DEoL @ London Film Festival 2026 #5 - Rebellion (UK 2026: Dir Ken Fero, Tariq Mehmood)

Fero and Mehmood's third documentary, following 2020's Ultraviolence and the following year's Injustice, concentrates on a 1981 story that has, unjustly, largely faded from memory.

The 'Bradford 12', as they came to be known, were a group of British-Asian men who were arrested, imprisoned and tried as 'terrorists' for creating and storing Molotov cocktails intended, as prosecutors alleged, to attack both the local community and the police.

Rebellion frames the arrests and trial within the depressingly familiar story of poor working class families, high unemployment and Government rhetoric on immigrants 'swamping' the country, as well as the rise of the National Front, police brutality (and unlawful killings) and, in 1981, a wave of riots which brought all these things to a head. The national anti 'black' mood is also illustrated by the case of Anwar Ditta, a British-born woman of South Asian heritage whose high-profile fight to be reunited with her three children became a landmark case, where a six year battle with the Home Office finally overturned their intransigent position.

In Bradford, where racist incidents were commonplace, based on information supplied to the Indian community (by the police) about potential skinhead gang attacks, a group of men decided to defend themselves by fashioning makeshift 'molotov cocktails'. The threatened attacks didn't happen, but police raids on several houses led to the discovery of the unused 'bombs' and the arrest of twelve men.

The documentary follows the arrest, committal to prison, and trial of the 'Bradford 12' through interviews and clips from a reconstruction of the court proceedings. In that the whole point of the film hinges on their mistakenly being classified as 'terrorists' for the purposes of conviction, comments from real terrorists like Leila Khaled seem more than a little out of place.

The unanimous acquittal of the 12 was important not only for their personal freedoms but because, in concluding that the men were justified in defending themselves largely because of information received from the police - who lied about the threat levels - it also confirmed that the police were not policing 'without fear or favour'.

Fero and Mehmood's documentary is by its very existence polemical in nature and therefore leaves many questions unanswered. One thing it doesn't state, but is implicit in its message, is that none of the threats faced by those communities 45 years ago have gone away; in fact the hostility they feared has, in a post Brexit world, been mainstreamed. The extensive list of support groups in the end credits suggest that these threats are larger and more insidious than ever. 

DEoL @ London Film Festival 2026 #4 - The Blood Countess (Austria/Luxembourg/Germany 2026: Dir Ulrike Ottinger)

At some point there will be a definitive onscreen biography of Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Ecsed; 16th Century Hungarian noblewoman, aristocrat and, more infamously, bather in the blood of virgins. God knows there have been a few attempts, from 1971's twin offerings Countess Dracula from Hammer films and Daughters of Darkness by Harry Kümel, and more recently, Bathory: Countess of Blood from 2008, with Anna Friel in the title role.

Anyway Ulrike Ottinger's most recent film is definitely not it; to be blunt, it's difficult to know what this is. Set in a weird fusion of 19th Century and contemporary Vienna, Isabelle Huppert is the Blutgräfin (Blood Countess) Erzsébet Báthory, in town for a kind of family reunion. Aided by her vampire maidservant Hermine (Birgit Minichmayr sporting a Weimar bob), stopping off for an enroute snack courtesy of a young girl's neck, she begins the process of meeting up with her relatives.

Principal among these is nephew Rudi (Thomas Schubert), a strikingly dressed (and among a cast that are all colourfully dressed, that's quite something) vegetarian whose aversion to the red stuff is being worked on with his attendant therapist Theobald (Lars Eidinger). 

Following the gathering of the clans are two would be vampire hunters, who have clearly strayed in from the set of Roman Polanski's 1967 horror comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers (clearly an inspiration for this film); Theobastus Bombastus (André Jung) and Nepomuk Afterbite (Marco Lorenzini). While Erzsébet's trail of bloodlust continues, she's also on the search for a book which contains the details of her family's ancestry, keen to stop the records from being destroyed.

Much of the film is devoted to this search, with a distinctly make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach. Clearly eighty-something Ottinger, who is a painter as well as a filmmaker, was much more interested in giving her audience a baroque romp than in following a coherent narrative. After a while the viewer has two options; walk or surrender to the gentle insanity on display.

For the benefit of the rest of this review, reader I stayed and got to witness: lavish ballroom sequences; a feast comprising a centre piece of a body reconstituted from various entrails; magnificent Viennese libraries; a row of gentlemen, seated, shaved and throats slit (mostly offscreen) as one of the banquet courses; a CGI bat with the sensibility of Lassie; oh and Conchita Wurst.

Yes that Conchita Wurst, Austrian Eurovision winner and drag queen who gets to belt out their hit 2014 hit 'Rise Like a Phoenix' probably for no other reason that they happened to be available. Unfortunately this rendition becomes the film's highlight; in its near two hour running time it's the closest The Blood Countess comes to being, if you'll pardon the phrase, full blooded.

