Between Thursday 27th February and Sunday 2nd March, Film4 FrightFest takes over the Glasgow Film Festival for its ninth year, offering a world of “gritty serial killers, stark staring horror, comic book thrills and spills, favourite maniacs, sci-fi delirium, doc shock and mind-bending mystery.” As we move closer to the festival we have selected our favourite films from this year’s line-up that we can’t wait to watch. This week we’re want to tell you all about Almost Human.
In 2011, Joe Begos and his collaborative partner Josh Ethier made a short film about a werewolf attack called Bad Moon Rising. They took the short to Frightfest in the same year and received so much praise that it inspired them to make a feature. So, after two years of writing, planning and shooting Almost Human was born and was given its world premiere as part of the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Pitched as a mix between Fire in the Sky and the Terminator, Almost Human tells the story of Mark Fisher (played by Josh Ethier) who is taken in a flash of blue light leaving his best friend Seth (Graham Skipper) and his girlfriend Jen (Vanessa Leigh) behind to pick up the pieces. So two years later, when Mark mysteriously returns, he leaves a string of murders in his wake and it’s up to Seth to stop him.
We were lucky enough to watch the film as it was the secret film for Celluloid Screams horror festival in Sheffield last October and we can tell you for certain that, as his feature debut, Begos does a fantastic job with Almost Human. Directing and handling the cinematography, he has crafted a horror sci-fi hybrid that operates as one part invasion thriller and one part slasher movie. Echoing such films as The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the film is a love letter to ’80s horror and is rich with low-budget effects that are fun to watch and add to the overall enjoyment of the film.
The film will be given its Scottish Premiere on Saturday 1st March at 21:00 at the GFT in Glasgow.
http://youtu.be/fkJdN2iBOBg
