devout audiences, THE REMAINING is a surprisingly effective disaster shocker based on the Book of Revelations, produced by the makers of DONNIE DARKO and URBAN LEGEND. When a group of close-knit friends assemble for the marriage of Skylar and Dan, they have no idea they will witness The Rapture and face a series of catastrophic events turning the celebration into a life-or-death struggle.
THE DROWNSMAN (UK Premiere)
Director: Chad Archibald. Cast: Michelle Mylett, Caroline Korycki, Gemma Bird Matheson, Sydney Kondruss, Clare Bastable. Canada 2014. 87 mins.
In the tradition of JEEPERS CREEPERS, REEKER and HATCHET, make way for a totally different supernatural villain and new franchise maniac. After almost drowning in a lake, Madison (ANTISOCIAL star Michelle Mylett) finds herself scared to death of water Her dread intensifies when she’s continually haunted by a rancid ghostly entity trying to pull her into his dark aqua world. After watching her struggle for a year with the debilitating hydrophobia and nightmare visions, Madison’s four best girlfriends attempt an unconventional intervention in which they accidentally open a floodgate to a sodden universe.
THE SLEEPING ROOM (World Premiere)
Director: John Shackleton. Cast: Leila Mimmack, Joseph Beattie, David Sibley, Julie Graham, Christopher Adamson. UK 2014. 75 mins.
From the producers of the FrightFest 2011 favourite PANIC BUTTON comes a supernatural tale of ghostly Victorian revenge. When 19 year-old Brighton call-girl Blue (Leila Mimmack) meets her latest punter Bill, little does she know the horrifying impact it will have on her wayward life. For the seaside house he’s renovating once used to be an infamous Victorian brothel with a murderous history, with a connection to Blue herself. Now the chilling closet space thy discover is about to unleash terrible occult forces and nobody will escape its monstrous power unless a score for a heinous felony is settled.
THE MIRROR (World Premiere)
Director: Edward Boase. Cast: Jemma Dallender, Joshua Dickinson, Nate Fallows. UK 2014. 88 mins.
There is a long-held belief that mirrors act as gateways to another dimension and play host to a world filled with evil spirits. And one tale about a supposedly haunted mirror was picked up by the media in 2012. Both the Daily Mail and Huffington Post reported on how the owners of a recently purchased antique mirror left them dogged by bad luck, financial misery, strange sightings and death-defying illness. Now writer/director Edward Boase brings that horrifying story to the screen starring Jemma Dallender (I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2).
ANOTHER (European Premiere)
Director: Jason Bognacki. Cast: Ana Paula Redding, David Landry, Lillian Pennypacker, Michael St. Michaels, Nancy Wolfe. US 2014. 80 mins
On her 18th birthday Jordyn learns a hideous secret about her past, her bloodline and her family when her Aunt Ruth (Nancy Wolfe) stabs herself at the party. It turns out Ruth has been keeping secrets and one of them is that Jordyn’s mother may not be as dead as everyone has been led to believe. As Jordyn she tries to unravel the mysteries of her new nightmarish existence, more past secrets are revealed through demonic possession, witchcraft desire and extreme indulgences, and it becomes clear her legacy is fraught with danger. Who is Jordyn really and why does everything seem to be going to hell?
DEADLY VIRTUES (UK Premiere)
Director: Ate De Jong. Cast: Edward Akrout, Matt Barber, Megan Maczko, Helen Bradbury, Sadie Frost. UK/Netherlands 2014. 87 mins.
In the dead of night a stranger walks down a residential street. Gaining entry into his chosen house, psychopathic Aaron makes his way to the upper floor where sounds of lovemaking emanate. Aaron injures the man and knocks the woman out. When Alison awakes, she’s strapped to the kitchen ceiling in a bizarre web of ropes that hold her fast. For Aaron is an expert in Kinbaku, the Japanese fetish art of tying knots. What follows is an experience that will reveal the transgressions in the couple’s relationship and ultimately act as a catalyst for extreme liberation.
BLOOD MOON (World Premiere)
Director: Jeremy Wooding. Cast: Shaun Dooley, George Blagden, Corey Johnson, Anna Skellern, Ian Whyte. UK 2014. 90 mins.
It’s 1887, Colorado, and a deserted border town is lit by the burnished glow of a reddish full moon. A stagecoach full of passengers and an enigmatic gunslinger Calhoun (Shaun Dooley, star of THE WOMAN IN BLACK) find themselves prisoners of two desperate outlaws on the run. As the prairie travellers attempt to outwit the outlaws in any way they can it soon becomes apparent that a bigger menace lurks outside on the plains; an otherworldly mythical beast that only appears on the night of a blood red moon. From Jeremy Wooding, comes a western unlike any other – packed with the good, the bad and the ugly.