The 27th edition of FrightFest takes place in London next weekend (August 27-31), ushering fans of the horror genre to “the dark heart of cinema” via films such as Nervous, The Glorious Dead and Bowels of Hell.
Clearly it’s not for the faint of heart.
But the reason Paul Stainforth is “absolutely buzzing” to be heading down there isn’t the prospect of binge-watching blood, bedlam and gore.
It’s because his debut drama feature, The Brook, has been selected for what will effectively be its world premiere screening, although there was an invitation-only tester showing at Gala Durham where audience reaction played a part in shaping the finished product.
The Brook, filmed in County Durham but with some footage shot in Newcastle nightclub Xerox, is to be shown at Odeon West End at 3.40pm on Saturday, August 29 – in between screenings of The Death of Us and The Alice Paradox.
While mid-afternoon is not generally considered a time of peak jumpiness, Paul will be keeping his fingers crossed that his 93-minute film, in the genre “mystery, thriller, horror”, will give the audience what it wants and, more importantly, impress someone who can get it into cinemas nationwide.
“What I hope is that someone will watch it and go, ‘You know what… Paul and his team have made this and it’s got into FrightFest. OK, we can trust this guy’.
“Well, it was completed within the budget but we’ll see what happens. There are talks going on with distributors.”
That budget, compared with those lavished on the likes of Steven Spielberg, John Hughes and Wes Craven, whose Hollywood blockbusters Paul grew up watching in the 1980s, was tiny.
But he has proved that for £60,000 you can create a full-length feature and get it on at an established festival (FrightFest’s headline sponsor this year is American streaming service Tubi).
“Moving to the village of his mother’s youth, art student Jacob discovers his grandad’s old video camera shows one hour into the past,” goes the FrightFest summary of the plot.
“In Elmbrook, a place steeped in strange folklore and whispered legends, the community believe their village is protected by a puma that watches over the ‘good’.
“But when one of the good locals mysteriously vanishes, Jacob and his friends, armed with the video camera, uncover clues that pull them deeper into Elmbrook’s bizarre secrets.
“Soon the search for answers spirals into a dangerous mystery as they uncover a vengeful serial killer with a connection to the past.”
Paul, born and brought up in Durham, studied graphic design at Newcastle College until he got a job in his second year.
He has his own design agency but you sense his heart really lies in Hazy Pine Pictures, his film production company.
“I’ve always been a film fan and I suppose I sort of transitioned into what I’m doing now.
“I think it came with the introduction of DVDs when you’d get these little behind-the-scenes featurettes. I guess I’ve got that inquisitive nature, thinking how did they do that?
“There’s a scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street where one of the characters is lying in the bath and Freddy’s claw comes out of the water towards her.
“There was no CGI back then so it set me thinking.”
Paul began not with a film school training but with the simple desire to make films.
He shadowed established director Daniel O’Hara, spending time on set when he came to the Northumberland village of Craster to shoot TV folk-horror series The Red King.
“Unofficially he has been my mentor really. I’ve learned so much from him, from going on his sets.
“I help on other people’s sets, too, and it’s great to do that and collaborate. The shadowing opportunity in Craster was brilliant because I was just watching and listening. I call it my unofficial film school.
“I really love being on a set where you might come up against something and not be entirely sure how you’re going to get round it, but you look to the person to your right or left and have a conversation. You always get there in the end.”
Previously Paul has made short films and a documentary called Big Smooth, about the late Neil Fingleton, from County Durham, who went to America to become a basketball player.
“We screened it in the States a couple of times (it premiered at Gala Durham in 2023) but that gave me the experience and, I suppose, the courage to take on a fictional feature film.”
The idea for The Brook, he says, came to him some years ago and was inspired by the local legend of the Durham puma.
Paul suggests that if it ever existed, it might have been one of the exotic pets released into the wild when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was passed in 1976, making the keeping of such creatures illegal without a licence.
Thinking he needed a plot twist, he then turned to one of the ideas he jots down in one of the notebooks he always carries.
“What would happen if you picked up an old video camera and when you looked into it, it showed you a glimpse of the past?”
For most people, the sheer coordination skills required to make a movie – assembling cast and crew, finding locations, gaining permissions and scheduling everything within budget – would be beyond them.
Paul, while not diminishing the challenge, relishes it and has proved he can do it.
For The Brook he assembled a good cast including North East actors Connor Lawson, Helen Chong, Kylie Ann Ford and Jill Dellow, and worked with Scottish screenwriter Chris Watt which enabled them to access some funding from Creative Scotland.
Much of the filming was done around Stanhope and Eastlake, in a deeply rural area of County Durham, but some sequences were shot at his old school, Framwellgate Moor Comprehensive (now Framwellgate School Durham).
They even filmed in the classroom where Paul used to study art.
“They were really good in working with us and really supportive. They’re having a new school built so perhaps there was a little bit of, ‘Well, this school is getting torn down anyway’.
“But they were happy for us to do our thing.”
If FrightFest goes frightfully well for Paul, we might soon be able to see The Brook at a cinema near us.
In the meantime, he has a very good idea for a ghost story…