WELCOME TO THE ARROW VIDEO FRIGHTFEST: DIGITAL EDITION

Even though 21 years of curating FrightFest, searching the world for the most surprising and unusual movies with left-field plot twists should have forewarned us, who’d have thought that Covid 19 would deal the biggest shock of them all? 

It’s been like all the worst nightmares our beloved FrightFest friend George A. Romero dreamt up – with one major difference. Who knew living through a global apocalypse would mean still having to pay the bills!

First off Team FrightFest hopes that you and yours have kept safe and well through the past couple of unparalleled and extraordinary events. For anyone who has been touched by the illness, our deepest sympathies are with you.

We knew pretty much early on in the pandemic that it would be well nigh impossible to mount a socially distanced FrightFest, a streamlined one to keep everyone out of harm’s way. Yet we clung to the hope that the trajectory of the virus in the UK might improve enough to salvage something to celebrate our amazing 21st Anniversary. But then the sad key to that closed door meant we had to think out of the box and like many other film festivals this year, an online digital experience seemed to be the best solution.

While we know the FrightFest community thrives on the interactions that happen between, before and after films with their best friends, reserved seat neighbours and newbies welcomed with open arms, we also know that spirit, envied throughout the fantasy film festival circuit, will be captured with our ambitious programme of world and UK premieres, First Bloods, sneak previews and special events including panel discussions and podcasts.

Highlights from our great line-up of World and UK premieres include sinister treats and gory delights. There’s TWO HEADS CREEK, a cannibal comedy in the best old school Ozploitation tradition, the most dangerous TRIGGERED game, the organ transplant shocker 12 HOUR SHIFT from director Brea Grant, the honour-killing chiller AV: THE HUNT, the pulse-pounding action horror THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS VAMPIRES and you’ll forget all about chicken with the chlorinated body counter AQUASLASH.

And what terrors lie on the internet in BLINDERS, THE COLUMNIST, THEY’RE OUTSIDE and DON’T CLICK, in a hotel HALL and haunted Scottish castle in PLAYHOUSE. Thrill to sci-fi mutants in ENHANCED, the disintegrating mind in THE SWERVE, the cursed Nazi evils of SKULL: THE MASK, mind-bending experiments in THE HONEYMOON PHASE and the Hollywood nightmares of BLIND. 

Not to mention two superb anthologies; France’s DARK STORIES and Australia’s indigenous DARK PLACE. Or the wonderful genre documentaries THE HORROR CROWD and CLAPBOARD JUNGLE. And for those who missed our FrightFest Glasgow breakout hit A GHOST WAITS, we are presenting the ghostly romance in a new cut.

Finally, our Short Film Showcases are back along with the Arrow Podcast and more including loads of extras such as a fabulous warm up night made up of our annual film quiz and the World Premiere of SKY SHARKS. We made it into one of the films early trailers, did we make the final film?

So welcome to FrightFest 2020, where reality is virtual and our even closer reconnection is virtually guaranteed.