FrightFest review – Synthesized

FrightFest review – Synthesized

Written and directed by Chris Green, this is a ‘turning worm’ story – a familiar horror sub-genre (cf: Willard, Carrie, The Mask) in which some poor unfortunate is a horrible family situation gets miseries and humiliations heaped on them for half the film then strikes back homicidally, usually by discovering some paranormal ability (controlling rats, telekinesis) but sometimes just by overcoming the natural reluctance just to kill people with whatever comes to hand.  In this case, a hammer.

Martyn (Thomas Turgoose) repairs computers and other gadgets in a city centre shop and indulges the expensive hobby of buying expensive synth equipment and making music in his garage (occasionally doing pub gigs).  Valkyrie (Sacha Parkinson), Martyn’s wife, treats him with contempt, goes out on thin excuses and comes home late, drunk and ‘smelling of sex’.  When Martyn goes out of his way to help Tia (Hannah Traylen), a fragile girl with a problem laptop, he gets a sense that her self-harm and mental health issues are exacerbated by abuse from a feral-seeming custodian (Neil Bell).  Martyn’s woes escalate and he lashes out with the hammer, becoming a serial killer – he even lurks in a bin to get the drop on Val’s bullying brother Odin (Chris Coghill).  But he also starts seeing Jasmine (Kiran Landa), an obviously wonderful woman who says she’s a teacher only because if she admits she’s a police officer on a dating ap she’ll never get any matches.  And she’s assigned to the hammer killings.  Green doesn’t play this for horror, and indeed the film probably works best as a rom-com, despite the disturbing material.

In most films on this pattern, the initially sympathetic protagonist becomes a monster – Turgoose, still best-known for his child performances in This is England and Eden Lake, is good as the basically decent killer and the film suggests his victims pretty much deserve what’s coming to them (what we find out about Valkyrie and Odin’s background also sketches in why they’ve become awful people) though it takes a slight detour in order to smooth the way to its unusual ending, which features a performance of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s electric classic ‘Enola Gay’ rather than, say, a hammer-smashing duel to the death.

In a good cast, Kiran Landa is outstanding in a role which shows off her range; she’s a good bet for stardom.