While the London-based FrightFest events in August and over Halloween seem to change venues every year or so, the Glasgow chapter is a more fixed affair. For it is always timed for the end of that city’s annual Film Festival, and always takes place on a single screen (Glasgow Film Theatre 1), ensuring that those attending are all seeing the same programme together, like congregants united for a cultic ritual. It is the least southern and most social of FrightFest gatherings.
If some things at Glasgow, like the fully engaged audience and welcoming vibe, never change, what does differ from year to year is the menu of films on offer. Opening on the evening of 1 March with Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s long awaited adaptation of their stage play Ghost Stories and Brian O’Malley’s gothic romance The Lodgers, this year’s festival boasts a further line-up of 11 titles over the following two days. There will be creatures from the deep (Xavier Gens’ Cold Eyes), from the woods (Adam MacDonald’s Pyewacket), from the Quebecois hinterlands (Robin Aubert’s The Ravenous), from the Pacific Northwest (Patrick Magee’s Primal Rage), or from Basque folklore (Paul Urkijo Alijo’s The Blacksmith and the Devil). There will be horrors altogether more human (Gabriela Amaral Almeida’s Friendly Beast; Adam Marcus’ Secret Santa; Issa López’s Tigers Are Not Afraid). There will be postmodern takes on genre (Kelly Greene’s rediscovered Attack of the Bat Monsters; Dragos Buliga’s The Wanderers: Quest of the Demon Hunter). Finally, late evening on Saturday 3 March, the festival will count down to its own end with Neil Mackay’s action-heavy pre-millennial siege thriller Sixty Minutes To Midnight.
The films will be accompanied by guest Q&As, trailers and shorts, as well as all the blood sweat and fears that we have come to expect from FrightFest.
The full programme can be found here: http://www.frightfest.co.uk/2018Films/frightfest-glasgow-schedule.html
And ticketing information is here: http://www.frightfest.co.uk/tickets.html