Broken Bird, Test Screening, The Invisible Raptor
The dark heart of cinema beats once more! Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024 is back. A quarter of a century after Alan Jones, Paul McEvoy, Ian Rattray (later joined by Greg Day) launched the festival it’s bigger than ever. Now taking over four screens at the Odeon in London’s Leicester Square, including the mammoth main screen, horror fans are offered twenty-five main screen premieres and forty-five Discovery Screen titles. So join me in this diary as I enjoy a long bloody weekend of films including…
BROKEN BIRD
Directed by Joanne Mitchell
Drawing first blood is a feature debut from FrightFest alumni Joanne Mitchell. Sybil Chamberlain is a professional mortician who is starting again at a small “boutique” place after her last employer closed following an “incident.” When she isn’t dealing with death, she’s desperately looking for a connection – sharing her poetry with audiences who are not entirely impressed and having flights of fancy about the handsome man who works at the local museum. She certainly needs the company – she’s felt empty and alone for some time now following a tragic childhood event. And lately, she’s felt herself slipping ever further into a dark world where her only company is the corpses she attends to day after day. It’s an easy emotional buy-in, helped by Rebecca Calder’s delicate and darkly funny performance – playing Sybil as caught between two worlds, neither of which she understands. She’s snobby and stiff with others, but also navigates interactions like an alien in need of a hug. Like the movie May, with which this shares a few ideas, I found her so likeable I almost didn’t want it to be horror. But then this is FrightFest, and where they start to go wrong, boy do they go wrong.
Broken Bird is a film of two halves. The character study portion ends with a brilliantly twisted moment that escalates the ick factor, before giving way to a more fast-paced thriller built around a dual narrative. Unfortunately, the secondary strand with grieving copper Emma is less successful than Sybil’s, lacking its uniqueness or otherworldly tone. I get why it’s there, to frame a conflict, plus there’s a clear overlap between the two stories thematically – both dealing with the trauma of loss. Though stylistically, they don’t gel, and the jumps from black comedy to melodrama work to the detriment of both plotlines. It’s hard to go from some of the stranger bits to a crying mother struggling with alcoholism. Moreover, the storytelling itself suffers a bit when things that should be presented as twists get raised casually and signposted to heck. It is also unclear why the police get involved on a hunch – considering Sybil was never charged for what happened before and has gone to no lengths to change her identity beyond changing her hair. It’s frustrating as, at points, the procedural element almost watches like an afterthought and a means to get our lead to exactly where we need her for the ending. Yet it builds to a delightfully dark denouement that will haunt you afterward. It helps that Joanne Mitchell is a talented director who can find empathy in unlikely places and works the fantasy elements into the narrative brilliantly. A strong debut and a welcome start to the festival.
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TEST SCREENING
Directed by Clark Baker
It’s another feature debut – this time from comedy producer Clark Baker, who has worked on modern comedy classics Nathan For You and The Eric Andre Show. It’s among the films I was most looking forward to, billing itself as The Thing meets Society by way of Stranger Things. It’s the Summer of 1982, and in the small Oregon town of New Hope (see what they did?), four film-loving friends are hyped about a Hollywood studio holding a test screening in their local theatre – which could really do with the business. Could it be the new Star Wars? Nah, though it’s the right genre: we’re lurching headfirst into science fiction territory. Among other viewers, Simon and Mia come out as changed people – quieter, more lifeless, and (in Mia’s case) more heterosexual. It falls to Penny, a closeted lesbian who is the daughter of the local fire and brimstone pastor, and local cinephile Rick (aka Reels), to find out what the heck the movie really was.
