Broadcast Signal Intrusion – Film Review – FrightFest

Posted on September 3, 2021 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Jacob Gentry

Written by: Phil Drinkwater, Tim Woodall

Starring: Harry Shum Jr., Chris Sullivan, Steve Pringle, Justin Welborn and Kelley Mack,

Rating: ★★★½

Broadcast Signal Intrusion is a film that is all about atmosphere. The opening scene is disjointed and unsettling creating an oppressive and terror filled atmosphere right from the start. It’s a mystery thriller that appears to draw inspiration from Cronenberg’s Videodrome and De Palma’s Blowout. It has a great sense of paranoia that echoes throughout the film.

The story focuses around a series of three broadcast intrusions that happened in the late 1980s and mid 90s. Each intrusion featured a strange masked face woman and an assault of noise. They are creepy and unsettling and really get under your skin. James (Harry Shum Jr., Glee, Shadowhunters) lost his wife a couple of years ago and stumbles across the broadcast intrusion, becoming obsessed with trying to find out who created them and how it links with his wife’s disappearance.

From the opening the film is genuinely creepy. The intrusion clips of the strange masked woman with indecipherable words and harsh noises are haunting and something that will stay with you. There’s a growing sense of paranoia that adds to the terror, with the case being something the FBI had looked into and couldn’t solve and tension as James doesn’t know who to trust. He breaks his phone to stop people from listening to him.

There is a jazzy and abstract score, heavy with disjointed piano pieces. It’s used to create the overbearing atmosphere that makes everything so much more tense and keeps you heart rate elevated throughout. The film has many strange and surreal moments as it builds towards the climax, sadly, the final sequence doesn’t live up to the build-up. It brings up more questions than it answers and leaves a lot up to you to question yourself.

Harry Shum Jr. is great in the film. He’s frantic and obsessive in his search for the truth and completely believable in the role. It’s a very strong performance that carries pretty much the whole film. The whole cast is excellent, and James and Alice (Kelley Mack) work well together to piece together the puzzle.

It may feel similar in premise to other films, but Broadcast Signal Intrusion is completely its own thing. The story is fresh and original. The horror is slow and full of tension and the whole thing builds an atmosphere that so many horror films can only dream of building. It does feel slightly too long and is let down by the ending, but the journey to get there is one hell of a ride.

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Lupina Book One: Wax by James Wright – Book Review

Posted on September 3, 2021 by ashleymanningwriter

Thank you to Legendary Comics for the copy of this book in return for an honest review

Lupa witnesses her mother death during a brutal attack on their home town. Lupa is left alone until she is found by the she-wolf, Coras, and sets off on a journey.

There really isn’t a lot to say about this comic. The art style is very nice and the use of colour is beautiful. Beyond that there really isn’t much. It’s very short, just over 100 pages in this volume and it took me less than ten minutes to read it cover to cover. It didn’t grip me really at all, and I found myself reaching the end and thinking, is this it?

Other than the artwork there isn’t anything in this comic for me. It just wasn’t that interesting. I was invested up to Coras arriving and then nothing really seemed to happen between then and the end of the book, which makes up most of it. The first section of this book seemed interesting and then the pace was so quick I never really got a sense of what the story was actually about and it then it was over.

I won’t be reading book two of this series. The first one has nice artwork but little else. I didn’t care about any of it once I’d finished and I’ll probably forget all about before the end of the day.

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The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes – Book Review

Posted on September 3, 2021 by ashleymanningwriter

Thank you to Penguin Random House for the copy of this book in return for an honest review

The second book of The Inheritance Games trilogy picks up exactly where the first one left off. With the big reveal about Harry’s identity. It takes no time to get going and carries on at full speed for the whole of the novel. Like the first one this is full of mystery and intrigue.

If you’ve read the first book, then this is essentially more of the same. If you haven’t, I wouldn’t recommend starting here. The first book is essential to this one and while the opening few chapters does a good job of recapping the story it is more of a refresher for returning readers than summaries for newcomers. Go back and read book one, it’s worth it.

The puzzle that the late Tobias Hawthorne has left behind for our heroes to follow reveals the truth of what happened to Toby and the fire on Hawthorne Island twenty years ago. There are a lot of twists and turns in this book. It’s a lot bigger in scope than the first one, which mostly took place either at Hawthorne Manor or at Avery’s school. There is more travelling, more puzzles and a lot more assassination threat.

The characters are all back and Max is part of the main group this time around. In the first book she was only included as someone Avery spoke to over the phone, she appears in person and is a great character, playing off Xander nicely. A lot of events seem to happen without Avery being present, and since this is a first person story, it’s a little disappointing that we don’t get to read everything. I would have liked to follow Libby and Nash on their journey. It makes sense.

The only real negative for this one is the love triangle, for me, doesn’t work. It seems really forced and just tacked on. The mystery is enough for me to keep reading and I didn’t enjoy the flip-flopping between Grayson and Jameson.

While the book isn’t as strong as the first one, I really liked that this wasn’t a pointless sequel, some of the clues have been there since the first few chapters of book one, it really feels like this was planned from the beginning. Saying that, I’m not completely sure where Barnes is going for book three. Unlike the first one, The Hawthorne Legacy doesn’t end on a big reveal, it ends as a quite nice resolution. When The Final Gambit arrives next year, it will be interesting to see where this goes.

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Laguna Ave – Film Review – FrightFest

Posted on September 3, 2021 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: David Buchanan

Writer: Paul Papadeas

Starring: Russell Steinberg, James Markham Hall Jr, Dan Crane, Jeff Hillard, Félixe De Becker, and Stephanie Brait

Rating: ★½

Laguna Ave is being marketed as being similar to Tetsuo. The only similarity is that people meld with metal. Tetsuo is a frantic, energetic and intense from start to finish. It’s a raw experience. Laguna Ave is not.

