Film 1 - A Russian film that started brilliantly. It was creepy and surreal with some really strong imagery and strong central performances. Then at the halfway point it went totally off the rails. Instead of following one character that we'd got to know well, we suddenly had 4 characters running round being threatened. Three of them with no back story to make them interesting - at least up until just before they each met their demise. Also all the tension vanished. After the amazing start - very disappointing.
Then we had the short films -I didn't rate these as highly as last years to be hinest. The Stray was very good. Road Trash was reasonably amusing. Boo was pretty good, if a touch predictable. The others ranged from pretty forgettable to pretty bad - Lost Films of Bloody Nora should have been permanently lost. It was bloody awful. Thank god it was only 9 minutes.
Film 2 -This was an absolute belter. Difficult to say much about it without spoiling it. Sm is a young man suffering from blackouts. He's having an affair with a soldier friend's wife. Things start from that fairly standard beginning and change to a tragic metaphysical drama. Brilliantly shot, written and acted.
Another belter of a film - similar in tone to Sightseers - this is a black comedy with a pair of women travelling around the south of England murdering self help gurus as their own personal therapy. I'm not sure the final twist actually works for reasons I can't say without giving spoilers. But it's good enough I think I can let the huge plot hole slide for now.
This was preceded by a short film The Cabinet - which was easily the best short film of the day.
Pollyanna McIntosh's follow up to The Woman. Well written and acted with a strong social commentary going on in the midst of the psychological and occasionally slasher horror. It bugged me that a killing spree seemed to get no attention in the town or the local school - but that may have been a sideline cut for timing purposes.
I love a good punny title and this is no exception. It's also IMHO a pretty damned good film. A group of survivors from a sunken hospital boat are floating on their liferaft, close to the end of their supplies. Good news, a boat appears close by. bad news, it's a nazi warship. Good news, there's no nazis on it. Bad news, the thing that killed them is still stalking the corridors. With some excellent practical monsters and a really creepy looking vampiric pair of villains, this was a great fun creature feature in an unusual location.
Final film of the day - this had the makings of a good feature length twilight zone episode. However at 88 minutes it felt that the story was stretched a bit too thin and the ending almost didn't belong on this film. Having said that, it was never boring and the lead actor was good enough to carry the majority of the movie by himself.
It starts when he breaks into a 4x4 parked on a side street and gets locked in remotely by the owner. You need to accept that a car can somehow be soundproofed so when you hit the windows no one can hear you outside. If you can swallow that, then this is an entertaining enough way to spend your time, but, as I said on the top of this, possibly could do with being 20 minutes shorter at least.
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