The Lonely Man With the Ghost Machine is directed and written by Graham Skipper (Sequence Break), who also stars as Wozzek, who may be the last man on Earth. At one point, before he slipped into depression and started drinking the days away, he lived with his wife Nellie (Christina Bennett Lind) in a cabin. They were safe and should have been happy, but they grew apart and one day, she died.

Skipper spends most of the film on his own, in a cabin, having flashbacks, getting wasted and speaking to the voice of The Deleterian (Paul Guyet), who knows more than he tells Wozzek, who is trying to build a machine to bring his wife back to life when he isn’t giving himself therapy through questions he’s recorded earlier.

It’s also a Christmas movie and a puppet film, as when The Deleterian is revealed, it’s learned that he is also the last of his species, having eaten everything else on Earth that is alive other than Wozzek and that he needs someone to talk to. He tries to make this film’s protagonist more introspective, but that’s impossible by this point. And when he finally does succeed in saving his wife, she reminds him that it’s for him and not for her. That’s probably the nicest thing she says or does to him,

This is an auteur film in the best of ways, a one-man showcase for ideas, acting and story. It held my attention throughout and I can’t wait for more people to see it.

I watched The Lonely Man With the Ghost Machine at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Alter Monrepos (Amélie Daure and Anne-Sophie Charron) has an IV dripping blue liquid into her body, lying on a medical table. Or maybe she’s throwing up. Or is she in hypnotherapy with the cave-dwelling Léandro Lecreulx (Stefano Cassetti)? She could also be hooking up with gas station attendant Chris (director and writer Aurélia Mengin) or El Gringo (Emmanuel Bonami). At least she’s taking photos of everything that happens to her, so that she can show them in therapy and determine what makes her anxious — red — or safe — blue — and then learn what is real. And oh yeah — deal with her mother Rosy (Patricia Barzyk) and get past self-harm and embrace living.

This movie’s PR describes it as “Mario Bava meets David Lynch” but this goes further and better and deeper than that. It’s a world of neon that it stalks through, of desire and despair, of long-buried secrets, of the meanings of colors and a place where it can just all come to a stop so two metallic flaked lovers can grind together while loud mechanical shrill shouts pierce the soundtrack. To compare Mengin’s work to any other creative is a disservice. Here, she announces herself as a bold new voice that will only grow in power and command with each new work. This is not a movie that makes sense and therefore, it makes complete and utter sense. Magical and the note to her father at the end, referring to him as her partner in surrealism, made me wistful.

I watched Scarlet Blue at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

This film comes direct from Justin and Dominic Hardy, two of the eight children of the director of The Wicker Man, Robin Hardy. For years, they’ve said that this movie destroyed their family, but now, they have decided to follow the path of the film and how it was made along with director Chris Nunn and a crew. More than trying to understand how their father made a classic movie, suffered as it was unseen and took it through America where it became a cult film that finally spread back to the UK, only to see writer Anthony Schaffer take most of the credit, this is also about how Hardy had eight children to six women and how the many children have grown together and know one another better than they ever did their father. Now, they try to discover why he could so casually abandon them, obsessed with a film that seemed to go nowhere for so long.

At one point, Hardy believed that he was going to die, so he wrote all of his family letters to be read in the future. Those letters were found in his papers and went unopened until this film. It’s both a funny and sad moment when they are revealed. The true joy is seeing as how Justin and Dominic support one another through this draining experience.

This is less about the behind the scenes experience of the making of the film, which isn’t the story it should tell. That story, of the lives behind its creation, is told quite admirably.

I watched Children of the Wicker Man at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Last year, Hadley Briggs (Emma Reinagel) barely survived Halloween when her ex-boyfriend went on a killing spree. He’s been in a mental ward since then, but as her hometown prepares for both the holiday and its 300th birthday, the killings have started all over again, just days after she attempts to return to school.

This is the kind of town that doesn’t just create urban legends and brutal crimes, but also gives birth to characters that each seem like they could be the killer, even Hadley, as she has some secrets that she’s kept since she was stabbed one year ago. When a body shows up with “Happy Halloween” carved in his chest — and photos are sent to Hadley and all of her friends, like best friend Peyton (Aline O’Neill) and quarterback love interest Kagan (Graham Weldin) — this gets tense almost immediately.

