FrightFest: 13 Hrs

Making its UK premiere at this year's FrightFest was 13 Hrs, which boasted a cast including Harry Potter actor Tom Felton and Hollyoaks star Gemma Atkinson. We were prepared for the low budget. But not for this British film's failure in other areas.

Sarah Tyler escapes from her troubled family to America. On her return home for a two-week stay she finds that her parents are struggling to maintain their relationship and trying to put a brave face on their money troubles, and her three younger brothers aren’t at all pleased to have her home. To make matters worse, a mysterious beast is prowling the house and grounds, attacking the family and friends assembled there.

The only thing we had to go on at the start of this film was a poster and a shady sounding synopsis promising that “something that needs to kill and is looking for human prey” would be coming out of the approaching storm. Unfortunately, all the big surprises that were meant to keep the audience guessing throughout the narrative were easy to figure out very early on. Within a few minutes, the camera focused on a full moon, then a strange beast appeared, picking off family members. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together and know exactly where the story is heading.

On a similar note, it didn’t take a genius to figure out who the werewolf was. We won’t ruin all the “surprises” here in case you do go and see this movie but a thumping great clue is dumped in the audience's lap right at the film's start when Sarah first talks to her father.

What was a surprise, seeing as Tom Felton was the cast's biggest name, was that he didn’t have a bigger or better role. Our guess is that he was busy with other projects (namely filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) so he was only available for filming for a day or so.

Not only was the plot weak, the majority of the cast were insufferably posh and patronising, sounding like they’d just got out of drama school and making their plight impossible to even want to sympathise with. The character relationships were sketchy to say the least, with no explanation for the conflicts hinted at between the father and his children behind the scenes. There was no connection between the siblings so it was difficult to pick them out from the group and we’re still unsure why the film is called 13 Hrs. Unless the 13 is some kind of reference to bad luck, which was certainly something suffered by those FrightFest attendees who sat through this inferior movie. 

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