I fully accept that The Blood Countess looks amazing with a rousing Strauss-esque score, but its flat pacing and air of self congratulation make it a chore to sit through. I also get that it's a thinly disguised satire of the Austro-Hungarian power dynasties; but it still has to be watchable. The only saving grace, apart from the production design and costumes by Jorge Jara Guarda (and oh if they could be in a better film), is Huppert as Báthory. From the opening scene, where, dressed in trademark vermillion, she steps off a crimson barge floating in an underground canal, straight into the camera like the Bond villainess we'll never see, to the climax on board the giant Wiener Riesenrad ferris wheel, the radiant actor lights up the screen every time she's on. Sadly it's just not enough.

DEoL @ London Film Festival 2026 #3 - Ink (UK/France/USA 2026: Dir Danny Boyle)

It's 1969 and entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch, following his acquisition of the News of the World, has just bought the struggling broadsheet The Sun from the Mirror Group, a paper with a very limited circulation. People think him bonkers, but he has an idea; to relaunch the paper to an audience who fall between other newspapers - and this is at a time when daily papers are bought by a significant percentage of the UK - and provide something that the working person would want to buy regularly. He also wants 'the establishment' to see him as a major player, something he has, to date, been unable to achieve.

To make this happen, Murdoch makes an offer that can't be refused to Larry Lamb, a brash northerner who at the time was editing The Manchester Daily Mail. Lamb accepts, packs up his family and moves down south, pitching to a number of fellow writers and sub editors to join him.

This is the jumping off point for Danny Boyle's latest movie, which charts The Sun's meteoric rise in popularity under Lamb's control, choosing a populist approach to content and daring to take the paper to places that other titles avoided.

A ferocious Jack O'Connell plays Lamb to Guy Pearce's Murdoch, and much of the film is devoted to the shifting relationship of the pair, with the editor giving the people what they want, no matter how salacious, and the owner tolerating, but never embracing his protege's approach.

Adapted by James Graham from his own 2017 stage play of the same name, Ink's cast of characters mixes the fictitious with the real; chief among these is the excellent Claire Foy as Jules Davies, a plain speaking amalgamation of several strong women who worked on the paper at this time, advancing the female angle of the daily while competing with the hard talking, tough speaking male staff.

Boyle's movie, while remaining faithful to the play, nevertheless manages to open out the action into the printing presses and rainy streets of London; the film begins and ends in elite hangout Rules, the oldest restaurant in London, bookended with two scenes that take place just over ten years apart. The expense account living enjoyed by the pair, and indeed the staff of The Sun, locks the journalists and executives in a golden handshake in which they must tolerate, if not like, the increased excesses of the newspaper; a real work hard, play hard environment. 

It also covers the most horrendous (real life) incident in Lamb's tenure: the mistaken identity kidnap (and eventual murder) of Muriel McKay (Lucy Russell), wife of Murdoch executive Alick McKay (Jonathan Hyde). The kidnappers, who wanted to extort a ransom, thought they'd taken Murdoch's wife, and the paper unwisely decided to publicise the incident as it played out. McKay's end (her body was never found) demonstrates the line between responsibility and exploitation, one which sadly didn't hurt The Sun's circulation.

The film closes with the decision which changes The Sun's fortunes forever (and outlasts Lamb and his successor Kelvin Mackenzie, shown waiting in the wings); to feature 20-year-old Stephanie Rahn as its first 'Page 3' girl. Boyle pivots off this scene to a filmed montage which suggests that the paper presaged the slide into populism, embracing pugilist politicians, Facebook, Farage, Musk and Trump. It's a lofty claim and one I didn't totally buy into; indeed I question whether the film would have existed at all if it weren't for the inspiration of the stage play.

Ink is well acted, with the stylish flourishes (and anachronistic soundtrack) which are pure Danny Boyle. See it for O'Connell's taught, driven Lamb and its recreation of a lost time, even though ultimately the film might not equal the sum of its admittedly involving parts.

DEoL @ London Film Festival 2026 #2 - Nightborn (Finland/UK/Lithuania/France/USA 2026: Dir Hanna Bergholm)

Bergholm's second feature, after 2022's Hatching, may be unusual territory for some LFF audience members, but seems remarkably familiar to anyone with more than a basic knowledge of the folk horror genre. 

Seida Haarla and Rupert Grint are Saga and Jon, who have moved back to Saga's home country of Finland to start a family, with plans for three kids; specifically they've moved into her grandmother's run down house, its generous land filled with broken down vehicles and machinery. She's given up work for five years to make their child rearing plans happen; he's negotiating a new career in a foreign country.

Saga has grown up 'in nature' (to use an annoying phrase) whereas Jon has been uprooted from the UK and seems a lot more down to earth. They wander in their new country environment, full of fairy tale trees that look like people, and make love outside; a blunt cut confirms that seed has been sown with a close up of their new baby being born, blood covering an attentive Jon.

The birth is not without problems, leaving Saga bruised and bloody, and their little offspring is unusually hairy. "This is where it all begins," says Jon when the family return home, and he's not wrong; the baby, whom they're going to christen Christian (after Jon's father), aggressively latches during breastfeeding, cries all the time, and wears down the parents. So far, so newborn; add in Saga's brusque mum who criticises her daughter's tendency to romanticise life ("You look tired," she says to Saga in possibly the least welcome observation ever) and her sister Taru (Pamela Tola) whose pretty daughter and well scrubbed image contrasts with Saga's post birth knackerdness, and you have a recipe for an extremely stressful household.

