Arrow Video FrightFest Reviews: Bring Out the Fear and Shadow of the Cat
By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)
Irish psychological horror Bring Out the Fear sees troubled couple Rosie (Ciara Bailey) and Dan (Tad Morari) take a day trip to the woods, where he attempts to save their relationship by proposing marriage. Rosie, who is a recovering alcoholic and has recently had an affair, turns him down, and when the pair decide to wrap up their day and head home, they find themselves not only lost, but walking past landmarks that they had passed earlier — including an ominous human-looking figure constructed from wood — and being assaulted by loud, frightening sounds.
Writer/director Richard Waters has crafted a highly effective chiller that focuses on the growing paranoia and claustrophobic creepiness in which Rosie and Dan — and by extension, the viewers — find themselves. Bailey and Morari display great chemistry together, making their relationship and differences feel authentic. Although there are some well-acted supporting roles, the film is Bailey’s and Morari’s to carry, and they pull off the difficult task of making a pair of argumentative lovers characters for whom to root that they may escape their supernatural trap. Cinematographer Rowan Moore captures both the vast openness of the forest and the confining space in which the couple find themselves, and the solid one-two punch of Steve Nolan’s score and Ivan Jackman’s sound mix add to the mounting eeriness and suspense.
Argentinian feature Shadow of the Cat (La Sombra Del Gato) is an eccentric, quirky film that dwells somewhere between whimsical fantasy and light horror. Teenager Emma (Maite Lanata) lives a seemingly happy, though secluded, life on a remote farm, playing with a cardboard toy camera and pretending to film her father Gato (Guillermo Zapata), their bodyguard Sombra (Danny Trejo), and the other employees — along with her favorite pet chicken.
Gato wants Emma to stay away from larger society for reasons he doesn’t initially tell her, but when she sneaks off to the big city one day and comes home with a smartphone, she soon discovers that her father has been lying to her about her mother Celia (Monica Antonopoulos) abandoning her. This leads to a wild, increasingly bizarre romp involving a pseudo-science cult involving Celia’s mad-scientist father Otto Krull (Miguel Angel Solar), Gato and Sombra attempting to rescue Emma from the cult, a band of heroic drag queens, and other surprises that it would be unfair to spoil here.
Director José María Cicala, who co-wrote the screenplay with Griselda Sanchez and Gustavo Lencina, helms the Shadow of the Cat with bravado and colorful flair. The film leans more toward style than substance, with the relationship between characters seeming more surface-level than fully explored, but the set design and wild imagination behind the film are highly impressive. Fans of Guillermo del Toro, Terry Gilliam, and weird cinema should find plenty to enjoy in Shadow of the Cat.
Bring Out the Fear and Shadow of the Cat screened as part of Arrow Video FrightFest, which returned to the big screen this year with in-person attendance at London’s Cineworld Leicester Square from Thursday, August 26th through Monday, August 30th, 2021 and then presented an online edition from September 1st through 5th.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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