FrightFest Day One Reviews: THE LAIR, THE VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE, CROC! and SCARE PACKAGE II: RAD CHAD’S REVENGE.
BritFlicks' Stuart Wrighttakes a look at Day One at Arrow Video FrightFest, with film reviews of THE LAIR, THE VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE, CROC! and SCARE PACKAGE II: RAD CHAD’S REVENGE.
THE LAIR
Written by Neil Marshall & Charlotte Kirk
Directed by Neil Marshall
Wherever trouble goes it’s pretty clear from the start of THE LAIR it will find Capt Kate Sinclair (Charlotte Kirk). Shot down over enemy territory in Afghanistan by insurgents, she then goes toe to toe with the same men on the ground. A chaotic gun fight later and she finds sanctuary in what appears to be an abandoned, sub-terranean Russian facility. The insurgents reluctantly follow her in. What do they know? She somehow manages to outsmart them and escapes back up to ground level, but not before playing her part in unleashing something wholly ungodly that has lay dormant since the end of the cold war 30 years ago. And breathe. You’re only 20 minutes into THE LAIR.
Sinclair eventually finds safety on the last military base left in Afghanistan. Staffed by a rag tag bunch of misfits from the US and UK, no one believes or is interested in checking out what she ‘thinks’ she saw. No matter because after dark this base in under attack from the creatures – think multiple Venoms with more teeth in their mouth. The PREDATOR-esque banter and dialogue, loaded with cartoon bravado, bubbles below the surface as Sinclair gets acquainted with her new surroundings, but really comes to the fore under the stress of combat. Eye patch wearing Major Roy Finch (Jamie Bamber) orders the soldiers to ‘Kill anything that shrieks’. Meanwhile in the heat of the battle Sgt Oswald ‘Taff’ Jones (Leon Ockenden) quips: It’s like a Saturday night out in Cardiff.” American Sgt Tom Hook (Jonathan Howard) doubles takes at him and says: “I’ve got no idea what you’ve just said.” This speaks to the general tone of the film throughout. Kabir (Hadi Khanjanpour), a captured insurgent, gains Sinclair’s trust when he saves her from a suffocating ‘tongue lashing’ by one of the creatures. He talks about villagers going missing over the years without explanation. Meanwhile Major Finch is engaged with back and fourths with his higher ups as it appears he knows more about their situation than he’s letting on.
The creatures flee at daybreak. With no hope of evacuating out of Afghanistan any time soon, Sinclair convinces them that waiting for darkness and the next wave is not a good option. Instead they use the element of surprise and go back to the abandoned facility long before night fall. Neil Marshall ups the ante of being trapped under ground fighting these super human creatures, by pinning them in up at ground level via another insurgent attack and introducing the ticking clock of a massive US airstrike that will blow up the whole location. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Creature claws burst through heads like they’re water melons, machine gun fire never ends as they hold them off.
THE LAIR is a return to Marshall’s action/horror roots. There’s the claustrophobia and below ground creatures of THE DESCENT plus the gore, wit and camaraderie of DOG SOLDIERS. The sustained rat-a-tat of machine gun fire in the finale may well be rattling around your head for hours after the film finishes.
THE VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE
Written & directed by François Descraques
The year is 2555 and the imminent end of the world is upon us. Rewind to today and it could all be avoided if an outmoded nuclear power plant is never built. Activist Alice is part of a pressure group doing everything it can to stop a corrupt politico (her father) from signing off the order to build it. A desperate, covert attempt to stop the deal going through is interrupted by ‘The Visitor’ from the future that the film takes its title from. He is being pursued by the Time Patrol. Here Francois Descraques script takes its first of many pot shots at the lunacy of government’s everywhere and their ongoing stasis when it comes to addressing climate change. In 2555, a wing of the authoritarian establishment wants to stop any do-gooders messing with the past to fix future problems – even the total annihilation of the planet. Presumably, like right wing governments today, they’re only interested in power and not wanting to take responsibility for the problems humans create.
The Visitor inadvertently brings Alice and her father in to the doomed future and a tiny existential crisis opens up for dad. He claims he only wants to provide for his daughter and he needs money for that, money from the dirty deals that make nuclear power plants happen. Naturally, after some cajoling and head scratching dad will come to understand that what he’s about to do today is wrong, but the fascists derail his plan to cancel the nuclear power plant by threatening to kill his daughter. With the help of The Visitor, Alice takes matters into her own hands and ingeniously messes with the time continuum by making the ultimate sacrifice for the future of Mother Earth.
The tone is light for such a weighty subject matter and it manages to get a good few laughs out of you in the process - think epic adventure movies like Star Wars/Indiana Jones. THE VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE is grown up enough for the adults to tune in and accessible enough for the kids to dig it too. The climate crisis messaging is none too subtle in this film, but we’re past trying to pander to deniers’ doubts. This film is a wonderfully idiosyncratic, action/adventure dystopian time travel movie with a wee bit of hope for humankind thrown in at the end.
