The 20 best Fright­Fest films ever – part 1

To mark the 2016 edi­tion of Fright­Fest, we’ve picked 20 of the most inter­est­ing, sub­ver­sive and down­right weird­est films to have ever screened at the UK’s pre­mier hor­ror jam­boree. Are these the finest hor­ror flicks of the 21^st cen­tu­ry? Have your say @LWLies.

“Those peo­ple are not like you and me,” wid­owed innkeeper/​comedian Paul Bar­tel (Jack­ie Berroy­er) warns trav­el­ling cabaret singer Marc (Lau­rent Lucas) of the locals in the back­woods Bel­gian vil­lage where Marc’s van has bro­ken down ahead of Christ­mas – although Paul has his own con­fu­sions about his guest’s iden­ti­ty. In Cal­vaire, Fab­rice du Welz weaves from the tropes of Sev­en­ties sur­vival flicks like The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre, Deliv­er­ance and Straw Dogs a macabre Yule­tide fable of pas­sion and per­for­mance, with Marc unwit­ting­ly cast as a Jesus forced to take upon him­self the sins of oth­ers, and to suf­fer oh so very much for his art. Defy­ing cat­e­gori­sa­tion, Cal­vaire veers from hor­ror to para­ble, and from com­e­dy to tragedy, leav­ing us to work out for our­selves what emp­ty space in our lives its art can fill. That’s entertainment!

Fright­Fest had pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Chris Smith’s Creep and Sev­er­ance, but his Tri­an­gle is some­thing alto­geth­er more mature and sophis­ti­cat­ed. As Jess (Melis­sa George), pres­sured sin­gle moth­er to an autis­tic boy, takes a break with some friends on the yacht Tri­an­gle, they find them­selves seek­ing refuge from a storm aboard the ocean lin­er the Aeo­lus, com­plete­ly aban­doned but for a masked killer who starts tak­ing them out one by one. Yet in a seaborne hell of tor­ment and guilt, this high­ly allu­sive film limns a brain-bend­ing enig­ma, trap­ping us all at once in an unrav­el­ing mind, a nev­er-end­ing twi­light zone, and the prison house of cin­e­ma itself. The cir­cle of this infu­ri­at­ing­ly night­mar­ish nar­ra­tive seems impos­si­ble to square, mak­ing it like Alain Resnais’ mas­ter­piece Last Year in Marien­bad, only set on a boat, in colour, and with a whole lot of blood.

Post-post­mod­ern hip­ster-hop­ping meta-teen-com­e­dy Deten­tion throws out high con­cepts, scat­ter­gun allu­sions, curve­ball sub­plots and oth­er (sub)cultural detri­tus at unpar­al­leled speed, defy­ing view­ers to keep up or be left in the last decade. It hilar­i­ous­ly dis­sects a new class of ado­les­cents left to sink or swim in a world of rapid­ly shift­ing ref­er­ence points and val­ues, where they must piece togeth­er their iden­ti­ty from an infin­i­ty of retro-cul­tur­al mod­els and obscure Wiki data no fur­ther away than a mouse click, and yet still strug­gle, like all teens before them, to fit in, find them­selves (and the guy or girl of their dreams), and get an A – if not save the world. And while there is no genre that the angst and ecsta­sy of grow­ing pains can­not inhab­it, part of the genius of Joseph Kahn’s film (co-writ­ten with Mark Paler­mo) is to mash up all these dif­fer­ent gen­res into a pro­tean plot that sim­ply defies sum­ma­ry, and yet some­how is all made to cohere, impos­si­bly, in the end.

Alt-music vlog­ger Mark (Marc Sen­ter) and out-there artist Gin­ger (Elis­sa Dowl­ing) spend a long dark(ly fun­ny) night of the soul togeth­er in Ginger’s desert cab­in, belea­guered by intrud­ers both exter­nal and inter­nal. Bud­dy Giovinazzo’s A Night of Night­mares is a mod­est­ly bud­get­ed film that keeps its (maybe) super­nat­ur­al mechan­ics sec­ondary to strong char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and nuanced dia­logue. It might be dis­missed as a roman­tic quirk­fest were it not so devi­ous­ly twisty and unfath­omably creepy – although, even after the pen­ny has dropped, it nev­er los­es any of its immense charm, which is the rarest of com­modi­ties in this genre.

The fea­ture debut of writers/​directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papusha­do, and one of the first genre films ever to emerge from Israel, Rabies opens with a scene that promis­es famil­iar slash­er busi­ness, before more or less for­get­ting all about its rapist/killer-on-the-loose and shift­ing its focus to a Coens-style ensem­ble clus­ter­fuck of mis­steps, mis­un­der­stand­ings and mis­de­meanours. Apart from the noc­tur­nal pro­logue, these all take place in broad day­light, in a small strip of wood­land that becomes both a Bermu­da tri­an­gle and a micro­cosm of Israel’s com­plex social and polit­i­cal land­scape – a ver­i­ta­ble mine­field where the twinned sens­es of enti­tle­ment and entrap­ment have pro­duced a treach­er­ous envi­ron­ment best trod­den very carefully.

