From blood-soaked thrillers to ‘absurd’ creature features, FrightFest once more brought an eclectic range of horror films to London for its 25th anniversary.
Across five days, genre fans could enjoy some of the buzziest up-and-coming titles set to hit cinema screens in the coming months, as well as indie features that could be the next word-of-mouth hit.
More than 70 films were shown at Odeon Leicester Square, including exclusive world premieres as well as special restoration screenings of iconic classics A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hitcher.
After watching what was on offer at this year’s FrightFest, we have gathered the titles you absolutely must add to your watchlist for 2024 and beyond.
Whether you want an eerie ghost tale, a tense cat-and-mouse mystery, or a monster flick with a difference – these are the FrightFest films you absolutely need to watch.
Broken Bird
Based on a screenplay by Emmerdale’s Dominic Brunt and directed by his wife Joanne Mitchell, Broken Bird opened this year’s FrightFest with a bang.
Sybil (Rebecca Calder), is a lonely, troubled woman who moves to a new town to start afresh, landing herself a new job in a funeral parlour where she spends her days with her secretive yet friendly boss (James Fleet).
Though her life is still consumed by loneliness and she often spends her days wistfully imagining how life could be, soon escalating to deadly new heights.
Test Screening
The eighties have given us a wealth of iconic horror films and inspired modern hits – such as the wildly popular Netflix series Stranger Things.
Test Screening, directed by Clark Baker in his feature debut, takes place firmly in the 1980s and follows four teens from a small Oregon town – Reels (Drew Scheid), Simon (Johnny Berchtold), Mia (Rain Spencer), and Penny (Chloë Kerwin).
Their town is picked to host a mysterious screening for an upcoming movie, but it turns out to be unlike any feature the group has seen before as viewers fall under the effects of a devastating mind control experiment.
The Invisible Raptor
If you always thought Jurassic Park needed tonnes more gore, Spielberg references, and a few fewer dinosaurs – then this is the comedy horror for you.
As the title suggests, The Invisible Raptor follows a raptor invisible to the naked eye. An experiment gone wrong that escapes the scientific facility it was raised in to wreak havoc on the sleepy town of Spielburgh County.
It’s up to washed-up palaeontologist Dr Grant Walker (Mike Capes), and his loner security guard co-worker Denny Danielson (David Shackelford) to track down the apex predator following the disappearance of Elliot Kintner (Luke Speakman), a regular at Dr Walker and Denny’s dinosaur-themed attraction Dino World.
Bookworm
Among the ghosts and gore of FrightFest was the quirky, heartfelt Bookworm, starring Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher.
Mildred’s (Fisher) world is thrown into disarray when her mother falls into a coma after a freak toaster accident and she is forced under the care of her estranged father Strawn Wise (Wood).
In an attempt at bonding, Strawn promised to take Mildred on a camping trip she had been looking forward to to hunt for the mythical Canterbury Panther, which proves to be more perilous than the duo first expected.
The Lonely Man with The Ghost Machine
FrightFest favourite Graham Skipper returned to the event with his latest film The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine.
The tear-jerker tells the story of Wozzek (Skipper), a lone man left on Earth 10 years after a global catastrophe known as ‘the calamity’ where the skies turned purple and ‘things’ took over the Earth.
As the world lies in tatters, Wozzek desperately tries to bring his deceased wife Nellie (Christina Bennett Lind) back to life using the ghost machine, while being visited every night by a mysterious being known only as The Deletarian.
Children Of The Wicker Man
The Wicker Man, released in 1973, has become one of the world’s most important and iconic films, influencing a legion of folk horror titles and cementing director Robin Hardy’s status as genre royalty.
But behind the scenes, the film was plagued with money issues and left the Hardy family in tatters as the director abandoned his wife and children.
More than 50 years later, his sons Dominic and Justin Hardy comb through six bags of unseen documents to piece together the story of the making of the Wicker Man, and explore the devastating effect it had on their lives.
Member’s Club
The surprise late-night hit of this year’s FrightFest came in the form of witchy stripper horror Member’s Club.
With a surprise appearance from Peter Andre and directed by Marc Coleman, the hilarious horror comedy follows the story of a washed-up group of ageing male strippers.
