Five FrightFest Facts From Braden Croft director of True Fiction

The Twentieth FrightFest is here so obviously our exclusive interview feature Five FrightFest Facts From… is back with a vengeance. Below we hear from Braden Croft director of True Fiction and you can read more FrightFest Facts from 2019 and beyond by clicking HERE.

1. Tell us about your film?
True Fiction is a two-hander psychological thriller about a young woman assisting her hero, a reclusive author, in writing his next book. She agrees to be his psychological guineau pig to inspire him and, well, things go pretty sideways.

2. How did you get into making horror movies?
I first fell in love with horror when I picked up my dad’s copy of Stephen King’s “Skeleton Crew” when I was far too young to understand it all. From there I moved onto horror films and comic books that fed that morbid, macabre itch. At some point, still in elementary school, I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker and that the only natural fit would be to make the horror movies like the one’s I saw and read growing up.

3. What film would you love to see screened at FrightFest and why?
ANY film? Well, I’d love to see every film I’m yet to make screen at FrightFest, haha. Maybe I don’t understand the question. As for films screening this year I’d love to see Come To Daddy, Freaks, Why Don’t You Just Die and Satanic Panic. My only annoyance with ANY festival experience is that there are hidden gems in the program that tend to be overlooked or overshadowed. It’s only after word-of-mouth hits well after the film’s first festival screenings that you realize you missed a unique opportunity to watch something special on its first run. Hopefully said films get their due and find a platform for a wider audience down the road. Retrospectively, I think I’d program Shinya Tsukamoto’s catalogue for FrightFest’s genre savvy festival goers. It’d be a riot to see his early works grace the screens again.

4. If you could create your own award to give at the FrightFest, what would it be and why?
Great question! Maybe something to honour transgressive / trash cinema. Festivals like FrightFest are so welcoming to the furthest reaches of the genre that it’s only natural cinema’s black sheep get their due on a large stage.

5. If your life was made into a horror film, what would it be called and who would play the starring role?
I’m loving this… brilliant question. I adore films with absurdly long titles like, “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb.” Everyone knows Peter George’s novel, “Red Alert,” its source material, would have been an amazing title, but not amazing enough for Kubrick.

My life’s title would be, “The Existential Horror Of A Life Well Lived or: How To Live In Your Head And Still Make Your Bed In The Morning.” It’d star Andy Serkis as everyone, but digitally resurrected stars of horror filling out the cast. Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Peter Lorre, etc. A young Jessica Harper would play my time-traveling mother that brings me (a young Gregory Peck, via Andy Serkis) through stages of my life – A Christmas Carol / It’s A Wonderful Life style – but ends on a bittersweet note that life is meaningless and shouldn’t be taken so seriously, so you might as well just keep living it. It’d be a bit of a downer but uplifting too like a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

TRUE FICTION EUROPEAN PREMIERE CINEWORLD DISCOVERY – SATURDAY 24 AUGUST Find out more HERE.

avatar

Alex Humphrey

Alex studied film at the University of Kent and went on to work for Universal Pictures in their Post Room gaining an inside look at the movie industry from the very bottom. Constantly writing reviews in everything from local magazines to Hip Hop sites Alex honed his critical skills even spending a brief period as a restaurant critic. Read more

Related post

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.