Possum, the feature debut from Garth Marenghi star Matthew Holness, is to be screened at the third annual FilmFear season - six days of horror, extreme cinema, cult favourites and special guests coming to Manchester this October.
Possum stars Mission Impossible villain Sean Harris and veteran actor Alun Armstrong. Best-known for playing Garth Marenghi in the cult Channel 4 series, writer-director Holness adapted his own short story for the screenplay; Holness will be signing copies of the story as featured in the recently re-issued anthology ‘The New Uncanny’ before the screening, as well as participating in a post-screening Q&A.
Also in attendance at FilmFear is actor-writer-comedian Toby Hadoke who will take part in a Q&A following a special “listening event” of Nigel Kneale’s The Road. Based on the legendary lost 1963 TV play and scripted by Hadoke for BBC Radio 4, The Road stars Mark Gatiss and Adrian Scarborough and tickets to the broadcast will be free to anyone with a FilmFear screening ticket.
Scandi fantasy Border, co-written by the author of Let the Right One In, kicks off the season on 26 Oct and is the first of eight new films from across the globe to screen over the six-day event. A visceral fusion of Nordic noir, social realism and supernatural horror, Border’s genre-defying tone is matched in fellow Swedish title Videoman, a mystery-thriller/relationship-drama that will surprise audiences with its tonal shifts, while the chilling horror St. Agatha from celebrated filmmaker Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III, IV) bolsters the emerging ‘Nunsploitation’ genre.
Screening alongside new titles are three classic horrors for film fans to revisit or discover on the big screen: two films from the horror grandmaster, John Carpenter - conspiracy theory sci-fi They Live and haunting ghost-story The Fog; and Sam Raimi’s remarkable debut, The Evil Dead, which brings the season to a ferocious finale on 31 October.
The FilmFear season also returns to Film4, with a season of premieres, discoveries and channel favourites running for six nights from Friday 26 to Wednesday 31 October. Included in this year’s line-up are television premieres of the acclaimed folklore horror hit The Witch; the woodland terror of 2016’s reboot Blair Witch; director Johannes Roberts’ The Other Side of the Door; the twist-filled Pet, starring Dominic Monaghan; found-footage cult hit The Taking of Deborah Logan; and M. Night Shyamalan’s surprise-filled The Visit. And coming to the channel from last year’s HOME programme is Kaleidoscope, the psychological chiller starring Toby Jones and directed by Rupert Jones.
Film Fear runs from Oct 26 - 31. Details here.
