Lurking within the wider Glasgow Film Festival programme is the annual FrightFest weekend. A bastard homunculus of its larger London-based sire, it’s a wildly popular event that is well worth attending even when the movies are of variable quality, such as in this instance. Our Managing Editor Kevin Ibbotson-Wight was there, and gives his opinion on the films that were screened on Day One of the event.

kicks off with House of Ashes (Izzy Lee/ USA/ 2024/ 95 mins), a psychedelic haunted house horror with themes of bodily autonomy. Mia (Fayna Sanchez) has been sentenced to house arrest under post-Roe vs Wade laws after suffering a miscarriage. Not only this, she was briefly under suspicion for the subsequent death of her husband. New boyfriend Marc (Vincent Stalba) is assiduous to a fault, but strange things are happening in the house, and Marc is increasingly one of them.

House of Ashes initially looks like it’s going to be a solid little single-location shocker, but it son unravels under a bizarre tone. Sanchez gives an emotionally demanding role her best, but Stalba appears to be in a different film entirely. A distinctly strange screen presence, his off-kilter persona and mystifying line delivery too often dissolves all intensity into comedic. With the cast and crew sat nearby, it’s clear the gales of laughter from the crowd weren’t intentional. It all clashes uncomfortably with the very serious themes. A wobbly start. 2/5

Things pick up with the fascinating true crime documentary The Last Sacrifice (Rupert Russell/ UK/ 2024/ 90 mins). In 1945, elderly farmer Charles Walton was horrifically murdered in a way that suggested something ritualistic. As the remained unsolved over the next few decades, the hidden underbelly of England meshed with the prevailing counter culture. The various conspiracies went on to influence the burgeoning folk horror genre, specifically The Wicker Man.

There are the expected talking heads from such people as Tim Stanley, Gavin Bone, and Leila Latif, but where The Last Sacrifice excels is in the superb editing from Alexander McNeill, which pieces together the known events of the Walton case from other docs, films, and news report in an almost psychedelic collage. It gives a real cinematic kick to what is otherwise a doc that relies on hypotheses and conjecture. While we’re left none the wiser, it it a worthwhile primer for the freakier edges of the British Wiccan movement, and it’ll put some great films on your radar. Oh, and make sure and stay for the epilogue to discover how the Teletubbies fit into it all. 3/5

There are little hints of Ti West‘s modern classic House of the Devil about By the Throat (David Luke Rees/ UK/ 2025/ 78 mins). Patricia Allison plays Lizzy, a young woman suffering from PTSD after being attacked, who takes an ill-advised live-in job in an isolated house in the country. She’s to take care of the bedridden Amy (Jeany Spark) while her husband Alex (Rupert Young) is away on business. Things are ominous from the off, but are the weird apparitions in folk horror masks really there, or is Lizzy’s trauma manifesting in unsettling ways?

By the Throat has plenty of promise with a threatening pulse of slow-burn dread. Allison is an appealing and vulnerable heroine, and Jeany Spark is an unpredictable, ambiguous presence as Amy. The film also packs a nice twist into its lean runtime. But then it takes a further unnecessary sideways shift that makes no sense at all and exists purely as a rug pull that falls apart under the most cursory scrutiny. It’s a real shame, as it had some serious potential but it trips over its own narrative cleverness. 2/5

Ultra low-budget WWII alien flick The Doom Busters (Jack Lawrence McHenry/ UK/ 2025/ 80 mins) ups both the energy and charm levels considerably. Dads’ Army vs Predator is the order of the day as a training exercise for a ragtag group of rural Home Guard recruits turns deadly, and they have to save the world from an extra-terrestrial killing machine. Stiff upper lips are tested and no genre trope is left unpilfered as our plucky heroes face a foe even tougher than the Nazis.

It’s hard to take against such a committed and heartfelt project as The Doom Busters, even when its wobbles are completely evident. What it lacks in depth and resources, it more than compensates with character, imagination, and a clear, delirious enjoyment from everyone involved. The hit-and-miss jokes, wild plot development and shameless genre ransacking are all part of the fun, and it manages to be genuinely heartfelt. Somehow, a real sense of peril and fondness for these very silly characters creep up on you. Particular plaudits go to Margaret Clunie who pulsates ’40s femme fatale glamour as a nurse who is suspiciously handy with a machine gun, and Jessica Webber as an adorably can-do local girl who brings some Brownie energy to the situation. 3/5

Day one concludes with perhaps the most skillfully assembled film of the bunch with In Our Blood (Pedro Kos/ USA/ 2024/ 88 mins). Documentary filmmaker Pedro Kos bring his experience in that field to his first feature. This mockumentary sees young filmmaker Emily (Brittany O’Grady) and cameraman Danny (EJ Bonilla) travel to the deprived New Mexico town of Las Cruces to film a reunification between Emily and her estranged mother, a former drug addict. The day after their first meeting, Emily’s mother has vanished and the duo set about tracking her down.

The documentary approach demands the audience is only privy to the information of that on camera and the film is intriguing throughout as we’re introduced Blair Witch-style to various residents of various import. Some are keener to be on camera than others, and some may be waving red herrings. Taking in a drug rehabilitation centre, a mysterious photograph, the unfriendly neighbourhood cartel, and some slightly underhand filming methods, the investigative aspect to the film is well-shot and frequently gripping. There is also no cheating with the film’s handheld authenticity for easy narrative purposes.

The downside is that the horror aspect is rather perfunctory, and too effectively signposted in one earlier discovery. Still, Kos has the nous to introduce a further twist late on, albeit that will work for some and will have others throwing up their hands in frustration. Despite these issues, this is a different spin on several genres, and one made with the documentary authenticity of someone who knows the format inside out. 3/5

All films screened as part of Glasgow FrightFest