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.