While prob­a­bly the least known of all the titles list­ed here, Inoue Yasuo’s The Neigh­bour No. 13 cer­tain­ly earns its place amongst the most strik­ing and uncom­pro­mis­ing genre films of the last decade. Based on Inoue Santa’s man­ga Rin­jin 13-gô, it is the Jekyll-and-Hyde sto­ry of Juzo (Oguri Shun), a down-trod­den con­struc­tion work­er who unleash­es his mute, id-like alter ego No. 13 (Naka­mu­ra Shi­do) upon real­is­ing that his ten­e­ment block neigh­bour (Hiro­fu­mi Arai), now mar­ried with a young son, is the same per­son who once vicious­ly bul­lied him in school. A deliri­ous mind­melt of avoid­able abuse and abject con­se­quence, the film’s psy­cho­log­i­cal inten­si­ty and unflinch­ing aggres­sion are deliv­ered in a pack­age of jar­ring­ly hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry visu­als – includ­ing a mem­o­rable slam­dance between the naked Juzo and No. 13 in an iso­lat­ed bunker beyond space and time.

As Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle) aban­dons her med­ical stud­ies to become an in-demand sur­geon for the under­ground body mod­i­fi­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ty, she car­ries out a cool vengeance upon the male med­ical instruc­tor who abused her. Yet if rape-revenge forms the basic con­tours of Jen and Sylvia Soska’s dark yet daz­zling film, there is far more con­cern here to con­trast America’s eco­nom­i­cal­ly strat­i­fied, misog­y­nis­tic main­stream with the more accept­ing mar­gins in which the film­mak­ing twins them­selves have been able to thrive. Caught between these two worlds, Mary becomes a kind of Frankenstein’s mon­ster whose scars and sutures even­tu­al­ly show. The results are a sur­gi­cal strike against the Amer­i­can dream itself, as well as a Lynchi­an por­trait of a woman in trouble.

Hideo Naka­ta will per­haps always be best known for the foun­da­tion­al J‑horror Ringu (1998), but his Dark Water is bet­ter. After win­ning a bit­ter cus­tody bat­tle, Yoshi­mi (Kuro­ki Hit­o­mi) moves into an apart­ment build­ing with her six-year-old daugh­ter Ikuko (Kan­no Rio), and as she slow­ly unrav­els before the clash­ing demands of work and sin­gle moth­er­hood, a ghost­ly girl begins haunt­ing the dank build­ing, bring­ing Yoshimi’s unhap­py mem­o­ries of her own child­hood flood­ing back. This seri­ous, som­bre exam­i­na­tion of a woman on the verge of a ner­vous break­down and the tra­di­tion of aban­don­ment that she has both inher­it­ed and will her­self pass on, Dark Water is full of aque­ous appari­tions, allow­ing its creepy atmos­pher­ics to drip with a deep, dark sadness.

It is Octo­ber 1981 in icy Stock­holm, and the news reports of a Sovi­et breach of Sweden’s bor­ders form the back­ground of anoth­er Cold War in which meek, dis­turbed young Oskar (Kåre Hede­brandt) fan­ta­sis­es acts of vio­lent vengeance against his bul­ly­ing tor­men­tors. As if on cue, Eli (Lena Lan­der­s­son) moves into the next door apart­ment with an old­er guardian – and these two lone­ly chil­dren form a friend­ship even as the neigh­bour­hood is struck with a series of bizarre mur­ders. Adapt­ed by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his own nov­el, Tomas Alfredson’s moody, lyri­cal chiller came as a wel­come anti­dote to the tween super­fi­cial­i­ties of Twi­light (released the same year), bring­ing art­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal sub­tle­ty to its pre-ado­les­cent angst.

With a tor­tu­ous­ly metic­u­lous nar­ra­tive struc­ture as its only spe­cial effect, Nacho Vigalondo’s low-bud­get fea­ture debut keeps wrong-foot­ing the view­er with its straight-as-an-arrow jour­ney through events where the nor­mal stric­tures of chronol­o­gy sim­ply no longer apply. This immac­u­late time-trav­el movie may tie us in knots, but its protagonist’s increas­ing­ly des­per­ate attempts to get back to where he start­ed are root­ed in a com­pelling­ly noirish moral frame, fol­low­ing one man’s errant gaze through to its point of no return. By fore­ground­ing the observer’s para­dox with­in his inge­nious­ly con­vo­lut­ed plot­ting, Viga­lon­do presents us with a con­fronting piece of meta-cin­e­ma, draw­ing our eye with a flash of flesh, only to show us just where our voyeuris­tic desires can lead.

Check out the sec­ond part of our best Fright­Fest films ever fea­ture to find out what ranked 10 – 1. Fright­Fest 2016 runs 25 – 29 August. For more on this year’s fes­ti­val vis­it fright​fest​.co​.uk