FrightFest (2019): Films ranked





Well, that’s another FrightFest down. The twentieth anniversary made for a bloody wonderful long weekend spent with some of the most exciting voices in contemporary horror and fantasy cinema. Still, you can have too much of a good thing, and after five days I reckon I need to see a Disney film or two. You can read my coverage here, here, here, here and here. Though if you want my bottom line, to see the cream of the crop, here’s how I’d order every flick I saw. As per usual, festival goggles apply. Although I’d love to claim otherwise, across a festival little things like the atmosphere of the screening, the order the movies were shown in, how tired I had gotten at the screening and even how hot the room was all could have had an influence. As such, I reserve the right to say I was completely wrong about any one of these. I should also add that I dug something about every film I saw. It was a strong turn-out, and you’d have to go pretty low on that list to find one I wouldn’t want to rewatch. Hence this year I’ve dropped the overly negative “best to worst” phrasing from the title in favour of the more neutral “ranked”. Everyone who had a film shown has my respect and, without exception, I’d love to see what they do next. This is a great time to be a fan, and if this year’s festival was anything to go by then our genre is in safe hands.

Without further ado…

    1. Harpoon
    2. Ready or Not
    3. Why Won’t You Just Die!
    4. Extracurricular
    5. Girl on the Third Floor
    6. Kindred Spirits
    7. A Good Woman Is Hard to Find
    8. Knives and Skin
    9. The Wretched
    10. Eat Brains Love
    11. The Black String
    12. Rabid
    13. Spiral
    14. Crawl
    15. Come to Daddy
    16. Daniel Isn’t Real
    17. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    18. The Perished
    19. Bloodline
    20. Mary
    21. The Drone
    22. Dachra
    23. Madness in the Method

A final thanks to the guys (Paul McEvoy, Ian Rattray, Alan Jones and Greg Day), and the rest of the FrightFest team, for putting this on. Additional thanks to the sponsors and the volunteers, along with every filmmaker and fan who came along to make the weekend special. And finally to HorrorCultFilms, for once again granting me the privilege of representing us. Now for a really, really long rest.

Our FrightFest coverage will conclude this week with exclusive interviews with The Black String director Brian Hanson, its producer Richard Handley and Freaks co-writer/ co-director Zach Lipovsky.

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About david.s.smith 450 Articles
Scottish horror fan who is simultaneously elitist and hates genre snobbery. Follow me on @horrorinatweet

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