Advent (2024)
In director Airell Anthony Hayles’ U.K. chiller Advent (AKA The Krampus Calendar), skeptical YouTuber Hayley (Rasin Pavlova) and her enamored camera operator Charlie (Cian Lorcan) record her latest project to disprove the supernatural. She purchases a cursed Krampus advent-style calendar from one of those dark corners of the Internet that horror films often feature. At first amused by the absurdity of the situation, she soon finds herself obsessed by following the disturbing directions behind the daily doors. Richard Hill (Nicholas Vince), her university professor, comments on her downward spiral in a talking-head format. Pavlova gives a fine performance as her character goes from pessimistic to both petrified and petrifying. Hayles has crafted an intriguing entry in the fear-fare subgenre of online-fame–seekers whose quests for more clicks lead to deadly consequences.
Advent had its World Premiere at FrightFest Halloween 2024 and arrives on UK digital on November 25 (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play).
The Bitter Taste (2024)
German English-language feature The Bitter Taste, director and cowritten by Guido Tölke, and cowritten by star Julia Dordel, is a wild one! The film runs the mash-up gamut from human-hunting horror to action horror to gothic vampire horror, and more. Tölke manages to keep things constantly entertaining for various reasons and rather impressively juggles the multitude of tones on display. Dordel toplines as Marcia Laurenz, a hunting party guide who, through a series of mysterious events and scrapes and no help from a skeptical local police officer (Anne Alexander-Sieder), winds up facing a group of the undead in a pentathlon-like event, aided on her travails by heartthrob fisherman Josh (Nicolo Pasetti). If the premise sounds wacky and wild to you, you are probably part of the target audience. Go in learning nothing more than what I have described and be ready for a quirky horror movie that plays things rather straight, and you should have a pretty fun time with The Bitter Taste.
The Draft! (2023)
Official logline: 5 typical college students spend their weekend in a typical old villa only to find that they have to survive in a battle of wits against an absolute all-mighty all-powerful terror that is seemingly undefeated.
Director Yusron Fuadi’s film The Draft! (Setan Alas) puts a unique Indonesian spin on meta horror movies, and although it pays tribute to that country’s fright-fare filmmakers, international audiences will have seen most of the other elements on display before — as evidenced by the logline — from Scream to Cabin in the Woods and beyond. For those viewers, the plentiful kills may hold more interest. It’s not easy to warm up to the deliberately clichéd characters, either, though the ensemble cast — Anggi Waluyo, Ibrahim Alhami, Adhin Abdul Hakim, Winner Wijaya, and Anastasia Herzigova] — does a nice job of portraying the usual suspects including the hot-headed jock, the know-it-all nerd (in this case, a horror movie expert), and the pretty one. The meta mystery i revealed earlier on, and Fuadi and his cowriters Richard James Halstead and B.W Purba Negara infuse the film with humor, including winking references to bad screenplays.
Advent, The Bitter Taste, and The Draft! screened as part of Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Halloween, which ran November 1–2, 2024 in London, U.K.