But things get worse; the baby, now named Kuura in a surprise announcement by Saga at a family do, seems incredibly sensitive to sunlight, burning on exposure, and prefers darkness. More baffling, he seems to have a physical aversion to cold iron. Much of Bergholm's film is concerned with the rift between the parents, Jon's distant, patronising manner contrasting with Saga's desperate attempts to mother her child in a normal way and, when realising Kuura's more basic instincts, abandoning all traditional childrearing techniques in favour of pacifying her newborn.

Nightborn is ultimately unsuccessful because its equating of the stresses of new parenthood with the mysteries of the forest is too clunky; performances, particularly the supporting cast, verge on the parodic, and the balance of horror and domestic drama is uneasy. As a mother on the brink, almost from the first frame, Haarla is convincing and sometimes deeply affecting, but Grint's Jon doesn't have the heft to match it. Too often Bergholm's film pivots around too thin a premise, making the drama repetitious and, considering the fantastic elements, often rather hollow. Disappointing.

DEoL @ London Film Festival 2026 #1 - Musk (USA 2026: Dir Alex Gibney)

A near four hour long documentary on the planet's richest manchild sounds like quite the undertaking, but in Alex Gibney's deft hands we're served up a film that is by turns fascinating, sometimes darkly funny, but ultimately devastating.

Split into two parts with, mercifully, a small intermission, the first two hours (!) details Elon Musk's rise to riches via Zip 2, a sort of map based local directory which he developed with his brother Kimbal and sold for a huge profit in the late 90s. Shock numbers one and two - there will be others - are a) his ability to make large fortunes remarkably easy and b) footage of him at this point being follicularly challenged, something quietly rectified as the years advance (along with other tweakments).

The rot sets in with the Tesla project. A laudable ambition, to create a battery driven car, becomes strained when Musk pushes for the development of Autopilot, the driverless vehicle, and proceeds to convince the buying public of the project's safety; in real life this is very much not the truth. Gibney produces witness testimony - and, shockingly, real crash footage - showing the human cost of Autopilot gone wrong in numerous accidents hushed up by out of court settlements, and manipulated demonstrations which cover up the technology's shortcomings. Musk also covers his brutal buyout - and internal massacre  - at Twitter, using management 'techniques' that he'd later deploy within the US Government.

We hear a little about Musk's upbringing and his horrendous bullying father Errol but, because Elon wasn't prepared to talk to Gibney, these recollections are delivered via existing statements from family and, in the documentary's much needed human element, interviews with former wives, most notably his first, Justine Wilson. Through her we learn of the man's ambition to be the world's most prolific baby father, the public manipulation of the heartbreak of their first child dying as a baby (he maintained online that the child died in his arms when in reality it was Justine doing the holding) and later his disowning - personally and financially - of his trans daughter Vivian, claiming that his 'son' was "dead - killed by the woke mind virus". Gibney's way around the non participation of the subject is to use an AI version of the man, articulating sentences attributed to him over the years; it's a bit of a clunky device, but turning Musk into a chisel jawed avatar is exactly the version of the guy that he himself would probably deploy.

Where ambition morphs into folly is evidenced through his SpaceX project into 'Occupy Mars' (wherein Musk is aiming for an established city on the planet by 2050); experts are on hand to dismiss the practicality of this by describing the extent of Mars's hostile environment, but of course it doesn't stop the US President sliding the project onto his own agenda, as shown in Part 2 of the documentary.

And let's get to Part 2, which slowly pulls the Quixotic mask off Musk to reveal the dark heart of, as he's described when he joins Trump on the 2024 Campaign trail, 'the greatest capitalist in modern day America'. Gibney shows how the hyper-enthusiastic Musk - which some have attributed to the guy's excessive drug use - and his likely deployment of the controversial 'Starlink' satellite comms system to aid pro Trump messaging in the days leading up to the President's second term in office - inveigled his way into Trump's perverted Camelot. His appointment as head of the Department of Government Efficiency shows the DOGE project for what it was; a cynical dismantling of those central departments who were starting to bring an investigative case against Musk for his previous transgressions. 

Footage of Musk, hoisting his son X on his shoulders (the child the subject of a fierce custody battle with the musician Grimes) while he and Trump seemingly make it up as they go along in the Oval Office, his spat with the President and reconciliation, make up some of the most chilling aspects of the documentary. "He is a nuke" is how ex partner Ashley St Clair, a former MAGA cheerleader who is also in a custody battle with the man, describes Musk, and an interview at the close of the documentary, in which a tongue tied Musk is unable to articulate precisely what his motivations are, either suggests someone who has lost sight of his ambitions, or someone in full possession of them but who chooses, once again, not to publicly play his hand.

Musk profiles a man completely without self awareness, whose treatment of employees, wives and Government high ups is disdainful and whose world view is that of a child with his finger uncomfortably near the button. He offers no solutions beyond progress for its own sake, no humanity (he scarcely considers himself as human), is totally unaccountable and considers those who would challenge him as '"stupid" or "douchebags". See this documentary now, and tell me afterwards if you don't agree that we're totally fucked, and we brought it on ourselves.

