The ketchup really started to fly with Wrong Turn 2. This was the film’s world premiere and director Joe Lynch didn’t even try to contain his enthusiasm at the prospect of his film being shown to the FrightFest crowd. Eschewing the original's more restrained atmosphere in favour of plenty of gruesome deaths, this was a real crowd pleaser, no doubt helped by the free can of Japanese Kirin beer we were all given before the screening.
The next film was Disturbia, a clever Hichcockian thriller, but having already seen it on DVD I decided to skip it. I also didn’t bother with the Australian comedy The Devil Dared Me Too because, frankly, it looked a bit crap based on the trailer. Instead I headed home for some much needed sleep.
Day 4
The day didn’t start well. Problems getting into London resulted in my missing the first film of the day, the adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. This had been one of the films I’d been looking forward to the most, offering a touch of real world horror to counterbalance all the psycho killers. By all accounts it was a harrowing experience and it would be a day that combined the bleak with the humorous.
Botched was a British comedy that merged the heist movie and the slasher film with mixed results. Set in Russia and featuring English actors displaying some dodgy accents (Sean Pertwee as a Russian mob boss in particular) along with Stephen Dorff as an unlucky jewel thief. The film supplied plenty of gore but the laughs were intermittent and this was nothing special. Special would come later in the day.
Next up was a Uwe Boll double bill (Postal and Seed)and the thought of two films by this critically reviled director was less than appealing, so instead I went in search of a zombie mask for the final day's zombie walk record attempt to celebrate the showing of the low budget Brit flick Zombie Diaries. A couple of hours later I still hadn’t found a mask and, tired of wandering the streets of London, I elected to watch the second Boll film, Seed.
Boll was on hand to introduce the film (as he had been for the first film, the comedy Postal) and he described it as his reaction to the current trend of hyping films as the most extreme thing you’ve ever seen. Eli Roth’s Hostel and Tarantino’s comments about it came in for special attention, with Boll describing the film as “American Pie in Eastern Europe.” As someone who thought Hostel was the most overrated horror film of recent years and the worst of the current trend for what’s been called “torture porn” I was in agreement with Mr Boll. But could he do any better?
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