This week in horror – News round up 05.09.20

This weeks horror news round up comes from Grace at Film Overload!

Overview: Arrow Video's Frightfest 2020

This year's Frightfest reigns different to the past, with it taking place virtually. The online festival line-up included 25 films (seven world premieres and 16 UK premieres). As usual the menu of films included a selection of soon to be top hits such as Ivo van Art's well received The Columnist and The Swerve (Dean Kapsalis, 2018).

The collection of films was entirely varied with stories from Canada, Australia, UK, Netherlands and Brazil, allowing for a broad range of films to emerge, particularly the hilarious hidden gem of the season Two Heads Creek (Jesse O'Brien, 2019).
Frightfest's usual energetic brigade of guest appearances, Q&A's and film showcases were not left out, despite the fact that the event was held online; in fact the comfort of watching from home was not overlooked.

New uncut trailer for Cronenberg's Possessor lands

Possessor is a sci-fi horror film directed by Brandon Cronenberg, if the surname sounds familiar it's because the infamous David Cronenberg is Brandon's father and his influence is not ignored, with intense body horror and brutality exhibited throughout. Possessor follows a secret agent who inhabits other people's bodies via brain-implantation to perform assassinations for her clients.

The film explores loss of identity and control over one's own actions. The set up has been praised due to its originality and stand out performances by the impressive cast including Andrea Riseborough ("Mandy") and Christopher Abbot ("Piercing"). The trailer definitely highlights the startling enigmatic atmosphere Cronenberg has established, with a background of stylishly choreographed violence and gore all lit with a sense of dystopian reality.

The New Mutants fails to live up to long awaited expectations

Josh Boone's The New Mutants has not been dealt an easy hand, with a repetitive delayed schedule constantly pushing its release date back. This may have edged up the hype surrounding the film for a while, but the anticipated release has been considered a let down by many. The reviews are not all negative, yet many audiences feel the horror potential it had was overshadowed by its origins within the X-Men franchise.

The New Mutants was marketed as a horror take on the saturated supervillain genre (similar to last year's Brightburn), however the scare tactics have little hold over the exaggerated action sequences and overt Marvel cliches that have grown tiresome.

The reaction is not entirely surprising as one of the reasons for the delay was due to the studio (20th Century Fox) requiring the film to be almost completely reshot after such negative responses. Unfortunately a lot more than a reshoot needed to be completed to save The New Mutants.

First teaser for Blumhouse Productions Amazon Prime horror films coming this Halloween

Blumhouse Productions seem to appear in many of the latest horror releases for years, with their investments creating hits such as The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell, 2020) and Halloween (David Gordon Green, 2018). Blumhouse will release a total of eight films directly to Amazon Prime. The series of films is aptly titled 'Welcome to Blumhouse' and from the first look that was released this week horror fans will be in for a treat.

The teaser trailer promises an unsettling journey into fear, with a glimpse into each film's chilling disposition. The four films coming soon are 'The Lie' (Veena Sud) which starts Joey King as an impulsive killer, 'Black Box' (Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr.) which explores the temptation of reversing history, 'Evil Eye' (Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani) which is produced by Priyanka Chopra and deals with the consequences of parental suspicions and 'Nocturne' (Zu Quirke) which explores a musician's Faustian pact to supersede her talented sister.

The first four will be released on October 6th just in time for Halloween, with the other four films premiering in 2021.

This weeks article comes via Grace from Film Overload, you can check out more of her work here.