FrightFest 2026 Part 4: Reviews of Grind (USA 2026), Ghost in the Cell (Indonesia/South Korea 2026), Bad Karaoke (USA 2026), Dracula The Night Around Us (USA 2026), Gator Face (USA 2026) and Compliance (USA 2025)

The last of my four round up posts covering 30 films 'seen' at this year's FrightFest.

Grind (USA 2026: Dir Ed Dougherty, Brea Grant, Chelsea Stardust) All three of the directors of this witty and stylish portmanteau film have form; I’m a particular fan of Stardust’s 2019 movie Satanic Panic, and there’s something of that film’s dark playfulness in this scattergun takedown of big corporations.

DRGN is a sprawling conglomerate, embracing volume sales, home deliveries and more (sound familiar?). Grind’s linking device – always important in anthology films and an element often poorly considered – is to feature the stories of various employees, providing a coherence to the whole feature, even if some of the individual tales remain a little undercooked. 

On the warehouse floor, new recruit Maria (Mercedes Mason) consistently misses her packing targets (she fails to locate ring lights in time, which her colleague Pete (Matt Mercer) informs her are stored in the ‘influencer services’ section) and is transferred to the ‘special gifts’ area. This acts as the springboard for the movie’s individual tales, the first and best being ‘MLM’ in which would be influencer Sarah (Jessika Van) struggles to sell enough ‘LaLa Leggings’ to meet the sales quota set by her mentor (who wears a T Shirt with the words ‘Stop Being Poor’). The penalty for this commercial sin is a series of mini curses, starting with her husband’s penis turning into a bird, then everything she likes to eat transforming to inedible glitter; the final straw is the arrival of ‘The Ax Man’, a huge guy – in LaLa Leggings) - whose murderous intent is the result of Sarah being perceived to have let the brand down.

In ‘Delivery’, a fast food driver, Benny (Vinny Thomas) is given a weird pick up job; to deliver a bag full of squishy stuff to a destination that has all the hallmarks of an escape room, complete with revolving chamber. ‘Content Moderation’, the longest and darkest of the stories, features a new DRGN employee whose role, contrary to what was advertised, is to moderate a series of increasingly sick videos for the ‘Hatchbook’ social media channel (also presumably owned by the company), with predictably mid altering results. And finally ‘Union Movement’ has the staff of a coffee shop franchise visited by a murderous creature when the workers organise union representation.

While none of the stories in Grind totally land – again, a common issue with this genre of film – the whole thing is really well put together and often wryly funny. It also looks pretty slick, and if the object of its humour is pretty obvious, that, and the interconnectedness of the individual stories with the wrapping device, makes this enjoyable satire of the gig economy very watchable.

Ghost in the Cell (Indonesia/South Korea 2026: Dir Joko Anwar) Anwar’s latest is set in a prison in Jakarta (although not an actual location; Anwar created a huge set in which the action is entirely based), the inmates of which follow the usual path of the incarcerated; tribes form, no one trusts each other, the staff are mercilessly cruel and there’s a particularly lascivious specimen, Tokek (Aming Sugandhi) who sees all new prisoners as his own sexual playground.

Into this hellhole (actually it really isn’t; at times I was reminded of the prison in Paddington 2) is placed Dimas (Endy Arfian), a young man unfairly banged up for murder after the boss of the newspaper on which he was working was found gutted and interlaced in a ceiling fan.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Dimas gets to room with the predatory Tokek, which doesn’t last long; a demon, a sort of awful alter ego of the prisoner, turns Tokek – literally – into a human shower. It’s not long before the rest of the prison, helped by a psychic inmate called Six (Yoga Pratama) with the ability to pick up auras of those next for the chop, reasons that an evil entity has entered pokey with the quiet, reserved Dimas, placing the whole establishment in peril.

Anwar, never a director to underdo things, gives us a prison movie at once incredibly gory and broadly funny; sometimes in the same scene. There’s an ongoing send up of Indonesian politics in relation to the justice system – favoured prisoners being given 5 star treatment, the government turning a blind eye to the warders’ sadism – which to be fair you can find in most B movie prison flicks. 

Ghost in the Cell, from the punny title to the artfully executed kills, fires off in all directions, sometimes a little artlessly. I sort of struggled to get the point – maybe being Indonesian may have helped here – but any movie that gives you dance numbers, scares and wildly inappropriate soundtrack music can’t be all bad.

Bad Karaoke (USA 2026: Dir Robert J. Steinmiller Jr, Chris Lightbody) The directors' first feature sees a group of musicians, ‘The Nunu’, who are ‘America’s #1 Party Band’, in a van on their way to play at a wedding. The various group members started off performing original songs, but that didn’t turn a buck, so now they’re reduced to singing and playing classic hits at functions. They’re headed up by the headstrong Hannah (Kat Cunning) whose girlfriend Ava (Jenna Karan) she literally stole away from Ava’s own wedding; she’s that kind of headstrong. Sensible Emily (Lexi Underwood) has paid for a room to put the band up overnight.

