Grimmfest 2017
Bare with me on this as it might take a couple of days to cover everything. The usual four days of Horror at one of the great northern film festivals is always a lot of fun.
Thursday
Habit
Director Simeon Halligan also run's the festival. He's a nice bloke and interesting to talk to so I'd be potentially biased given I (sort of) know him. However, his films really speak for themselves. His previous two features Splintered and white settlers are both great fun so I'm happy to recommend this one to anyone fond of his previous films.
Habit represents something of a Progression for his work. It certainly has a more mature style to it and a more ambitious story adapted from a novella by a local author with assistance from Steve Balshaw who also works for the festival. The film is centred around Manchester's Northern Quarter after dark. A young man who takes in a street girl gets drawn into working at a massage parlour located in one of the dank side alleys that can be found in the quater. He discovers the denizens of this night world are some kind of cannibalistic cult that offer all sorts of fun for Manchester's night life in exchange for the occasional murder and feed.
It's a very stylised, bloody affair with some great lighting and a nice score that feels very fresh & original. It's nice to see a horror film really use Manchester given that in spite of some heavy gentrification still feels like a very Gothic city. This one is worth catching when you get the chance.
Ruin me
A couple go on a 'slasher sleepout' weekend which promises to be one of those interactive weekends where people in costumes jump out at you and there are puzzles to be solved. However things appear to spiral out of control and people seem to be dying for real.
It's a decent movie but a lot of people seemed to get put off by the final act. I didn't mind it and mostly this was a fine film that narrowly missed out on being great. Worth a look certainly as up to a point the film is genuinely entertaining. Flawed but interesting.
Run Runner Run
Grimm always seems to dig up interesting short films to play with the main features. This was a good start with a runner finding herself hunted by a hillbilly family. Nothing massively original but it does its thing well.
Still/Born
After a difficult birth, where one of her kids is stillborn. A woman begins to suspect her other child is being hunted by an evil spirit. The big question here is, is the woman genuinely encountering supernatural evil or is she suffering post natal psychosis? It feels like a Canadian attempt to do insidious but honestly it feels like a much better film than that. The demonic force feels well realised and not just Darth maul, their are some jump scares but the film does not rely on them, instead it generates a real sense of dread that kept me on the edge of my seat. Well worth seeking out.
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