FrightFest

5/10 - The first couple of acts were OK, but it was obvious whose house it was going to be... and then we spent the rest of the movie in a closet. Meh. At least it managed a bit of creepy at the end.

Typical Aussie horror I thought. Started well but got a bit freaked out at the end. Ok though.

a bit nonsense when the ghosts turned up. Ghosts menacing serial killers... Who am I meant to root for here?

Also I'm sorry but anyone can kick their way out of a cupboard

A very intense first two-thirds of the film, reminding me of Koontz's classic novel Intensity. However, the last act went in a different direction, which, on one hand is good to see a Director try something different, but on the other I wasn't wholly convinced by it, nor was the execution as sure-footed as in the earlier scenes. 7.5 / 10

For me, this was absolutely dreadful. The plot clunked along in the first half (despite the attempts to build up tension), character traits were shown and then left undeveloped (I'm thinking here of the abused girlfriend of the awful guy, who appeared cowed by him at one point and who I assumed would be confronted by one/both of the girls at some point when he was out, and made to choose between her abusive man or doing the right thing), and the whole start of the second act with the glowing red eyed demon revenge girls was just tedious. As someone else said, it was left unclear who to root for, though to be fair I didn't really care for any of them because the plot went from 0-100 in the first 5 minutes, leaving very little time for me to care about the sisters and their relationship, or whether they lived or died.

It started off ok and the heroine was pretty smart and plucky, but as soon as she got stuck in the (enormous) wardrobe all of that drained down to nothing and I found it increasingly irritating.

At the point where our main baddie went to dispose of Wayne and the wife was having a shower she could have kicked the shit out of the wardrobe doors and/or bashed the lock with her tyre iron, but no, she instead scrabbled around at the lock pathetically with a pen knife and failed miserably to open the door. I'm not surprised her ghost was unimpressed with her mediocre effort.

Introducing an out of left field supernatural element at such a late stage didn't work for me, and not providing us with any details at all of their intentions or why they were doing what they were doing made for a dull watch.

The guy who introduced it in the Horror Channel screen said something about this being the new Babadook. Seriously ?

Oswald Cobblepot wrote:It started off ok and the heroine was pretty smart and plucky, but as soon as she got stuck in the (enormous) wardrobe all of that drained down to nothing and I found it increasingly irritating.

That reminds me! Earlier than that scene, the bit where she fell into the ditch and was unable to get out made absolutely no sense when it was revealed that she hadn't twisted an ankle or otherwise incapacitated herself - she was apparently just shit at getting out of a six foot drop

It's the next big Australian horror thing after The Babadook.

Why?

Well, it's Australian.

And...?

It's written and directed by a woman.

But is it any good?

No.

Agree that it started out pretty watchable. I actually liked the 'Inner Closet' angle for a while, because I think you can do some interesting, intense things in a small location (like Buried, for example.) However, yes, it made no sense that she couldn't kick her way out when shit started to go down. As for the demon-y girls, well they were pretty late to the party. Would have been nice if they'd taken care of the situation a little earlier, rather than turning up to do the supernatural equivalent of rolling their eyes and tutting. At the end was the lead meant to die (but become a demon/ghost thing) or be saved, but come back all demony? If it was the latter I wonder whether it was meant to lead into another tale

Definitely no Babadook.

This was pretty awful. 20 minutes of running through the woods. 10 minutes of trying to scale a mud bank that really only looked about 2 foot tall. Then 30 minutes of sitting in a cupboard. I liked the idea of the girl giving up so she'd die and then come back as a ghost and save her sister, but then all these other ghost girls turn up aswell. I get that they were the other victims of the bad guy but what had they been waiting for and why did they and our main girl all come back wearing white night dresses?

It also had a scene where the lead stitches up a gash on her side. I think the whole thing where someone stitches up there own wound in a movie is a bit boring now. Rambo did that years ago and he made his own tunic from discarded tarp aswell.
3/10

Without wanting to get too technical, this movie didn't have enough stuff in it.

You're welcome.

total cluster fuck of a film and pile of poo,just wanted it to end ,how this crap made the main screen is shockin,this should been on discovery screen and howl on main screen as i couldnt see that film as was sold out,was some shockin films that made the main screen

thatcambridgebird wrote:

Oswald Cobblepot wrote:It started off ok and the heroine was pretty smart and plucky, but as soon as she got stuck in the (enormous) wardrobe all of that drained down to nothing and I found it increasingly irritating.

That reminds me! Earlier than that scene, the bit where she fell into the ditch and was unable to get out made absolutely no sense when it was revealed that she hadn't twisted an ankle or otherwise incapacitated herself - she was apparently just shit at getting out of a six foot drop

Agreed. She also wasn't very good at getting out of a wardrobe either, those Australians really make damn good wardrobes. Immune to crowbars and hammers ... but ignore those mighty tools, try and get out with tiny Swiss army knife instead.

That aside, this for me wasn't so great, I heard a few people saying they enjoyed it on way out of the screening and I am jealous of them, as for me it felt like a mish-mash of ideas and styles that didn't blend well, it was overly long in sections and also the lead made too many bad choices for her to be believable.

As soon as she got in trapped in the wardrobe I kept thinking of Southpark and R-Kelly, I am happy to have SouthPark on the mind not so much R-Kelly.

An obvious attempt to combine 2 massive Aussie hits, Wolf Creek and Babadook but the only time it looks like it might work is the first 20 minutes which were quite tense I thought. As soon as it went with the thuddingly cliched "girl on the run seeks refuge in *shock* the killers house" it lost all traction and once she went into that damn wardrobe well, the game was up. The appearance of supernatural elements at the end didn't work in the slightest but at least it granted this film a swift end.