On their way to their overnight stay they narrowly avoid hitting a blind woman and, having stopped, find a bar which contains an old karaoke machine. Thinking it might liven their evening up, Emily liberates it with the full blessing of the barman. Of course, we’ve already seen a prologue in which the machine shows its evil side, plucking out the eyes of the woman doing the singing. Turns out that thing is possessed by the anger of a singer songwriter prevented from playing at the bar because the karaoke machine was more successful.

At their rental, the group party in the grand tradition of young people about to meet horrendous ends. The karaoke machine is fired up, a song is chosen, but a poor vocal performance – as decided by the evil box - results in the singer having to choose their own death (from a rather limited menu of creative mutilations). And repeat to fade, with the added annoyance (for the group) that the machine cannot be turned off, and when smashed turns up as an app on the band members’ phones.

All this might be pretty silly – actually it is, and played for sly laughs – but the group members are a likeable bunch, and the frat house gaggery is pretty amusing. It’s gory as hell, and pretty effective to boot. Sadly the prevailing message – that original material is better than covers – feels a bit insipid, as are the songs which pepper the movie. But it’s huge fun, scrappy and slightly anarchic, with some great comic moments. Just don’t expect sophistication.

Dracula The Night Around Us (USA 2026: Dir Chris Schwab) A couple of years ago Chris Schwab made the vampire actioner Fangs Out: Blood Apocalypse. Two years on and he returns to his theme, but with a very different approach.

Ostensibly an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, Schwab brings the story to modern day America and condenses it into a 70 minute feature. Eric Toms is Dr. John Seward, a psychologist at Purfleet hospital (one of a number of casual references to Stoker’s source text in the movie) specialising in mental health trauma; one of his patients is a raving guy, keen on eating flies, called…Renfield (Spencer Weitzel); “It’s coming!”, the lunatic shouts. 

Seward is a rather down on his luck character (“Just remember, who else is going to hire you?” remarks his boss), who lives alone, and forms a friendship with his neighbour Mina (Marlene Mc'Cohen) after he finds her daughter Lucy (Raelan Mackiewicz) wandering alone in the apartment car park.

But outside of their lives, pressing ever closer to Seward, is an evil presence, a vampire who hypnotises and preys on young women, finally closing in on Lucy. Seward slowly learns the nature of the vampiric threat and traces the undead to his lair, a coffin located in the city’s sewer system. 

DtNAU is a pretty bold venture; shot on what looks like degraded film stock, this is far from the straightforward Stoker adaption it might seem. Schwab has done some character shifting; Seward also contains elements of the novel’s Jonathan Harker, and the director has made Mina and Lucy mother and daughter. Most of the cast are Schwab’s friends, which makes the production feel intimate, and there’s a great sotto voce score which thankfully doesn’t over intrude.

Stoker’s novel, written at a time when Britain feared the foreigner (oh how times have changed!) comes through in Schwab’s portrayal of Dracula as a dark skinned Nosferatu like figure whose influence literally decays the society in which he operates; Seward’s final explosion of violence is a direct response to evil having won the day, rendering him far less powerful than the book’s equivalent. This is a complex film which initially feels slight, shot quickly but competently and maintaining a dreamlike haze throughout. Excellent.

Gator Face (USA 2026: Dir Padraig Reynolds) Reynolds has been a little quiet on the horror front of late, after his run of grindhouse-esque features, The Devil’s Dolls, Open 24 Hours and Dark Light, at the tail end of the previous decade.

Obviously it’s an itch he needed to scratch again, because Reynolds has returned with a movie that positively screams 42nd St. Three girlfriends, coming to the end of an idyllic vacation in Miami, get lost in an isolated beach location. Trying to get a handle on where they are, they find a run down house with the curious words ‘3 Dead Inside’ daubed on its side. Before long two of the three are dead, courtesy of a Leatherface type character (the film is very in thrall to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) wearing an alligator mask; oh yeah, and some alligators.

The surviving girl, Jess (Amariah Dionne) manages to escape, seeking refuge with another group of young ‘uns whose truck is on the fritz. Pretty soon this group are taking a pretty dim view of Jess because gator face is now after them. Oh dear.

Gator Face (and there’s a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title) is the kind of movie where nobody over thirty is to be trusted and the whole town very much practices a ‘the family that prays together, slays together’ credo. It’s all terribly familiar stuff though, and the film’s lurch into folk horror territory after an hour or so of a guy chasing interchangeable youths with an axe is almost a relief. But Reynolds is a very capable filmmaker, and holds on to the grindhouse vibe right the way through (the whole thing was shot in two weeks and preserves a rough and ready feel). I’m amazed that he didn’t ‘fake grade’ the film to complete the look; actually he does over the end credits, together with a coda that strongly hints that 'Gator Face 2' might be coming for your ankles soon.

