First Wave Of Arrow Video FrightFest London Films Revealed!

“It’s Coming home” might be a popular tune for one part of the UK. In August Arrow Video FrightFest the UK’s biggest horror and fantasy film festival, IS coming home is back at the Cineworld Leicester Square!

From Thursday 26th August until Monday 30th August, 2021 they’ll be no dodgy penalties, just five days of the very best of global genre cinema. After the chaos of the pandemic Frightfesters will be delighted that their dark hearts will be in unison in a cinema rather than digitally. And today we learn about the 25 films that entice you into the main screen, including four world premieres and eight International / European premieres.

Global events over the past eighteen months have not only altered most people’s lives but have had a profoundly influential effect on a lot of genre filmmakers and both the opening and closing films this year reflect that.

The festival opens with the European premiere of Neill Blomkamp‘s Demonic. The latest, highly anticipated and petrifying new vision from the District 9 filmmaker that was Shot in secret last summer in British Columbia. A journey that will takes us on a unique voyage into a world terrifyingly similar to our own as he expertly juggles a thought-provoking crossover between forward thinking science fiction and hi-tech horror.

If you adore instant cult classics, the Closing night film Rob Jabbaz’s feature debut, The Sadness is the film for you. Making it’s UK premiere, an relentless, merciless, bloody wild ride, which after a year of combating a pandemic with relatively benign symptoms, a frustrated nation finally lets its guard down. This is when the virus spontaneously mutates, giving rise to a mind-altering plague. The age of civility and order is no more. There is only ‘The Sadness’.

It’s about time we had some Cage Rage and that will come in the shape of the UK premiere of post-apocalyptic Grindhouse classic Prisoners Of The Ghostland. Gunslingers, ghosts and cults…welcome to the insane visual madness of a Sion Sono movie. Another independent-spirited actor firmly established within the genre is Elijah Wood and he is on top form as an FBI profiler assigned to interview Ted Bundy in No Man In God, which will receive its European Premiere.

Comic book icon Alan Moore returns to FrightFest  with Mitch Jenkins once more with the UK Premiere of mystery fantasy The Show. Then there’s the world premiere of British chiller The Kindred, with some familiar genre actors in the cast which includes James Cosmo, Steve Oram, April Pearson and Samantha Bond. Other

You’ll be  shell-shocked with the World Premiere for creature feature Crabs!.  The Retaliators may sound like some Ska-Punk supergroup, it promises to be a  hilariously gory crowd pleaser featuring cameos and music by Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, Five Finger Death Punch and Papa Roach.Dominic Brunt‘s Evie, is a thrilling and frighteningly sinister take on the shape-shifting Selkie myth, co-directed with Jamie Lundy and starring Michael Smiley.

This year’s event  will bring the first feature of FrightFest’s innovative ‘New Blood’ initiative Broadcast Signal Intrusion with it’s UK Premiere.  The unbearably tense, electrifying thriller Coming Home In The Dark, the one-take time travel suspense comedy Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes . Kazakhstan,  maybe  known as that former Soviet Union nation in the middle of nowhere it will bring us the cruelly comic misadventure Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It.

As ever many world genre films head to the woodstock of gore for their UK premieres including ‘sonic slasher’, Sound Of Violence. Alex Noyer’s extraordinarily eye and ear-opener, supernatural Thai slasher The Maid. the South African fantasy Gaia, the award-winning boy meets monster indie sensation Slapface, The Advent Calendar heralding  the return of outré French horror and the oddest US genre entry for years, the extreme comedy King Knight.

Rodrigo Fiallega’s blood-drenched shocker The Exorcisim Of Carmen Farias continues the trend of fabulous Mexploitation New Wave.  There will be an International premieres for Julien Knafo’s mutant-tastic Brain Freeze and Offseason,  Mickey Keating’s quantum leap into the big time with an  slice of Southern Gothic,

There are also European premieres for Edoardo Vitaletti’s gripping period occult drama The Last Thing Mary Saw, starring Rory Culkin. German 70s nostalgia-fest Dawn Breaks Behind The Eyes and Rob Schroeder’s startling puzzle box Sci-Fi mystery, Ultrasound.

The main  Arrow FrightFest line-up, will unearth three  shorts including  the World Premiere of Alex Proyas‘ Mask Of The Evil Apparition taking us back to his DARK CITY cinematic universe.  Well all need a good sing song  and Theo Rhys Stuffed, will provide that fantastic full blown musical extravaganza. There is also the World Premiere of Scott Derrickson’s Shadowprowler a distinctive take on the home invasion thriller.

Festival co-director Alan Jones, said today: “Like every other film festival this past year, the Arrow Video FrightFest has had to adapt to the difficult circumstances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Our last three events may have taken place entirely online but you can’t keep a commended vanguard of international genre cinema down for too long and Team FrightFest has been working tirelessly to make sure our banner 22nd event will tick every box you’ve been desperately missing.

Let’s face it, for the past year it has felt like we’ve been extras in the longest, flattest and most boring sci-fi movie ever, but now we are free at last to meet up with our Arrow Video FrightFest friends and acquaintances again for a much needed and well deserved in person horror fantasy binge”.

Over the next weeks Arrow Video FrightFest will be revealing the line-up for their pioneering Discovery and ‘First Blood’ strands, plus the much much-loved Short Film Showcases, special events, this year’s guest list. With the main event now heading back to Leicester Square does that mean the end of the digital event? No, the digital side is now firmly part of the fabric of Frightfest and understand not everyone will want to go back to the cinema just yet. So from 1st until 5th September will be Arrow Video FrightFest Digital edition, what films they will show will be revealed in the coming weeks.

2021 Arrow Video FrightFest will take place from 26th August until 30th August at Cineworld Leicester Square London. Details on prices and date of ticket sales to follow.