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In its 25th year – a ripe old age for a festival so invested in death – Pigeon Shrine FrightFest again celebrated the horror, fantasy, and sci-fi genres over five spine-chilling, blood-curdling days.
With its opening and closing movies (Joanne Mitchell’s Broken Bird and Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes-sensation The Substance) both directed by women for the first time in the festival’s history, FrightFest sandwiched 70-odd films in between, offering genre cinema at its cutting-edge best.
But which movies were the best of the best? Total Film emerged from the fest with bleeding eyeballs and a tattered list of awards…
Best Film
Dead Mail
The Dead Thing
A Desert
7 Keys
Strange Darling
The Substance
Test Screening
And the winner is…
A Desert
Best Director
Clark Baker (Test Screening)
Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy (Dead Mail)
Joshua Erkman (A Desert)
Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)
JT Mollner (Strange Darling)
And the winner is…
Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy (Dead Mail)
Best Actor
John Fleck (Dead Mail)
Kyle Gallner (Strange Darling)
Kai Lennox (A Desert)
Sterling Macer Jr. (Dead Mail)
Zachary Ray Sherman (A Desert)
David Yow (A Desert)
And the winner is…
Zachary Ray Sherman (A Desert)
Best Actress
Georgia Conlan (Charlotte)
Willa Fitzgerald (Strange Darling)
Sarah Lind (A Desert)
Emma McDonald (7 Keys)
Demi Moore (The Substance)
Margaret Qualley (The Substance)
And the winner is…
Willa Fitzgerald (Strange Darling)
Best Monster
Bath Beast (Test Screening)
Crabs (Survive)
Dracula (The Last Voyage of the Demeter)
Elisabeth-Sue (The Substance)
Graff (The Last Ashes)
Dr. Analog (Video Vision)
Toilet Terror (Scared Shitless)
And the winner is…
Elisabeth-Sue (The Substance)
Best Death
Dusty Peters (The Invisible Raptor)
Final shot (Strange Darling)
Knife in mouth (The Last Ashes)
'Star of Fame' (The Substance)
Toilet plunge (Scared Shitless)
"You fucking tourist" (A Desert)
And the winner is…
Final shot (Strange Darling)
Best Scare
Empty cupboard (The Ghost)
Mickey’s trick-or-treating ghost (Traumatika)
"You are the outside" (Fright)
The man in the window (Shelby Oaks)
Stranger danger (Crabs)
And the winner is…
The man in the window (Shelby Oaks)
Best Gore
Bloodbath (The Substance)
Bathtub dismemberment (Protein)
Head torn off (Scared Shitless)
Pier pressure (Mutilator 2)
Spurting stump (The Last Podcast)
And the winner is…
Bloodbath (The Substance)
Best Gross-Out
Achilles heel slices (The Last Ashes)
Meaty smoothie (Protein)
Penis sewn in corpse’s mouth (Broken Bird)
Pulling teeth (The Substance)
Spine injections (The Substance)
Tongue snip (Members Club)
And the winner is…
Spine injections (The Substance)
Best WTF Twist
And the winner is...
Survive (The morning after the storm)
Best non-stop limb-lopping, torso-chomping, head-snacking, and just all-round relentlessly hosing claret in a crowd-pleasing manner
And the winner is...
The Invisible Raptor
Award for striking originality
And the winner is...
Dead Mail
That's it from this year's FrightFest! For more scares, check out our list of the best horror movies of all time.