Compliance (USA 2025: Dir Kyle Mangione-Smith) Quite what this glitchy found footage conspiracy thriller is doing on the FrightFest schedules is beyond me. Calling Mangione-Smith’s debut feature uneven is like saying that Mantovani tunes could do with more drums, but it’s way too long at 105 minutes and its head hurting visuals aren’t nearly coherent enough to give the viewer more than a flavour of what’s going on.

The opening premise is pretty interesting; Sam (Megan Wilcox), a former psychologist with a drink problem and related confidence issues, is employed in a sort of HR capacity at an Air BNB like company called ‘UVisit’; she gets a late night call to attend an incident in one of the rentals, where a young woman, Sarah (Lindsey Normington), has been raped by two men who have forced their way into the apartment. Later it’s found that the woman’s ID is fake and that her fingerprints have been previously burnt off.

Sam’s post attack interview with Sarah is a support one, but in reality a thinly disguised attempt to get the woman to sign an NDA; there’s a sense that this sort of thing has maybe happened before. It’s also bad timing; UVisit owner, the frankly shitty Harry Keenan (Charlie Wood) is on the cusp of signing a deal which will merge the company with a group of businessmen connected to the Democratic party. He wants the incident covered up and, when Sam shows unexpected sympathy to Sarah, he fires her.

From here on in Sam, now free from the clutches of UVisit, finds herself embroiled in a deeper conspiracy, as Compliance visually demonstrates the murkiness of the world she has fallen into. Mangione-Smith’s movie is entirely constructed from CCTV, home security cameras and, in a rather retro fashion, messed up video graphics that strongly suggest the world we experience visually is one big porky pie.

Compliance is well done up to a point; but the conspiracy elements, combined with the rather distancing visuals, make this feel increasingly like a late season episode of The X Files filtered through mid 1990s video cut up technology. Surprisingly Wilcox manages to elicit some sympathy as a woman out of her depth, and Normington is glacially weird as the victim with a secret. OK then, but a little more control may have helped.

FrightFest 2026 Part 3 - NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM SPECIAL (#5): Reviews of Heraldry Paranormal (UK 2026), Hoarder (UK 2026), Binding Eva (UK 2026), Spider Island (UK 2026), Welcome to G-Town (UK 2026), Full Moon Rising: The Charles Band Story (UK 2026) and The Peril at Pincer Point (UK 2026)

Heraldry Paranormal (UK 2026: Dir Ashley Nashville) Director Ashley Nashville’s first feature is a spirited return to the ‘first person filmmaking’ (that’s found footage to you, not that the footage is found here) based around a quartet of amateur online ghosthunters named, unsurprisingly and slightly bafflingly, ‘Heraldry Paranormal’.

HP’s head honcho is Finlay McCoy (Jimmy Roberts) whose frustrations over his inability to land a true haunting cause tensions with his team members, namely Seamus (Nashville), Emerson (Tara Buranakul) and Finlay’s sort of girlfriend, their American mentor Blair (Parker Paige). After a potential haunt in a Doncaster Air BnB turns out to be a hoax, Finlay’s problems deepen when he gets into a spat with the property’s owner and a rival paranormal expert, Rosie Watts (Kate Hargrave). He’s almost given up the ghost (pun very much intended) when Finlay gets wind of a couple, Violet and Gemma (Lauren Grendon and Sekki Tabasuares) living in a supposedly haunted house, inherited from a git of a grandfather who disapproved of them being both a same sex couple and married.

But just when it looks like this house might be the real deal, along comes Rosie, and the two ‘experts’ battle for the right to claim the house’s entity for themselves.

For most of its length, Heraldry Paranormal follows the path of many cheaply made camcorder movies wherein a group of admittedly fun characters goof around in a relatively unscripted way, and it’s hard to get excited about the setup. But things change for the better once the team arrive at Violet and Gemma’s house, building to a reasonably exciting (and occasionally quite scary) climax. Nashville does as much as he can with a threadbare budget (a secret room on the first floor of the house which bizarrely leads to a basement is a nice touch) and the ‘diss’ videos which map the ongoing feuds are pretty funny.

It’s a little overlong and you have to like the characters to get on with this; in particular grumpy Finlay can seem like ‘a lot’. But I liked the freewheeling nature of it, and the shift to horror towards the end is well navigated.

Hoarder (UK 2026: Dir James Owen) James Owen’s debut feature, 2022’s Bite, saw a couple of con artists hiding out in the house of an elderly woman, with murderous results. Four years on and arguably Owen reuses the same setup, but in this case the hiders are two health care professionals whose intentions are far more honourable.

Community heath nurse Eric (Paul Casar) and his medical student assistant Melissa (Daisy Jelley) are doing the rounds, administering flu jabs to the housebound or those who otherwise couldn’t get protected. They’re an awkward pair – you get the sense that Eric is uncomfortable around younger women – but they have a job to do. And their next visit is to the home of Doris (Terry Bamberger from this year’s Daggers Inn), living with Alzheimer’s, and her husband/carer Fred (David Sterne).

Arriving at the house, they find it in considerable disarray; the couple are clearly in need of assistance. While his wife seems almost comatose, Fred, resistant to any intervention, is obviously an alcoholic. But when Eric administers the jab, the old woman finds reserves of energy, punching the nurse and shouting “he will return!”. This is the point at which Hoarder changes from a dark social commentary comedy to, well, a dark horror comedy, although the secret of what lies within the house is never fully divulged; the only thing we know is that the ‘hoarder’ of the title may not just refer to the house’s human occupants.

