This is usually the point at which I hit The Wall - like a marathon runner (presumably; obviously I wouldn't know from direct experience) when it suddenly catches up with you and you think you can't go on any more. Happens every year at FrightFest even though I know there are only ten films left, we're past the halfway point and freewheeling downhill from here. Even so, as I plug in the firestick again I'm starting to have to make the effort...
Prey (Prime) **
Matinee fun as a bunch of halfwits journed out into the jungles of Panama to visit a waterfall and end up being eaten by a chupacabra beast of local legend. Hard to sympathise with any of them: not only were they told there was a monster out there but they'd accessed found-footage clips on YouTube of the previous bunch of imbeciles who ignored all the warnings. The guys are an especially hateful selection of hard-drinking yahoos hanging around with their shirts off and being dicks to their girlfriends. Still, you do get the satisfaction of seeing them get killed, and the monster's effective enough when it's (mostly) barely glimpsed.
Revenge Of The Pontianak (Netflix) **
Visually lush but ho-hum horror from Singapore/Malaysia: if a pregnanat woman is buried without the full funeral rites, she will come back as the titular pontianak, a kind of vengeful demon. In this instance she's a spurned fiancee deemed an unsuitable match, and the errant son is forced to dispose of her when she's about to give birth... Colourful and watchable, and certainly well done, but it never really clicked with me.
The Inhabitants (Prime) *
Yet another low-rent ho-hum seen-this-all-before horror cheapie in which a couple move into an old B+B, not knowing that it's haunted. Very flat, very unremarkable, occasionally silly, only mildly creepy, barely worth the effort.
They Look Like People (Prime) *
Given that it was a FrightFest title, this was the big disappointment of the weekend: a mostly three-hander between people I couldn't possibly be less interested in. Is there a shapeshifter alien invasion imminent? Is our hero's firlfriend one of them? Can his best friend save him, even if it means duct-taping him to a chair in the basement? Do I give a damn? Honestly, I felt like walking out. I didn't believe in any of them, didn't believe anything that happens, couldn't wait for it to be over. More seriously, and personally more worryingly, I honestly cant even bothered to work out why.
Danur (Netflix) **
Aka Danur: I Can See Ghosts, this is yet another Indonesian ghost story, no better or worse than any of the others and not doing anything particularly radical. This one has a flavour of Insidious about it, with a young child lured into a netherworld by demonic entities. It's perfectly watchable, perhaps less stylish than others of a similar ilk, and a whole bunch of absolutely nothing special.
Ryde (Prime) **
A psycho takes the identity of a Ryde driver (which is absolutely not Uber) and kills a bunch of horrible people in a cheap homicidal maniac thriller. Viciously violent in places, enough to get an 18 if anyone bothered to officially submit it; tackily and sleazily entertaining enough as late-night slasher trash. In the event, it pretty much ended as the best film of the day and it really shouldn't.
A poor day all round, then - just one day left...
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