Director and writer Brittney Greer recognizes the debt that all slashers owe to Halloween and that all slashers made after 1996 owe to Scream. As the killer continues to decorate the town with the body parts of his or her victims, the one thing that comes to the fore is that Greer is able to authentically translate the very human voices and feelings of her teen characters.

I watched Happy Halloween at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Directed by Alice Maio Mackay (T-Blockers, Bad Girl Boogey, So Vam), who co-wrote the story with Benjamin Pahl Robinson, this film follows Lola (Jeremy Moineau), who returns home of Purdan for the holidays. It’s the first time she’s been back since she transitioned and the town may seem like it’s changed, but it’s also filled with secrets, like a killer known as the Toy Maker.

Lola is also an investigator and true crime podcaster, so when the murders hit a bit close to home, she’s on the case. Like all of Mackay’s movies, this has more LGBTQ+ representation than pretty much every mainstream movie this year put together. Also: who knew that Australian Christmas was in the summer?

I love that her town has changed to the point that her sister Danielle (Dominique Booth) is proud to take her out, that a former teacher is now a drag queen who runs a queer bar, that Lola is so capable and that this has a neon look that’s helped by taunt editing by Vera Drew (The People’s Joker’s). It’s just 70 minutes long and in that time, it tells a complete story, has a fair bit of red herrings and ends with a killer that makes sense.

Mackay is barely out of the teens and has made six movies already. Each has improved and grown more confident, making each film festival where I encounter one a joy. We can always use more seasonal slashers, sure, but we definitely need more filmmakers doing the work and expanding consciousness like Mackay.

I watched Carnage for Christmas at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Directed by Louisa Warren and written by Harry Boxley, Cinderella’s Curse starts with a woman named Phil (Sarah T. Cohen) asking her husband Jacob (Sam Byrne) not to kill her. He opens a book that he has taken from her, as the pages animate into existence, and Terrortures show up to serve him. This leads us to Cinderella (Kelly Rian Sanson), who serves as a slave to her stepmother Lady Dyer (Danielle Scott) and stepsisters Ingrid (Lauren Budd) and Hannah (Natasha Tosini).

This stepfamily is somehow worse than the fairy tales that inspired this movie, as they torture and kill another maid, Anja (Helen Fullerton), and force Cinderella to bury the body. She soon finds the magic book and uses it to bring her fairy godmother (Chrissie Wunna) to her, but again, unlike what Disney or any other storyteller would do with this tale, she has no flesh and her offer of help comes with a price.

The creators of this movie have told fairy tales before — Tooth Fairy, Return of Punch and Judy, Jack and Jill 3 — and that may be because they’re shocking in the way the same company’s Winnie the Pooh slashers are — Warren acted in one of those — and also material you don’t need to pay to film.

The biggest difference in this story is that the stepsisters have been in a throuple with Prince Levin (Sam Barrett) and they are luring Cinderella to the dance to torture and kill her. But this movie decides to rip off Carrie along the way and those glass slippers get used as weapons.

This is trash but you know, sometimes that can be enjoyable. I’m sure the filmmakers want you to know that these fairy tales started off quite bloody, but then again, they didn’t have wanna-be cenobites in them.

I watched Cinderella’s Curse at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Produced by six-time Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot) and directed by John Farrelly, this is the first Irish language horror film ever made.

In 1852, during one of the worst famines in Ireland’s history, Éamon Finegan (Tom Kerrisk) and his daughter Máire (Livvy Hill) take on a caretaker role at an isolated mansion, renovating it during an unforgiving winter. I think if I’ve learned anything from horror movies, it’s never work in an large hotel or house during the winter, because there’s definitely going to be something inside the house that either possesses or tries to off you.

As he works to improve the estate, Éamon has an accident and slams his axe into his foot, leading to him having to stay in bed. Máire works on the property and takes care of him as he begins to drink and lose his grasp on reality. As she hides from his rage, she also must beware the specters that exist on the grounds. She’s been haunted before and thought she had escaped. But now, within this home and the elements beating the windows, she’s trapped all over again.

What happens when a third party, the land steward (Anthony Murphy) arrives? And is the ghost who has followed Máire for years, Alexander, real? The close of this movie, with its strobing imagery and overlapping faces, is incredible and unlike anything I’ve seen in film. If the ghost isn’t real — and Máire says that she wishes that it was — then what horror has she truly gone through?

