FrightFest review – Lore
Directed by James Bushe, Patrick Michael Ryder and Greig Johnson – who also wrote, with Christine Barber-Ryder – this is a solid, efficient British anthology horror movie. None of the tales, including the frame story, are exactly ground-breaking, but it has decent suspense, a few proper scares, monsters, gore, in-jokes, good performances and a more than acceptable Crypt Keeper substitute in whispery, scary-grinning Richard Brake. Four young folk go out into the woods for a campfire tale-telling session hosted by Darwin (Brake), who sets the mood by mentioning all the sacrificed corpses found in these here parts … and everyone gets to contribute a story in a different sub-genre. On the menu are: a lowlife creature feature with a petty crim (Andrew Lee-Potts) chased into the proverbial warehouse by a couple of angry creditors – only for a toothy, oily monster to manifest; a quiet ghost story with a mother and son inheriting an old house, and an antique gramophone – then being bothered by a pixellated, scarred, contortionist, angry dancer spook; an EC comic-type retribution story with massive git Steve (Rufus Hound) bullying his wife (Katie Sheridan) into a wife-swapping session at a cheap hotel only to find the kinky couple he’s set up with considerably weirder than expected (with folk horror masks, dutch camera angles, etc) and a Bloch-EC grue punchline; and a slasher film homage set in a midnight multiplex where a tall, just-fired employee (Finbar Healy) puts on a mask and starts murdering patrons and staff alike with a handy popcorn scoop. The first two segments are relatively straight, but the second half of the film inclines towards black comedy. The wraparound gets meta, perhaps in the hope of founding a franchise – we’ve seen posters for spinoff films in the cinema story.
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