‘Frightfully real’
American Fright Fest – formerly Fright Fest – is a 2018 American horror film directed by Ante Novakovic (Sanctioning Evil) from a screenplay by Robert Gillings. The movie stars Dylan Walsh, Madison McKinley, Romeo Miller and Mercy Malick.
Plot:
Blood runs rampant on Halloween night when a politically ambitious Mayor from the small town of Sommerton decides to mount a live Fright Fest inside the walls of a long abandoned state asylum. He recruits a downward spiralling cult horror film director in Spencer Crowe, a man no longer capable of delivering the caliber of horror classics he once created with ease.
Mayor Fowler expects Crowe to put on a spectacle no one will soon forget, only problem is a van of criminally insane prisoners crashes just outside the perimeter and the trick or treaters think their murderous acts are part of the show…
Reviews:
“Fright Fest is a convoluted story that pulls together many well-worn genre tropes and archetypes that don’t exactly fit together as a whole. The end result is a tonally inconsistent slasher by the numbers.” Britflicks
“It’s confusing. Worse still, the deaths really aren’t that good either. A sad and sorry slasher film that somehow manages to take the genre back in time – a time that many had hoped was over. Lacking the fun nature that we have come to expect, Fright Fest just feels like one big misogynistic and politically incorrect mess.” The Hollywood News
“A truly abominable, dull, couldn’t-care-less movie…” House of Mortal Cinema
“Fright Fest is a better, funnier idea than it is a finished film. Crowe is so cartoonishly awful (we can’t think which horror filmmakers Novakovic and Gillings have in mind) there’s no sense of a line being crossed as he starts to exploit the murders, and the satire on awful, dimwit entertainment industry bottom feeders is basic (as these things go, it’s no Skeleton Crew or Return to Horror High).” The Kim Newman Web Site
Trailer:
Cast and characters:
Dylan Walsh … Spencer Crowe – The Stepfather (2009)
Madison McKinley … Taylor
Romeo Miller … Rico
Mercy Malick … Estelle
Ashley Blankenship … Maxine
Luke Baines … Mason
Pancho Moler … Finkle
Robert Scott Wilson … Steph
Heather Ann Davis … Janie
Jonathan Camp … Ruben
Kresh Novakovic … Mayor Fowler
Michael Kupisk … Philip Blake
Christopher Mann … Michael Berger
Yanina Studilina … Broken Ballerina
Peter Patrikios … Stanley
Filming locations:
Pennhurst Asylum, Spring City, Pennsylvania