Test Screening perfectly captures that period of being on the precipice of adulthood. We get all the complications that come with sexuality, forming one’s own identity outside one’s parents and figuring out what happens next. Plaudits to the team for crafting a well-told coming-of-age story around a tender romance and perfectly splicing it with a body-snatcher-style film. Yes, faces merging are scary, but Penny feeling rejected by Mia after they’ve kissed is heartbreaking. Unfortunately, some of the commentary is jarring, feeling cliched and even a bit dated. Yeah, I get that it is intentionally riffing on conspiratorial films of the period, so it only makes sense that they take on their concerns. But the wider themes of religious dogmatism and conformity speak to a very different political economy than today’s one of populism and culture wars. The villains’ motivation also seems flimsier the more we learn – they’re also outright bad at being villains too! Still, it has so much heart that I never stopped enjoying it, nor lost interest in the fate of the kids. Supporting characters are also very rounded despite some barely appearing, giving it an excellent small-town feel. As the infected “show” their loved ones something, we get some genuinely unnerving horror sequences.
Also, as a major plus, the special effects are first-rate, and in the second half, when the virus gets out of hand, we see numerous creative and grotesque deformities. There are genuine moments of dread as the remaining characters creep over to them to get a closer look – one bit involving a bath had me wanting to shout at the screen. It helps that the main cast is so likeable and vulnerable that we feel scared for them – we’re never encouraged to see them as action heroes as much as people trying to survive. The four leads share good chemistry with each other, handling the in-jokes like it’s the most natural thing in the world. As the other three hang out in the cinema watching Reels do a one-man performance, The Thing, it’s just good to hang with them. This sort of thing is so important for establishing emotional stakes, so the audience doesn’t mind figuring out what happens twenty minutes or so before they do. Still, even if you see it coming, the last few scenes are gloriously twisted – I mean in more ways than one – and the ending packs an emotional punch.
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THE INVISIBLE RAPTOR
Directed by Mike Hermosa
A sure contender for the most audacious title of the year, director Mike Hermosa takes the adage that it’s scarier when you don’t see the monster to its logical limit with the ultimate low-budget creature feature. Scientists at the Tyler Corporation have figured out how to engineer a super-smart raptor with the power of invisibility. Unfortunately, they can’t keep it in captivity for long, and within minutes of the movie starting, it breaks free and heads for Spielburgh County (another homage town name). It then falls to the down-on-his-luck theme park palaeontologist/merchandise seller Dr. Grant Walker, who once thought he’d made it big by finding a prehistoric dino butthole, to stop it. Joined by a host of loveable oddballs, including his ex-girlfriend Amber, and a sweary chicken farmer, he must find his inner Alan Grant to save the day. As you can guess, there are many allusions to the master, including a boy meets beast scene taken straight from ET, down to the young lad being called Elliot. Still, where old spoof movies sometimes failed to rise beyond the sum of their influences, The Invisible Raptor has its own identity – lying somewhere between pure B-Movie and the sorts of comedies we’d see in the early 00s. Immature and dumb, yes, but also filled with warmth.
The main characters are a lovable gang of underdogs, mostly portrayed with empathy. There’s a sadness about where some of their lives have taken them, but we are rarely invited to laugh at them, no matter how out of their depth they are. This foundation elevates it above many other high-concept horror comedies that lapse into constant spoofing or sacrifice character for the sake of a gag – this makes it enjoyable even when jokes don’t land. I also appreciated how the script stops itself short of sentimentality – one subplot in particular leads to a comically blunt anticlimax. The most dramatic moment also immediately follows a scene about genital size (though it’s resolved annoyingly quickly after). I could have done with fewer direct references to other movies in dialogue, though – even if the Invisible Man one had me laughing out loud. There are also some surprisingly effective horror scenes, including a claustrophobic home invasion and some excellent gore. Cats and kids are eaten, and a coed party gets torn apart: it’d be dark if it wasn’t so daft. Still, you can have too much of a good film, and at almost two hours The Invisible Raptor outstays its welcome. It never gets boring per se, but it lacks the world-building to go that long without losing something – unfortunate as the premise for the ending is gleefully daft. Nonetheless, this is a creative blend of monster mayhem and small-town comedy. A perfect midnight movie, and something I hope you can all see soon.
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