I watched An Taibhse (The Ghost) at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Dr. Grant Walker (Mike Capes) is a paleontologist who discovered the fossilized anus of a raptor, the kind of artifact that should have made him a legend but instead was stolen by the Tyler Corporation — not run by Steven Tyler — and the depression that came with this loss cost him his girlfriend Amber (Caitlin McHugh) and now finds him working in a dinosaur theme park, attempting to teach kids about science but instead doing dances with security guard and dinosaur suit wearer Denny (David Shackelford).

Yet life is looking up. It turns out that Amber is back in town, even if she has a young daughter with a name that no one can remember. There’s also a mystery, as a child and the guard dog for the park are both missing and gigantic piles of excrement are left in their place. Dr. Grant is sure its a raptor, but then he learns that his fossil created an invisible raptor which was to be used as a weapon for the government but has escape its captivity.

The journey to find the raptor will bring Dr. Grant and Amber back together, perhaps make Dr. Grant and Denny pals for life and definitely have them digging through a pile of raptor road apples in a child’s bedroom and finding a retainer, which is a definite sign that the raptor has a sweet tooth for little kids, even if they don’t want to tell the child’s grieving, drunk and attractive mother that news. The trail leads them to a chicken farm, run by Henrietta McCluckskey (Sandy Martin), where the raptor keeps assaulting the chicken mascot statue.

How did they make this monster? The answer is simple. “‘Did you see Jurassic Park? We did that.” Yet what this hilarious movie from director Mike Hermosa and co-writers Mike Capes (yes, the same person playing the lead) and Johnny Wickham does is audacious. It’s not just a loving homage to the biggest dinosaur movie ever, it’s also the second invisible dinosaur movie after Sound of Horror.

This is set in Spielburgh County and the jokes come fast and ZAZ-style furious, even having a moment that echoes Gary Busey’s weapon-filled vehicle in Predator 2 and so many nods to Amblin productions.  Yet even in this film that laughs at nearly ever demise and is filled with copious gore, it has a heart, an appearance by Richard Riehle as the town’s sheriff and several redemption stories. And oh yeah, a Sean Astin cameo and Vanessa Chester, Ian Malcolm’s daughter Kelly in Jurassic Park: The Lost World, shows up as a DJ.

I loved it, but then again, I’m a sucker for movies that reference movies and are filled with poop jokes and gore. You can even get an action figure of the Invisible Raptor here!

I watched The Invisible Raptor at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Joanne Mitchell makes her debut as a full-length director by taking her short Sybil and creating Broken Bird. Based on a story by Tracey Sheals and written by Mitchell and Dominic Brunt, it tells several stories about loss and grief, most importantly Sybil (Rebecca Calder), an assistant undertaker who styles herself like a modern day Louise Brooks, attends open mike nights where she reads obtuse poetry and dreams of being in love with Mark (Jay Taylor), a man who works at the Roman funeral museum.

There’s also Emma (Sacharissa Claxton), who has lost her child and is drinking herself into oblivion, which starts to impact her job as a cop and keeps her from investigating her case.

Meanwhile, Sybil’s imagination runs wild, always being disappointed by real men and choosing to romance those who are dead and unable to disappoint her. Sadness has infected her whole life, as she’s the only survivor of an auto accident that killed her entire family. While strange, she’s a hard worker and prized by her boss.

Once she learns that Mark has a fiancee named Tina (Robyn Rainsford), Sybil is let down yet again. When Mark dies — maybe not an accident — she finally gets the chance to touch him, even if he’s joined the choir invisible. At the same time, Emma gets closer to where her dead son’s body disappeared from after it was at the very same funeral home where Sybil works, a place where wonders what her boss Mr. Thomas (James Fleet)(James Fleet) keeps in the cold room.

Calder is incredible in this, pulling off a balancing act that requires her to be monstrous and yet sympathetic. There are moments where you will be on her side, despite the fact that she covets a widow’s lost lover and does all she can to possess it, even dancing before him and covering his face with her panties. It’s enough to wake him up, at least in her fantasies, and maybe that’s all she needs. Maybe this world isn’t for her.

I watched Broken Bird at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.