I really liked Owen’s slow burn approach to the horror elements of this movie; indeed little happens for the first hour (although a prologue hints at the nastiness to come) and most of the tension lies in what Eric and Melissa uncover in the course of what they think is a routine house visit. A great set design thoroughly convinces the viewer that Fred and his wife live in deep squalor and our health care professionals are also very believable (Owen is an ex surgeon so I guess the medical details would be accurate). There are a few head scratchy plot points, but I’d advise you to enter into the dark spirit of the movie; there’s a lot to like. 

Binding Eva (UK 2026: Dir Conscian Morgan) The impressively named director’s debut feature starts off as it definitely doesn’t mean to go on: cornered Felix (Ryan Ralph Gerrard), a criminal (and estranged father) mixed up with some bad people, makes his escape by diving into the back seat of a car, driven by mum Katarina (Katherine Deevy) and also occupied by her silent daughter Eva (Darcey Wood). Holding Eva at knife point, he demands that Katarina drive him to Chepstow, but the fraught setup causes her to crash the car.

The three then set out on foot, mother and daughter hostage to Felix, but Katarina’s initial confidence that she can guide them to town fails when they become hopelessly lost. Happening on a cabin in the woods, a hoped for rescue point becomes the start of a nightmare for all three.

Ok if you’ve seen a handful of genre films you’ll know how this one ends, and I’m guessing that Morgan knows you know, because Binding Eva isn’t about the arrival; it’s about the journey. Specifically Mum, daughter and criminal’s journey through the forest, with night turning to day and back again, a trip which feels increasingly divorced from reality. 

I’m not sure I needed some of the more obvious folk horror elements – goats, skulls and a presiding witch figure included – but the changing relationship of Felix and Katarina, a superb performance from Wood as 7 year old Eva, and a growing sense of unease and regret raised this one above standard lost in the woods fare.

Spider Island (UK 2026: Dir Christopher Smith) At some point in the future influencers, or content creators as they now like to be known, will be used in movies for reasons other than ridicule. Christopher Smith’s latest, his first feature since the lukewarm nunsploiter Consecration in 2023, treats them with the disdain which a horror crowd would probably approve (even though the plethora of podcasts and YouTube moments created by that community suggest a popular phrase involving ‘people’ and ‘glass houses’).

Here a boatful of creators and camera hungry young souls, all buff bods in swimsuits talking over the top of each other excitedly, rock up on an island as the freebie guests of hotelier David (Andy Nyman in good moustache twiddling form). David is VP of Infinity Dream International and he’s looking to get some good media coverage of his latest beachside facility, courtesy of his guests. Despite his company’s eco credentials, there’s plans for further hotel expansion into the island.

Undercover reporter Clara (Rose Williams) is looking to run an expose on IDI’s less than ideal eco track record, while at the same time hanging out with her dad, retired actor Curtis (Tim McInnerney) with whom she’s become estranged, and who runs a shabbier hotel (and almost 24/7 bar) on the same piece of land.

Nothing is spared for the guests’ comfort, with the exception of the air conditioning, which is on the fritz because of a blockage (check the movie’s title). While David assures the party guests that none of the island’s flora and fauna are in any way dangerous, this is clearly a fib; and you could trust him about as far as you could throw him, for he’s determined to keep the operation going even after the indigenous arachnid population begin their revenge.

Yes you’ve guessed it, we’re back in Jaws territory, or more precisely Jaws ripoff Piranha (actually make that Alexander Aja’s 2010 re reboot Piranha 3D) but with more legs. Smith’s broad humour, sometimes a bit cloth eared (a comedy character nicknamed mongoose, whose mum shortens his name to ‘mong’ anyone?) generally plays well, and the CGI spiders are very effective; I’m not an arachnophobe, and even I got a bit wigged out at times. As mentioned, Nyman and McInnerney both steal the show here; they get the best lines, and effortlessly upstage most of the rather vapid younger cast. Perhaps that’s the point.

Welcome to G-Town (UK 2026: Dir Ben McQuaid, Nathan McQuaid) Ben and Nathan McQuaid’s debut feature is a fabulously DIY sci fi comedy leaning heavily into Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste for its story of an attempted alien takeover.

The ‘G’ of the title refers to Glasgow, home for three slacker chaps, with little to do except reminisce about their camcorder film making days. Media studies student Bill (Danny McAllen), who’s overqualified for a street cleaning job but seemingly unable to hold down any employment, kicks his heels with his mates Peter (Stan Ross) and Ronnie (Ruben Ross), the former some kind of policeman, about to be posted to London. 

