Godzilla comes to Glasgow in Scotland’s biggest horror fest
HORROR fans will swoop on Glasgow this week for a three-day film festival with a record 14 premieres – including the first Albanian horror movie – as well as an eerie and blood-soaked premonition of how the genre will treat the 45th US President in the months and years ahead.
FrightFest, part of the Glasgow Film Festival and the biggest horror movie festival in the country, will see the world premiere of Bloodlands, the first big-screen collaboration between Australia and Albania, but also the Balkan country’s first foray into horror cinema. The director, Steven Kastrissios, will be joined on stage by the main cast members.
Already sold out is Shin Godzilla, in which the monster returns to present-day Japan to wreak havoc. The inspiration for it was drawn from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
This is the 31st film featuring the monster and the third from the Japanese production com- pany behind it. It was released in Japan in 2016 and was the country’s highest-grossing live action film. FrightFest director Alan Jones said: “Shin Godzilla is our first big sell-out. Godzilla fans can’t get enough of that monster stuff.”
He continued: “I particularly like Fashionista, which is Simon Rumley’s new one. It has a very unusual look about it.”
British directer Rumley has specialised in low-budget slasher movies but this is on a grander scale. It’s a psycho-horror thriller set in Austin, Texas.
Stars from the film including Amanda Fuller – who played Morgan Peterson in Grey’s Anatomy – will be among those at the event, which starts on Thursday. The festival kicks off with a screening of A Cure For Wellness from Gore Verbinski, which features giant carnivorous eels, a hideously deformed baron and stars Mia Goth, best known for playing the character P in Nymphomaniac. This probably isn’t family viewing.
Friday’s line-up includes the UK premiere of Matthias Hoene’s $50 million fantasy epic The Warrior’s Gate, followed by the UK premiere of It Stains The Sands Red, a “thrilling and unexpectedly heartfelt zombie road movie”. Director Colin Minihan and actor Brittany Allen will be in attendance.
This year could also see the new president inspiring a raft of ghoul flicks. American Horror Story, an FX channel series, is planning to base the forthcoming season around Trump (as if the reality wasn’t horrifying enough).
To end this year’s feast of fear is the UK premiere of an extreme horror comedy which it is said attempts to push all the boundaries – Roberto San Sebastián’s The Night Of The Virgin is described as “disgusting, offensive, hilarious and totally brilliant”. Jones said: “When we saw this we thought we’ve just got to put this on, it’s too insane.”