The second day of Glasgow FrightFest is even more varied in quality than the first. Featuring cosmic generational trauma, some terrific short films, an affectionate lookback at a maligned entry in an iconic franchise, a dismal effort from a respected veteran, and a fun comedy haunted house horror, it wasn’t short of variety. Sadly, it also lacked that killer title to pin back the ears. 

Day Two kicks off with an interesting cosmic horror in A Mother’s Embrace (Cristian Ponce/ Brazil/ 2024/ 91 mins). Cristian Ponce’s film foregrounds a once in a generation storm that ransacked Rio de Janeiro in 1996. Firefighter Ana (Marjorie Estiano) is called to a crumbling nursing home that is under severe danger from the elements. The residents are unwilling to leave, and when Ana and her team try and press the point they turn downright hostile. Something much older than the residents is lurking in the foundations.

The scenario is a little bit [REC] and a little bit The Void as the firefighters take on threatening residents and other, Lovecraftian terrors. Unfortunately, A Mother’s Embrace is not as distinctive as either of those films. For the most part it exists on a low hum of doom-laden weirdness without really peering into the existential abyss in which the best cosmic horror lurks. Estiano gives a strong performance but is left a little adrift in a narrative that tries to thematically link an earlier storm in 1966 to trauma she experienced 30 years earlier at the hands of her mother and doesn’t quite breach that gap. Not a stinker by any means, but could have really leaned into both the cosmic and the horror elements a little more. 3/5

Next up was the Short Film Showcase, which was easily one of the highlights of the weekend. So good in fact, we gave it the in-depth coverage it deserved. 4/5

The shorts were followed by the second of the weekend’s two very decent documentaries in Heart of Darkness: The Making of The Final Friday (Michael Felsher/ USA/ 2025/ 107 mins). The ninth installment of the Friday the 13th franchise, Jason Goes to Hell is a divisive one, as it broke from the hockey mask mould in favour of a plot that sees Jason body-swapping his way through his victims. The writer and director of the film Adam Marcus takes us through the entertaining story of its production.

There’s a who’s who of those involved in the production of the film, and happily pretty much all have fond memories of the time, and of director Marcus, who was a scrappy 23-year-old at the time. There’s Kane Hodder, who reprised his role as Jason, practical effects genius Howard Berger, and eccentric actor Steven Williams among many others. The biggest contribution comes from Marcus himself, a garrulous raconteur with real love for what he and his crew achieved, and an equal affection for the fandom that embraced the film. He’s very much the same in person as one of better Q&A’s of the weekend demonstrated. It’s standard fare for a documentary – archive footage and talking head – but it achieves its aim; making you want to watch Jason Goes to Hell, either for the first time or to reevaluate it. 3/5

The celebratory mood was punctured by the undisputed dud of the festival. Veteran director Pupi Avati has genre pedigree with the giallo The House of the Laughing Windows, but his new effort The American Backyard (Italy/ 2024/ 107 mins) is ghastly dull, in a way that a film that contains a pulsating vagina in a jar should never be. A young man falls in love with an American nurse during the 1945 liberation of Italy. Moving to America, he discovers the object of his affection has vanished, presumed kidnapped.

For a film that takes itself as seriously as The American Backyard it’s a ridiculous experience that’s somehow both laughable and tedious. Our protagonist Lui (Filippo Scotti) is a blank psychopath whose entire obsession comes from one chance meeting. The move to the US never feels anything other than narrative contrivance, and from there it degenerates into portentous tedium and incomprehensible surrealist moments that fail to compensate for the podding storyline. The film is based on Avati’s own novel, and you get the feeling that this would work better on the page, with a sense of Lui’s interiority that never comes across on film. As an experience with an audience, you can feel the air being sucked out of the room until it feels as hermetically sealed as that fanny in a jar. 1/5

It’s asking a lot for the next film to defibrillate an entire room, but Scared to Death (Paul Boyd/ USA/ 2024/ 98 mins) gives it a valiant go. This horror comedy from Glasgow native Paul Boyd utilises the trump cards of horror legends Lin Shaye and Bill Moseley and both are characteristically entertaining. The cast and crew of an upcoming horror film take part in a seance in a former orphanage that was closed down in the ’50s after five children were literally scared to death. Once the seance begins, the participants become trapped in the house with the spectral children, and something much worse.

Despite some careworn genre tropes, Scared to Death is a blast of energy and fun after the previous film. With a cast of colourful characters, especially Kurt Diemer‘s spot-on pastiche of stalwart genre journeymen ‘The Grog’, and a genuinely satisfying backstory to the events at the orphanage, it’s an uneven but dynamic film. Boyd is adept at meshing laughs and horror together, with both Moseley and Shaye stepping up to the mark nicely. It’s definitely more funny than scary overall, but the location is great, with the geography of the orphanage clear and coherent, and the camerawork increasingly giving a sense of claustrophobia which keeps the tone from becoming too knockabout. Who knows if it would have felt quite so impressive if the previous film hadn’t been quite so terrible, but Scared to Death feels like the first gritty gulp of oasis water after days in the desert. 3/5

All films screened as part of Glasgow FrightFest