Fangoria Frightfest Contest

Good old Fangoria is pushing a slate of eight new movies. They want everybody to watch the trailers on Eventful and rate them, and the one that scores highest will be given a “limited” theatrical release (I suppose that means that the remaining seven will be dumped directly to DVD). As an extra incentive to vote, three lucky winners (21 and older, contiguous US residents only) will win trips to Las Vegas for Halloween. Pretty cool.

How do the actual movies look? I applaud Fangoria for offering a broad variety of horror: I see some haunted houses, some serial killers, and what appears to be a psycho hillbilly flick with a rampaging monster thrown in for good measure (namely Pig Hunt by James Isaac). I also like the fact that the selection isn’t entirely US-centric, with representatives from Australia and Spain. Unfortunately, though, the trailers didn’t get me too excited. We know how trailers lie, but even the best didn’t strike me as more than promising, with some others coming off as downright “meh.” On the low end, I didn’t much like the looks of Grimm Love, which strikes me as a sensationalist bit of fluff that relies too much on its true-story inspiration, and The Tomb, an “updated adaptation” of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia,” looks like a muddled mess hanging on gratuitous sex appeal and some downright amateurish special effects.

One that I’m looking forward to, though, is Fragile, a ghost story starring Calista Flockhart and directed by Jaume Balagueró, who was responsible for the excellent [REC]. It gives us an old, creepy hospital, some spooky kids and a really creepy villain. Check it out:

And even though it’s much lower of brow, I’m thinking that the Australian Road Kill, directed by Dean Francis, looks like a lot of fun. It starts with a carful of teenagers driving through the Outback when they’re run off the road by a gigantic, three-trailer truck, but this is no Duel ripoff. Instead, the truck itself turns out to be some sort of self-propelled, demonic… um… oh, who knows? It’s ridiculous, and I think I’ll enjoy it. Maybe you will, too.

Watch and rate all the trailers on Eventful.