Frightfest: A Lonely Place to Die (2011)

The final movie of this years Frightfest was A Lonely Place To Die, an all out roller-coaster ride from start to finish. Five mountaineers head out into the wilderness for some intense climbing. At the most remote spot, they hear a strange vocal noise, upon investigation they find a pipe sticking out of the ground, a breathing pipe. Beneath the pipe is a chamber containing a young Serbian girl, having freed her from her tomb they attempt to take her to the nearest town, but it seems their discovery is part of a deadly game, and now they must become hunted in order to try and get the girl to safety.

Set against a beautiful Scottish mountain backdrop, A Lonely Place To Die, is an incredibly dark piece of film-making, which bursts into action from the very minute the film starts, and to be fair never calms down until the very end.

Always good to expect the unexpected in a movie, and this is one of those movies that does that incredibly well. The passage of events after the discovery of the young girl, led for many excited ripples through a packed auditorium. For some of the audience, there was far too much trauma for their liking, especially after a series of mountain falls, sighs and head in hand situations were the order of the day; on it’s own not an achievement, but you have to take into account that the UK premier took place at a festival of horror movies, filled with die hard horror fans, that surely has to be an accolade that director Julian Gilbey must be proud of.

A killer aspect of the movie is the transition from country to town, having given us a breathtaking mountain backdrop, the next scene you see is a most fantastic looking carnival scene, at a Beltane fire festival, an image that in some ways is far more memorable than the mountain scenes. In a Q & A session at the end of the picture, Gibley explained that he saw a similar image some years prior, and vowed to put it into a future movie.

The cast is exceptional many of them performing their own stunts. Melissa George typically rules the movie, while Borgia’s star Sean Harris fills the shoes of the villain, an incredibly ruthless one at that. Young actress Holly Boyd who plays Anna in the film, wowed the audience, and then further impressed in the concluding Q & A.

There are few movies out there in the British film arena that will have the ability to haunt viewers quite as much as this, and it’s just those scenes that stick in your mind after the end credits roll, the harrowing deaths, the knowledge that none of the characters are safe, and those horrific falls. A Lonely Place To Day was a perfect end to a perfect festival, a movie so powerful that it has the ability to shock horror fans.

A Lonely Place To Die is in UK cinemas from September 7th.