As they take one last gig, the group soon realises they’re in way over their heads as they become entangled in a plot to resurrect a murderous 16th-century witch.
Dead Mail
Directed by Kyle McConaghy and Joe DeBoer, the dark thriller Dead Mail enjoyed its international premiere at FrightFest 2024.
The film begins with a bound and bloodied man (Sterling Macer Jr.) posting a please for help letter into a postal box before being dragged back inside.
The note makes its way to the county post office desk and into the hands of Jasper (Tomas Boykin), a skilled dead letter investigator who is intrigued by the mysterious note.
Shelby Oaks
YouTuber Chris Stuckmann has turned his passion for films into reality after launching a Kickstarter for his feature debut Shelby Oaks – raising more than $1.3 million (£988,788) in its first month and attracting the attention of Mike Flanagan and Neon.
The film kicks off with a documentary detailing the disappearances of the hosts of the popular YouTube channel Paranormal Paranoids – Peter (Anthony Baldasare), David (Eric Francis Melaragni), Laura (Caisey Cole), and Riley (Sarah Durn).
After visiting the ghost town Shelby Oaks they disappeared without a trace until the bodies of Peter, David, and Laura were discovered. But that still leaves Riley missing, with sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) left to investigate what truly happened.
Strange Darling
Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald’s twisty thriller was one of the most talked about films at the festival – and it’s easy to see why.
Directed by JT Mollner, Strange Darling follows The Lady (Fitzgerald) and The Devil (Gallner) in a non-linear thrill ride that tells the story of a one-night stand gone wrong and the final slayings in a serial killer’s spree.
And even that might be knowing too much – Strange Darling is a film best viewed with as little knowledge as possible for maximum shock factor.
Azrael: Angel Of Death
Ready Or Not, The Babysitter, and Scream VI star Samara Weaving returns to the world of horror in the gory folk tale Azrael: Angel Of Death.
Also starring Femme’s Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, the events of Azrael take place many years after an apocalypse dubbed The Rapture in which some survivors have ‘renounced their sin of speech.’
The mostly silent horror follows Azrael (Weaving) and her partner (Stewart-Jarrett) as they run from a devout cult hellbent on sacrificing Azrael to the Burned Men, the deformed creatures who inhabit the forest.
Boutique: To Preserve and Collect
Despite the abundance of streaming services, physical media is still a force to be reckoned with.
Looking at the history of physical media and its future, Boutique: To Preserve And Collect takes a look at the rise of boutique collector labels and the role they have played in film restoration and preservation.
From Something Weird to Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, and Criterion, the engrossing documentary speaks to filmmakers, historians, and label owners on what drives their passion for film and how the industry has risen from the first bootleg videos to highly coveted collectors edition rare films.
A Desert
After stunning audiences at Tribeca Festival earlier this year, Joshua Erkman’s surreal feature debut A Desert had its European premiere at FrightFest.
The film follows photographer Alex Clark (Kai Lennox) who goes missing during a trip across America to photograph abandoned buildings and recapture the passion that launched his career.
His wife Sam (Sarah Lind) hires private investigator Harold Palladino (David Yow) to track down her husband, who uncovers more than he bargains for when setting off to the seedy motel where Alex was last seen.
Generation Terror
The 00s saw the rise of torture porn in horror with titles such as Saw and Hostel grabbing headlines thanks to their extreme gore and violence.
But there’s more to the horror of the 2000s that so often gets a bad wrap, as explored by documentarians Sarah Appleton and Phillip Escott in their latest film Generation Terror.
The duo interviewed several film critics and filmmakers such as Rob Zombie, Neil Marshall, Chris Smith, Joe Lynch and Srdjan Spasojevic to dig deep into the cultural phenomena and external factors that inspired the horror films of the era as well as sharing behind-the-scenes tales about their titles from the decade.
The Substance
Demi Moore’s big-screen return in The Substance has already garnered plenty of strong reactions, and as the closing film of FrightFest 2024, it certainly made an impact.
It follows ageing starlet Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) as she embarks on an experiment known as the substance, a clinical procedure which promises to create ‘a better version of you.’
But if you don’t maintain the balance between the new and old you, disgustingly gloopy body horror ensues.