London Horror Festival Archives

Nightmares – London Horror Festival Online

28Oct

By Nicky LambertNo Comments

REVIEWS

Nightmares – London Horror Festival Online

Produced by Shock Horror Theatre and written and directed by and also starring Joseph Helsing, “Nightmares” is a one man show, described as a horror musical about a man plagued by nightmares. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a nightmare to watch. I try very hard to find positives in every show I review but I simply cannot find anything good to say about this. The character is in a cellar, sleeping on a quilt (which Helsing kept slipping on and falling over). He has repetitive nightmares. In one corner there is a skeleton. There are also two other bodies. We eventually glean – over a very long hour – that he has killed his wife and his brother because they were having an affair. Helsing’s acting is over the top, cringeworthy and unconvincing, as is the dialogue. There are long...

Birdwatching – London Horror Festival

I was pretty excited about the London Horror Festival, because I am a self-confessed horror fanatic. There are various fascinating psychological theories around why people like to feel fear which I’m not qualified to cite here or expand on, but for me it boils down to excitement. Books, plays, films, rollercoasters; it’s all about getting the adrenaline pumping around your body but also knowing that you are, at all times, perfectly safe. Perfectly safe is not how Amy (Karen Barredo), one of the three characters in Birdwatching, would describe her position. An actress of small notoriety having appeared in a few slasher B movies, Amy arrives at a shelter deep in the woods to take on the role of Kate, accompanied by Pete (Arno van Zelst) - cameraman by trade, actor to help a friend – and H...

Blind – London Horror Festival

What is evil? Can it infect a place and its people? And how would you react if you found yourself trapped in that place, in the dark, alone? Blind is a 30-minute immersive experience from Ryots Productions, currently part of the London Horror Festival, that takes us on a ‘found footage’ type story (in this case purely audio rather than visual) of what happens to historian Alice Levine - in town to share the slightly gruesome history of the newly re-opened Butcher Library - when a sudden power cut plunges her into darkness. When a young girl, that Alice presumes is the caretaker’s daughter, comes to keep her company, she shares a chilling ghost story of the library’s original inhabitants and a doll whose blindfold must never be removed. It’s a classic ‘bumps in the night’ tale by E...