The 10th Horrorant International Film Festival – ‘Fright Nights’ that primarily took place at the prestigious Elize theater of Athens, was a great success on all fronts, including the quality of the program that this year focused on Asian horror and the many filmmakers that visited Greece in order to provide generous Q&A sessions with the audience. Unfortunately, due to my busy schedule I was able to attend only a few screenings, and here are my brief thoughts on them.
Play Dead (2025)
Alison (Paula
Brasca) awakens in a dark basement among a handful of dead women, when she
realizes that a masked maniac is lurking in the surroundings. She decides to
play dead (as per the title) until she can think of an escape plan. Hailing
from Spain, but efficiently dubbed in English, this slasher directed by Carlos
Goitia [Horrorant had previously screened his The 100 Candles Game: The Last Possession (2023)] may be a bit
formulaic and even feel dated at times – it is echoing several classics from Saw (2004) to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) – but where it lacks in
inspiration, it delivers on execution, resulting in an utterly enjoyable
experience, so much that I can’t remember since when I was that enthusiastic
for a serial killer picture.
Dead by Dawn (2025)
A proposed high-art
stage play assembles a group of actors in the villa of a mysterious and wealthy
family that is rumored to practice the occult, when a serial killer is stalking
them on the grounds, and is killing them one-by-one with a variety of creative
ways.
Hailing from
Poland, writer/director Dawid Torrone’s debut may sound like your standard
slasher, but it is very far removed from the hollow genre standards, and what
it presents is a stylish manifesto for the senses, an artistically stunning
work of celluloid full of nods to the best moments in Dario Argento’s body of
work. Kinetic and intelligent, this benefits both from its many complicated
set-ups for the camera and the choreography, as well as its brutal gore. This
is a modern masterpiece that you cannot miss.
Deviant (2024)
Javier (Alain
Hernandez) is suffering from boredom resulted from a thankless job and a
sexless marriage, leading him to eye his daughter’s teenage friends. One day,
and after pressure from a colleague, he signs in a kinky dating app and starts
chatting with a girl. When a meeting is arranged in her house, Javier doesn’t
find a willing lover, but rather a grotesque fat man (Fernando Albizu) and his
ailing and wheelchair-bound mother (Itziar Aizpuru) who is suffering from
dementia. The protagonist is soon held captive at the perverted duo’s basement
and is expecting sexual torture with a variety of sex toys, after the tormentor
is finished with taking care of a pedophile priest (Patxi Santamaria).
As
writer/director Daniel M. Caneiro told us during his very entertaining Q&A
session that followed the screening of this horror-comedy, his inspirations
include Sam Raimi and Gene Wilder. But with brilliant – if subtle – commentary
on religion, family values, and even the dangers of technology, this is much
more than a simple torture film presented as a Christmas movie. It may be a bit
too provocative, or sexually humorous to guarantee a larger audience, but
everyone in the packed theater in which I saw it seemed to have a very good
time with it.
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