Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024 Preview: The Dark Heart of Cinema Gets Even More Frightening

Ever since it was first staged in 2000, FrightFest has enlivened -- or perhaps I should say endarkened -- central London over the Bank Holiday weekend. Now known as Pigeon Shrine FrightFest, the 2024 edition kicks off tomorrow, Thursday, August 22, with another outstanding edition.

Opening night festivities at Odeon Cinemas Leicester Square will kick off with the world premiere of Joanne Mitchell's Broken Bird, described as:

"A rich, absorbing and disturbing tale about a quiet soul in emotional turmoil. Sybil Chamberlain works as a professional mortician at a funeral parlour. She has spent her life looking for love. Brought up as a privileged, carefree child, at the age of ten, she lost everything in a tragic accident. A darkness fell over her as the bright lights of her life were snuffed out swiftly and cruelly.

"Now, an emptiness, an aching loneliness prevails, a gloomy void she seeks to fill. Reality and reason are slipping away from Sybil, and her dark desires are becoming more insatiable and progressively out of control. Will she ever find happiness and contentment, especially as the company she keeps is mainly deceased?"

Next, Clark Baker's Test Screening will enjoy its world premiere. The trailer, which you can watch at the official FrightFest site, looks super creepy. Here's the festival's description:

"Summer 1982, and in a small, declining Oregon town, excitement has been building for days. A Hollywood studio is holding a test screening of a new blockbuster movie in the local cinema. Could it be the new John Carpenter, the latest Steven Spielberg, or another Star Trek? Four lifelong friends can't wait to take their seats for the preview.

"But rather than a toe-dip screening, the film they watch is a mind-control experiment with terrifying and devastating effects on the community. Get ready for the sci-fi high of the year as The Thing meets Society in a Stranger Things universe."

Sounds awesome! The night concludes with the English Premiere of Mike Hermosa's The Invisible Raptor, described thusly:

"he Tyler Corporation figured out how to genetically engineer a prehistoric raptor, but they didn't stop there... they also made it invisible. Unfortunately, he's a really smart invisible raptor.

"After easily breaking out of its enclosure, it's now up to washed-up amusement park palaeontologist Dr Grant Walker and hapless loner Security Guard Denny Danielson to stop the predator before it wreaks havoc on the entire community of Spielburgh County. With the help of local celebrity chicken farmer Henrietta McCluckskey and Grant's old flame Amber, they uncover the truth behind the mysterious apex predator."

Sounds like a lot of fun to send you lot off to bed! But that's only opening night. Over the weekend, a host of treats will be unveiled, including some that our intrepid reviewers have seen at other festivals, including Ant Timpson's Bookworm, Chris Stuckmann's Shelby Oaks, Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy's Dead Mail, JT Mollner's Strange Darling, E.L. Katz' Azrael: Angel of Death, Joshua Erkman's A Desert, and Coralie Fargeat's The Substance.

And that's just on the main screen! The three Discovery Screens are packed as well with many horror treats, so enjoy your long weekend, festival-goers. To everyone else, we wish you a good day, as you wish you were en route to London.