CROC!
Written & Directed by P W Franklin
On IMDB CROC! is described as: “Deep in the English countryside, Lisa and George prepare for their wedding at a Tudor mansion. But an angry crocodile lies in wait, determined to ruin their big day.” Sensational, or what? Sadly not. There’s plenty of enthusiasm (and talking, boy do these characters like to speak their minds) on screen but none of it translates into something resembling drama or suspense. It is simply a bonkers set up – a killer crocodile on the loose in Hampshire - with a wedding party to kill. Very little else.
There’s a sex scene in the first ten minutes that appears to be from another film as it has no bearing on the film, nor does it set an erotic tone for what’s to come (pun intended). However, like SHARKNADO (2013) you don’t watch Z grade exploitation creature features for the cerebral experience. CROC! is almost always ridiculous when any rational thinking is applied to the action as it unfolds. For example, this crocodile can open swimming pool doors. The many deaths in the jaws of the beast are rarely, if ever convincing. And almost all of the hapless victims stumble to eye level with the CGI CROC! before they are eaten.
The bride’s father, set up as endangered species campaigner. It’s a good job he’s here to explain what the hell is going on. He says: “It’s a crocodile, but I don’t know what species … But I do know it shouldn’t be living in this climate.” However, the biggest mystery is second croc. During the initial wedding ceremony attack one of the guests shouts “There are two of them.” However, the characters only seem concerned with one croc for the rest of the film. Regardless, if cheap and cheerful is your horror bag then look no further than CROC!
SCARE PACKAGE II: RAD CHAD’s REVENGE
Horror anthology created by Aaron B Koontz & Cameron Burns
Three years after the original SCARE PACKAGE (2019), it’s time for more knowing scares and splatter filled homages to the genre films we love. We start at Rad Chad Buckley’s funeral with a cast of friends and family that include some recognisable faces of the big and small screen. For example, Kelli Maroney (FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, NIGHT OF THE COMET), Rich Sommer (MAD MEN, SUMMER OF 84), Maria Olsen (SCREAM, ZOMBIE SCREAM, GORE ORPHANAGE) and Graham Skipper making his first appearance of Frightfest 2022 – look out for him in Eric Pennycoff’s THE LEECH too.
Apart from knowing how Rad Chad ended up in the coffin, there’s little to worry about coming to the second in the series cold, as the continuity of the wrap around story is totally self-contained and stand-alone and works as its own film. Each of these segments apes the puzzle format of the SAW franchise, with a light sprinkling of other well-known horror films, but no matter what they do to get free, it’s always just a brief respite to watch one of the four stories before we return to find them in another tricky situation that finally brings them all the way back to Rad Chad’s Horror Emporium.
Like the first instalment SCARE PACKAGE II is a fun and very meta horror ride throughout the wrap around tale. Some are more overt than others. A BritFlicks fave is the Friday the 13th Part 2 machete across the face and then cut to outside to see the wheelchair bouncing backwards down some stairs.
There are four tales in the anthology part of SCARE PACKAGE II. WELCOME TO THE ‘90s (directed by Alexandra Baretto) starts off proceedings. It plays with the evolution of our understanding of the male gaze in horror and subverts the very notion of who deserves to die at the hands of slasher killer. Whereas THE NIGHT HE CAME BACK AGAIN! Part VI: THE NIGHT SHE CAME BACK (directed by Anthony Cousins) is a call-back from the first Scare Package anthology. This time Cousins splices the unkillable Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees phenomenon with the curse/supernatural chapters those types of franchises tend to introduce when they’re running out of ideas. Jed Shepherd (HOST) is the third spooky story – SPECIAL EDITION - and he draws on RING, VIDEO DROME and THE VIDEO DEAD to weave an eerie tale of a sister and her friends (the entire female cast of HOST) clearing out her dead brother’s house, a manifested ghost kid killer whose arms are just swords with the ludicrous (and hilarious) urban legend that he died on the set of THREE MEN AND BABY after falling out of a window onto some prop swords. Finally, there’s WE’RE SO DEAD (directed by Rachele Wiggins) which is a love letter to STAND BY ME surprisingly crossed with THE FLY in a denouement that will have cat lovers purring with delight.
SCARE PACKAGE II is a true celebration of the genre. Made by genre fans. For genre fans. It is downright parody at times, but it is never cruel or punching down on your favourite movies or characters. Everything honoured gets bear hugged and smothered in a genuine love for scary movies. As long as you understand the rules of horror, you’ll get out of there alive.
For more of our Arrow Video FrightFest coverage click on the links below
Full Arrow Video FrightFest Line-Up Here
