By David Dent
A luscious nitrate black and white title screen announces this old dark house thriller, accompanied by James Cox’s stirring score. It’s rather a shame that it’s all downhill from here.
It’s 1937, the blurb tells us, and young Emily (Gwyneth Evans, channelling the voice of Lady Mary in Downton Abbey) traipses around her rather decaying southern counties pile, consumed by agoraphobia and, well, herself. The only company she keeps is with her strict and ill-tempered mother (Jill Priest) and such confinement has thrown them into a love/hate relationship.
Emily’s life is shrouded in secrecy – even from her. Her father is a mystery who her mother will not talk about, mother hides letters addressed to her daughter, and Emily’s condition – which goes beyond agoraphobia to a mortal fear of outside forces that may harm her – remains undiagnosed.
The pair’s fear that Emily would not be able to cope if left in the house alone come to pass when her mother expires. She is left to the mercy of the many fears that oppress her everyday life; until she happens upon those hidden letters.
Although, again according to the blurb, ‘Fright’ is intended as ‘an homage to the unsettling atmosphere of 1950s horror cinema’ – and then references two films made in the 1960s; but it takes more than a few frocks and a crumbling country house to put the willies up one. To be fair director Warren Dudley does eventually go a bit grand guignol (or more precisely ‘Psycho’) and Nic Cage’s famous scene in ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ is given a re-run. But while ‘Fright’ is well intentioned, and the mansion backdrop is impressively photographed, it’s a bit all over the place.
Bloody Flicks 