I was going to post about the guests. We used to get quality and quantity, and now, like you say, I think most people recognised "the bloke from Lord of the Rings" and that was it out of 200 odd people. Ofcourse the cast and crew of some new, undiscovered British horror are "guests", but no one apart from the cast and crew themselves, their friends, or maybe people working in the industry know of them or indeed care that they are there.killer guinea pigs wrote:Sadly i agree that things have gone down hill (no pun intended) slightly.
Do you remember when frightfest used to have a major players turn up like george a romero or john landis, hellboy with the cast and crew or christopher nolan, danny boyle or argento etc
this year we had over 200 guests.........well i recognised that bloke from lord of the rings and andy nyman but not anyone else.
we all paid £185 for a pass and i dont give a crap about politics for this and that i just want the best films please otherwise i might as well just go to grim up north and pay £65 for a pass and watch most of the same films in manchester........which offers very good value for the cost.
celluloid screams in sheffield seems to be great value as well.
the problem with frightfest is most of the world premieres seem to be included just to say we have a world premeire ...how exciting but this is just a gimmick. most are rubbish that wont turn up anywhere else and wont go onto other festivals.
when other major fests around the world show dont breathe or the woods etc other fests want them..............name one frightfest premiere world that turned out to be a blockbuster where other festivals said we want that film........some low budget films are good like broken and nina forever but they were british films with uk or horror fan interest.
this year cell was released the day after frightfest so only a filler on opening night and in my opinion shouldnt have been shown for that reason not because it was absoulute crap and train to busan although fantastic was online for download before the fest began which someone i work with told me about !!
i too thought the first few days were hard work and not sure it got much better later on.
if your not happy about this then dont buy a pass next year..............but we all will again as there is a lot to enjoy but more transparancy about the way things are would be nice but we never got a explanation about why shockwave or bubba chilli parlour was shown so iam not holding my breath !
I spend £700+ every year going to Frightfest, including the pass, accomodation, food/drink, travel etc. For that amount of money or very little extra I could go to BIFFF, Sitges or Neuchatel.