Here are the highlights of this year’s FrightFest, featuring the best movies playing at London’s legendary genre festival, including The Invisible Raptor, Bookworm, and opening night film Broken Bird. FrightFest is “genre Christmas” for gore-hounds, with multiple screens in Leicester Square filled with horror of all flavors, from slashers and psychological thrillers to paranormal stories and creature features. This year’s highlights include Cannes winner The Substance , eagerly anticipated found footage flick Shelby Oaks , and a movie about an invisible dinosaur.
You can already read our 14 favorite movies from FrightFest 2023 , or scroll down for the best movies at the 2024 edition, which we’ll be updating as films screen throughout the long weekend. Broken Bird Directed and co-written by Joanne Mitchell, Broken Bird is the character study of a deeply troubled woman that transforms into a dark gothic horror. Rebecca Calder delivers a powerhouse performance as Sybil, a lonely figure with a troubled past, who works as a mortician, and spends her spare time writing bad poetry and looking for something to fill the hole in her heart.
The film also follows the plight of a local policewoman who is breaking down following the disappearance of her child. Which begs the question, how are these twin storylines connected? The answer is predictably upsetting, and connected to the delusions and hallucinations that are fogging Sybil’s mind. All of which leads to a devastating denouement that concludes this very modern gothic horror with a series of deliciously dark visuals.
Test Screening This is a tricky one, as there’s a movie Test Screening resembles that – if referenced – gives away much of what’s happening. But suffice to say, if you’re a fan of cult horror form the 1980s, you’ll know it when you see it. Related: That particular title isn’t the only movie referenced in director Clark Barker’s film, as the script – which he co-wrote with Stephen Susco – wears its influences on its sleeve, from the movies of John Carpenter to Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, The Faculty, and Slither.
Stranger Things is also clearly an influence, with the film set in a small town in Oregon in 1982, where the ‘test screening’ for a mysterious new Hollywood movie does something terrible to those who attend, with deadly consequences for the community. Like Stranger Things, each of the teenage protagonists is expertly-drawn, existing as three-dimensional characters rather than simple cannon fodder. The talented young cast brings them to life in convincing fashion, with Drew Scheid and Chloë Kerwin notably ones to watch.
The Invisible Raptor We actually saw this one at Glasgow FrightFest in February, inspiring us to write an article titled ‘ The best dinosaur movie heading your way doesn’t have Jurassic in the title .’ The film is silly, revolving around a hapless paleontologist teaming up with a hapless security guard to stop the invisible raptor laying waste to their town. But it’s also ingenious, the horror set-pieces as creative as they are cheap and plentiful.
Jokes come thick and fast and mostly about dinosaur poop, but there’s also nods to not only Jurassic Park, but also Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, The Goonies, and the like. Those classics clearly inspired the film’s co-writer and star Mike Capes, and he lovingly pays homage to each and every one of them, while crafting a very funny film. Oh, and stick around for the credits of this one.
.. An Taibhse (A Ghost) An Taibhse is billed as the first Irish-language horror movie, which makes it unique.
And while the story of a seemingly haunted house is far from original, it’s shot with style and flair by writer-director John Farrelly. Set during a cold winter in 1852 – when famine was tearing through Ireland – the film focuses on Éamon and his daughter Máire, who are tasked with taking care of a huge country pile through the freezing winter months until spring. He fixes up the place while she cooks and cleans, but as isolation takes hold, soon they are variously hearing voices, having visions, and experiencing all manner of horrors during the night.
Is the place haunted, or are they losing their minds? That’s the question at the heart of this slow-burning horror that’s beautifully framed and lit, and features a couple of absolutely terrifying scares. The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine Written and directed by Graham Skipper, The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine is one of those movies where the plot is in the title. Putting it all out there in a truly fearless performance, Skipper also plays Wozzek – the lonely man of the title – who is living in a tin cabin in the woods following a calamity that has somehow broken our world.
Said disaster also stole the love of his life, with his ghost machine designed to bring her back. And succeeds it does, with Nellie returning, at much the same time that Wozzek starts communicating with a mysterious voice that may (or may not) be in his head. What follows calls into question everything Wozzek thinks he knows, in a tale that deals in ghosts and monsters, but also themes of depression, fear, alcoholism, and yes, loneliness.
Bookworm Bookworm is a change of pace for FrightFest, being an adventure movie aimed squarely at kids. Though there is jeopardy in the form of a giant panther. The bookworm of the title is Mildred (Nell Fisher) a literature-loving tween who plots to trap and photograph said beast for proof of its existence.
That plan is delayed when her mum has an accident that takes her out of action. But then Mildred’s “biological dad” Strawn Wise shows up, and Bookworm kicks into high-gear. That’s because her father is an illusionist – not a magician – and played by Elijah Wood, clearly having a blast while sending up the likes of David Blaine and David Copperfield.
This mismatched pair head into the stunning New Zealand wilderness, where danger is lurking around every corner, especially when Kill List’s Michael Smiley appears onscreen. But it’s really about the touching story of a father connecting with the daughter he never knew. Things Will Be Different Things Will Be Different is written and directed by Michael Felker, whose work you’ll know if you’ve seen the films of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, as Felker edited Spring, The Endless, Synchronic, and Something in the Dirt.
He’s clearly been inspired by that dynamic duo’s work, and Things Will Be Different is a time-travel movie that nicely dovetails with the low-budget, high-concept sci-fi tales they’ve been telling. Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy play Joseph and Sidney, a pair of estranged siblings who meet at a diner on the edge of town, then head to an abandoned house in the countryside, where they change the time on the stopped clocks and are transported into the past. Trouble is, something – or someone – is preventing them from returning to the present, and what follows is a head-scratching time-travel tale that’s really concerned with repairing those broken familial bonds.
For more genre fare, check out our list of the best horror movies of all-time , as well as an article on why scary movies are the new summer blockbusters ..
