Frightfest 2011: Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark

Frightfest seems to get bigger and better every year, and the 2011 edition kicked off with a full house for the Guillermo Del Toro-produced chiller Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark. Being Frightfest, however, it wasn't quite as simple as that. With no warning, the festival launched straight into one of its latest innovations – the first in a series of shorts, called Carpenter Revisited, in which a bunch of horror luminaries direct their take on a John Carpenter classic. The opener, suitably enough, was Jake West's Escape From London, a riff on… go on, have a guess, in which Snake Plissken's sister has to break into a walled-in Westminster to get a weekend pass for a future Frightfest. Gory and funny, with cameos by festival regulars, it set the perfect tone for what was (and is) to follow.

Before the main feature, the Frightfest team took to the stage for the usual speeches and formalities, an event made somewhat notable by the fact that host Alan Jones seemed to be voicing a not-so-subconscious urge to murder two of his fellow co-founders, Paul McEvoy and Ian Rattray (Greg Day, Frightfest's PR guru, appears to be safe). And although there were no special guests in the room to support the film (no Katie Holmes, no Guy Pearce), any disappointments were soon assuaged by a taped introduction from Del Toro, who's in Canada at work on his new monster movie Pacific Rim. As usual, Del Toro railed against the censor, claiming to have been aiming for a PG-13 on Don't Be Afraid… but getting slapped instead with an R for “pervasive scariness”. Now, he's a lovely man, but I fear somewhat for Del Toro's sanity if he thinks a film that opens with set-piece involving a woman with a chisel in her mouth would ever get the same MPAA rating as Miss Congeniality 2.

Though the film started brilliantly, and played well to a largely mixed and usually quite demanding audience, I came away a little disappointed by Troy Nixey's feature debut. Del Toro's fingerprints are all over it, and I think that was the problem; it felt in some ways like a well-intentioned remake of Pan's Labyrinth with its lavish gothic fantasy and child's-eye-view, but with a rather more laboured sense of wonder and surprise.

It begins at the airport, where interior designer Alex (Pearce) is meeting his new girlfriend Kim (Holmes) and his estranged daughter Sally (Bailee Madison), who is being bundled off by her worried mother, who clearly thinks a few weeks in a remote Munsters'-style mansion will do wonders for a girl who's already shy and introverted. We know, thanks to a creepy prologue, that there are some rum creatures in the house, and before long they are calling to Sally from their hiding place-slash-prison in the bricked-up cellar.

A mounting sense of dread is nicely handled, and Madison is especially well cast, giving a performance that never once rests on cuteness. But when the creatures appeared, I started zoning out. Well, to be brutally honest, I started thinking about the 70s adverts for Unigate dairies, in which offscreen creatures called Humphreys used giant straws to steal milk (see one here). Something I do appreciate in Del Toro's work is his constant quest to recreate the primal fears of childhood – indeed, Don't Be Afraid… is a remake of a TV movie that “scared the shit” out of him and his brother as a boy. But personally I prefer the nightmarish mood-visions of David Lynch, and although this carries with it a few genuine scares, I honestly couldn't say I ever felt frightened.

I didn't stay for Warner Bros' Final Destination 5, in which terrible injuries befall perfectly innocent people, but I decided to hang around for footage from Matthias Hoene's upcoming genre mash-up Cockneys Vs Zombies. Now, every British horror aims to be the new Shaun Of The Dead but, astonishingly, this one might actually be it. Starring Harry Treadaway and Jack Doolan, it features a supporting cast that includes the great Dudley Sutton, Snatch's Alan Ford and, unbelievably, an 83-year-old Honor Blackman. The clip that was shown to us brought the house down, mostly for a hilariously slow-moving zombie chase involving a pensioner and a zimmer frame but specifically for a scene involving Richard Briers (oh yes) and an Uzi. It really was one of those unforgettable Frightfest moments.

The festival continues through to Monday, with some great movies in the form of Ben Wheatley's cracking Kill List, Lucky McKee's disturbing The Woman and Eli Craig's hilarious Tucker & Dale Vs Evil. However, there are some interesting movies lurking in the afternoon slots and in the Discovery Screen too. I'm hearing good things about the Paul Naschy documentary The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry and the British chill-thriller The Devil's Business, while the festival is especially proud of the Swiss film Sennentuntschi: Curse Of The Alps, a cult rarity personally tracked down by Alan Jones himself. Me, I'm curious to see The Wicker Tree, Robin Hardy's sequel of sorts to his legendary 1973 film The Wicker Man. I'm pretty sure I'll be disappointed, but if I am, I'll be in the best place for it; I'll probably see you in the Phoenix bar afterwards, crying into my Red Stripe.

For more details go to www.frightfest.co.uk. If you're not too chicken, that is.