Russell (Russell Steinberg) has just been sacked from his job. His lazy attitude bothers his girlfriend Rita (Stephanie Brait), who ends up leaving to travel north for work. A new downstairs neighbour moves in, Gary (James Markham Hall Jr), and makes a lot of noise each night. Russell becomes a little obsessed with figuring out who the neighbour is and ends up getting drawn into a world he doesn’t really understand.

This is being marketed as a horror comedy. It’s neither. There’s not one moment of terror or any scares to be found and while there are obvious attempts at comedy, they just don’t land. It’s just a really dull film where not a lot happens and the eighty minute run time stretches out into eternity.

It starts out promisingly, once you get through the opening scene where someone literally squats on a desk at their place of employment and does his business, the next scene feels like something ripped out of an independent 1990s film. It’s very reminiscent of Kevin Smith’s films with rock music playing in the background to a bunch of young adults sitting around talking. There’s a lot of hope there, but it doesn’t last long.

The performances are pretty terrible. They just can’t act. None of the lines are delivered with any believability or feel natural. Everything is stilted, especially an incredibly awkward moment where Russell and a friend get high and proceed to have a montage of them being high, including a singing moment. There is a charm to the bad acting, but it only goes so far.  

Not enough happens in the film. For the first half you feel like you are just going through Russell’s motions as he tries looking for another job, hangs out with his neighbours, gets annoyed at the new one and sits around not doing much. It’s really boring and then when it gets going there just isn’t enough there. It takes way too long to really get into gear and then it’s pretty much over.

The director shot the film in black and white, because it was the only way he could vision the film. It looks good, but other than a nod towards Tetsuo (which the director admits to not having seen) it doesn’t really feel needed. It hides some of the bad acting and effects, by giving a lower budget-vibe, that’s about it.

This is a film that is apparently about lost masculinity and the insecure feeling that Russell has, since his partner earns more money than him. It’s not explored in any interesting way and is a really antiquated view on the world. There might be an interesting story there somewhere, but it’s not Laguna Ave.

Laguna Ave isn’t worth watching. It’s a bad film that just drags on and on. It tries to be funny but isn’t. There’s no scares or horror to be found. All the charm it has doesn’t make up for the boring story it is telling.  

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The Show – Film Review – FrightFest

Posted on September 2, 2021 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Mitch Jenkins

Written by: Alan Moore

Starring: Tom Burke, Ellie Bamber, Darrell D’Silva, Babou Ceesay, Christopher Fairbank, Sibohan Hewlett and Alan Moore

Rating: ★★★★★

Comics legend Alan Moore has famously had his name removed from any of the adaptations of his work. He writes for a specific medium and that doesn’t always translate to another one. There is something lost in Watchmen through Zack Snyder’s adaptation, despite how close it is to the original comic. The change to the end of V For Vendetta, doesn’t work. The less said about Batman: The Killing Joke the better. Moore took a dip into the world of films with his short films under the banner Show Pieces. Expanding upon that is the excellent and surreal feature length The Show.

Alan Moore loves Northampton, the town he’s from. If you ever watch one of his talks, either in person or online, he has an entire speech about how Northampton is the centre of the universe. He can link so many important moments in history to it and even in his massive extensive look at Jack the Ripper, From Hell, he manages to link it to Northampton (Something no one else could do). The Show gives Northampton the same love that other films have given London, Paris, New York, or Los Angeles. It’s almost a character in and of itself. When Fletcher Dennis (Tom Burke) first arrives in Northampton he describes it as a quiet nice town to the taxi driver, something most of its locals would debate. Fletcher’s house mate runs a talking tour of Northampton and gives out facts and stories of history that channels Moore’s love of his hometown.

There are a lot of strange and unique characters in the film from a hospital orderly who has a vampire name and is obsessed with death, to a singer who resembles Hitler. They are all great and memorable and the performances are really good. Moore himself appears as one half of a comedy act that died in a fire in the early 70s. For the most part he is absent and then appears in the later half in the almost Kafkaesque dream world.

The comedy in this film really works. The strange characters are really funny. A stand out moment is the private investigators that Dennis hires. They are two children, who live in a black and white world and speak in noir cliches. One of the children narrates everything that he does and how he feels and the cross that everyone is searching for is called The Maltese Cross. There’s also a librarian who helps Dennis early on the film, and spends the rest of the film at his home in an almost Batman style role.

The Show is a delightful film with whimsical comedy, quirky musical moments and some wonderful direction. The visuals in this film, especially during the dream sequences look incredible, it’s energetic. Add some of Moore’s lively dialogue and you will be hooked from the first few scenes.

If you’ve seen Shot Pieces, especially the main story Jimmy’s End, then you will be familiar with the ideas and world that is being presented. The shorts are not essential viewing and The Show stands alone as a great story in its own right. There is still the very Twin Peaks style to the dreams, but this isn’t the main focus. If you couldn’t get on with Show Pieces, then The Show is still worth giving a change. It’s so much better than the shorts and is truly a great and original film.

The Show feels like an Alan Moore comic, but on screen with some amazing direction from Mitch Jenkins. It’s funny, entertaining, a love letter to Northampton and a truly captivating story. Whether your a fan of his comics or never picked one up in your life this is a brilliant film and you will find something to enjoy. One of the best of the year. There is a proposed TV series that will follow up from this and we can only hope it’s half as good as Moore’s first feature length film.  

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