But the three are about to be unsuspectingly launched into an intergalactic adventure; a group of aliens, diverted from their planned invasion of London, have somehow landed in Glasgow. All of their cultural homework is now worth zilch, but the extraterrestrials, headed up by Dazinger (Mark Dallas) and lieutenant Nyah (Annabel Logan) pursue their invasion plans by taking over the bodies of locals (cue lots of regional stereotypes) and setting themselves up in an office block. Bill has his work cut out convincing his mates about the takeover, eventually roping in street corner brochure waving crazy Alistair (Matthew Crawford Russell), whose ranting about aliens turns out to be on the nose. But when required to quiz a captive alien, his interrogation techniques prove less than effective, so it’s down to the three lads to stop Scotland – and maybe the rest of Britain – from being dominated.

While Welcome to G-Town could sure use an edit – the whole mid section meanders way too much – McAllen and the Ross brothers are pretty fun to be with, and the McQuaids have a keen sense of anarchy, with touches of Claymation effects, practical gloop (no generative AI in this one) and the whole cast going for it. Glaswegians don’t get off lightly here (one senses the directors’ ennui seeping into the script) but everything gets pulled together for a rather sweet end. No masterpiece then, a little lengthy, but in parts very, very funny.

Full Moon Rising: The Charles Band Story (UK 2026: Sarah Appleton) Sarah Appleton has successfully established herself as a chronicler of the fantastic genre both on Blu Ray extras and film, with recent documentaries on J horror and found footage movies.

Her latest is a long overdue look at the amazing life of Charles Band, a director and producer of over 400 films whose tenacity, as John Carpenter observes in the film, would enable him to survive a nuclear holocaust; along with the cockroaches.

Full Moon Rising charts Band’s numerous rises and falls, mainly through a series of talking heads (including Band’s own), starting with his influential filmmaking (and acting) mother and father – and yes Band still maintains he was babysat by Marilyn Monroe – to his first steps into directing. This was 1973’s Last Foxtrot in Burbank, a long thought lost satire of Last Tango in Paris (obvs) with Michael Pataki doing his best Marlon Brando, and a movie which gave Carpenter his first paid job in Hollywood.

Band’s hucksterish ways – pre-selling movies, for example, to get the cash to make them, mainly based on a title or poster – was pretty standard behaviour in low budget films. But Charles made a success of it, forming Empire Pictures in 1983 and going on to reap rewards by expanding his operation to Italy.

The documentary recognises Band’s ability to remain ahead of the curve, both in cornering the direct to video market – pretty much unknown in the 1980s – and later adapting his Full Moon production company to streaming services. It’s a career that’s seen its fair share of ups and downs – the shady money men moving in at the end of Empire and Band’s attendant financial problems, and cashflow issues resulting in film crews failing to be paid – but through it all Band has continued; and three wives later, it’s hard to find (on camera anyway) anyone who has a bad word to say about him.

Like all good documentaries, Full Moon Rising makes you want to seek out more of Band’s films, although in terms of his later output that’s an itch you can scratch fairly quickly; but there’s no denying that, under Empire International, he gave us a series of skillfully made, inventive low budget movies easily equaling anything produced by Roger Corman. 

The Peril at Pincer Point (UK 2026: Dir Noah Stratton-Twine, Jake Kuhn) This beautifully crafted fable tips its creative hat to the nitrate shadowed films of Guy Maddin and sometimes appears like a low-budget David Eggers movie. 

The creation of co-director Jake Kuhn and Noah Stratton-Twine (who also wrote the film’s sumptuous score), Jack Redmayne plays Jim Baitte, a movie sound guy whose attempts to make reliable field recordings for a forthcoming feature are failing to impress producers Teddie (Dashiell John Blanchett Upton) and Bill (Jason Hogan). Director P.W. Griffin (Os Leanse) wants to go in a different direction, namely a voiceover on the soundtrack. Impressed with the sound of a girl he heard while he was in a diner in Pincer Point, he tasks Jim to track her down and record her voice.

Jim, who in an earlier scene mysteriously received a bite from a crab at his London flat, travels to Pincer Point and, via the rather odd locals, finds out that the voice in question belongs to Marina Hurley (Alyth Ross) and, courtesy of her brother Hollis (Stratton-Twine) that she is missing. Jim is drawn into a mystery in which he becomes a focus, including talking crabs and a ghost frigate, ‘The Bucken Rider’ and its otherworldly master, Captain Telson.

TPaPP looks amazing. Filmed in academy ratio in luminous black and white, with painted backdrops, models and other technical sleights of hand (no AI was involved, the filmmakers emphatically announce) although filmed in Suffolk it conjures up a distinctly other worldly feel, like a Blighty version of one of Thomas Pynchon's more out there works. It’s a freewheeling piece, largely improvised, and its 'Mighty Boosh' style humour won’t be for everyone; there’s also more than a slight borrow from the ‘Clem Fandango’ recording scenes featured in Toast of London. But if quirky characters (Redmayne is particularly appealing in a scatty way), a shaggy dog narrative and a sense of anarchic fun are your thing, you’ll find a lot to like here. “It was supposed to be a horror,” said Stratton-Twine in interview, “but when we saw it come together we realized it was a comedy.” The dedication to Roger Corman at the end of the movie is spot on; as well as the aforementioned crabs, there’s a Cormanesque sense of getting the thing done with enthusiasm and meagre resources. A sequel is already planned.