With FrightFest annual horror feast nearly on us, Nina Romain looks at the onscreen cases of technology running riot – and why we run to watch them.
Technology getting the upper hand over humans has long been a beloved horror theme, showing us what happens when we don’t get to live in the glossy fiction of the non-existent world of Tron.
Orwell’s unfortunate antihero Winston Smith is trapped in a nightmarish tech-nightmare where he is under the allseeing eye of Big Brother, who was “always…watching you”. Smith reflects despairingly that: “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”
When it comes to British dystopias, Children of Men (2007) depicts a similar UK overrun by savage gangs, and of course Threads, (1984) where humanity is reduced to terrified starvation after a nuclear nightmare.
Any visitors to WestWorld, in both the 1973s feature and 2016-2022 small-screen series, fall into a technology-created Wild West adventure world set in a desert-plains fantasy. Here humans pay to be entertained by robots programmed to fulfill their every whim, but there’s a dark underbelly waiting for them. In the remake of Total Recall (2012), the trap is a grimy, innercity world where you are tracked by implanted devices and hunted down by police.
FrightFest this month looks at the downside of technology, with features set in apocalyptic and bio-hazard horror worlds. There are cases of biotech conferences runs riot, allowing a mutating virus to be set free (Colony, 2026), or chaos caused by a hospital-based infection (Species (Sanguine), 2026), or even spiders getting smart enough to give humans a run for their money (Spider Island, 2026).
Greg Day, Co-director, FrightFest says of August’s offerings:
“Tubi FrightFest’s line-up this year is record-breaking, with 82 features and 40 shorts, which not only highlights the genre’s transforming landscape, but also reflects the amazing span of progressive global genre filmmaking.
“FrightFest knows what creates resonance with its audience, knows where there is space for depth of exciting storytelling and knows what is important in the ultimate scheme of festival priorities: to interact, scream, laugh and debate in a safe space, with a like-minded community. In other words, it’s FrightFest business as usual, where the dark heart of cinema is always beating.”
London’s Shy Films’ producer, Harry Haroon will work on feature Cyber Food later this year, which he defined as using “creepy dystopian aesthetics”.
Haroon adds: “Everyone loves a good story of technology gone bad. That’s why we’re shooting Cyber Food in a bleak, dystopian future, where humanity has replaced real food with VR experiences and an addictive, mysterious serum. It’s a dark, gritty blend of cyberpunk and dark comedy looking at technology, and addiction, which we’ll create using low lighting, grainy footage and dark colours.”
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