THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING. WE’RE A WEEK CLOSER… Your time is running out. You need to make ready, steel yourselves for the inevitable. This Halloween it is going to be GRIMM UP NORTH! You have two options: You can make a decision now to join us at the Printworks, where you will be safe, for a monstrous three-day marathon of cinematic nightmares… Or you can take a risk, leave it to chance, and find yourself standing cold, alone and unprotected when the zombies hit Manchester! Still wavering and uncertain? Want to hear more before you make a decision? OK, then. Check out below the latest devilish dispatches from the Brothers and Sisters GRIMM.

WORLD PREMIERE AT GRIMM UP NORTH OF “THE REEDS”

MANCHESTER GOES TO HELL!
We were rummaging around in this dusty antique shop in the back of beyond the other week, and at the bottom of a pile of scrap we found something that looked like an engraved brass Rubik’s Cube. The shop owner seemed all too eager to let us have it for next to nothing. Almost as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of it. He probably thought he was tricking us, but we knew exactly what it was. Right now it’s sitting in the GRIMM UP NORTH Office like an unexploded bomb…… But not for much longer. We intend to give it a twist this Halloween and unleash the Cenobites right here in Manchester.

That’s right – THE CENOBITES ARE COMING! We are pleased to announce that Doug Bradley AKA PIN HEAD, Nicholas Vince AKA CHATTERER and Simon Bamford AKA BUTTERBALL will be joining us at GRIMM UP NORTH on the evening of Friday 30th October, to support our special screening of HELLRAISER. Here’s your chance to get as up close and personal as you dare; to ask them all those questions you’ve always wanted to ask. Even if the answers might prove more than your frail mortal form can bear.

We’ll also have signing sessions, for those who want autographs (There will be a charge for this – we have to pay the Cenobites somehow, and we`d like to keep our souls for now). Exact time details will follow shortly, so keep your eyes on the GRIMMFEST site.

FEAR NOT – YOU WON’T BE LEFT ALONE WITH THE CENOBITES!
There’ll be Aliens, Predators, Imperial Stormtroopers and all manner of other unlikely creatures wandering the festival venue all weekend. Hopefully some of them will prove to be friendly.

If not, there are always our celebrity guests. We’ve a whole host of directors, stars, and crew attending to support the screenings of their films, and take part in exclusive Q&A and signing sessions.

Here’s how the roster looks so far (subject to last-minute work commitments of course!):

ATTENDING THURSDAY
Jon Harris – director THE DESCENT 2
Anna Skellern – Star of THE DESCENT 2
Myanna Buring – star of THE DESCENT 2

ATTENDING FRIDAY
Gregory Mandry – Director, GNAW
Gary Faulkner – The Slaughterman from GNAW
Toni Harman – director, CREDO
Myanna Buring Star of CREDO, THE DESCENT 2
The cast from DREAD
Leigh Dovey – director of THE FALLOWFIELD
Steve Garry – star of THE FALLOWFIELD
Cast and crew from THE REEDS

ATTENDING SATURDAY
Cast and crew TONY
Holly Weston – star of SPLINTERED, FILTH AND WISDOM
Sacha Dhawan – star of SPLINTERED, THE HISTORY BOYS
Jonathan Readwin – star of SPLINTERED, DREAD
Sol Heras – star of SPLINTERED, ROCK RIVALS
Sadie Pickering – star of SPLINTERED, WATERLOO ROAD
Simeon Halligan – director of SPLINTERED
Rachel Richardson-Jones – producer of SPLINTERED
Scott McIntyre – SFX, SPLINTERED, DOG HOUSE, THE REEDS
Darren Longthorn and Steve – Prosthetics and special makeup effects, SPLINTERED
Faye Jackson – director of STRIGOI
Rey Muraru – producer of STRIGOI

ATTENDING SUNDAY
Mark Price – director of COLIN
Cast and crew of COLIN
Kate Glover – Director of SLAUGHTERED
Alan Harris – producer of THE FERRYMAN
Cast and crew – THE DISAPPEARED
Dexter Fletcher – Star of AUTUMN, LOCKSTOCK, LAYERCAKE
David Moody – Writer of AUTUMN, HATER
Dickon Tolson – star of AUTUMN, PEAK PRACTICE

REMEMBER, DAY TICKET PURCHASE WILL GET YOU PRIORITY ACCESS TO ALL GRIMMFEST Q+A’S, SEMINARS AND SIGNING SESSIONS.

SURPRISE FILM ADDED TO THE PROGRAMME!
We’ve been holding back a slot in our schedule for one final, heart-stopping surprise movie – and now at last we can reveal it! We are thrilled to announce the world premiere of UK horror film THE REEDS! (pictured above)

A weekend boating party turns into a nightmare for a group of young Londoners when they stumble upon a terrifying secret hidden in the reeds.

Produced by Simon Sprackling, director of cult horror comedy Funnyman as well as sterling genre documentaries on cult 70s exploitation actresses Linda Hayden and Judy Geeson, directed by Nick Cohen (Voodoo Lagoon), and with a screenplay by Chris Baker (Long Time Dead), the film stars Will Mellor (Two Pint of Lager, Casualty), Scarlett Alice Johnson (Adulthood, Eastenders), Emma Catherwood (Holby City, Spirit Trap), Geoff Bell (Rock and Rolla, Solomon Kane, Stardust).

Check out the eerie, atmospheric trailer HERE .

15 PREMIERES FOR OUR PREMIERE FESTIVAL!
THE REEDS is just the latest addition to a premiere-packed programme. Here at GRIMM UP NORTH, we are determined to start as we mean to go on. It’s our first year, and we wanted to ensure that our debut would be a memorable one. So for our premiere festival, we have secured no less than FIFTEEN film premieres – some regional, some national, some European, and some even World Premieres. Want to hear more? Of course you do.

THURSDAY PREMIERE!
We’re kicking off proceedings on Thursday 29th November with the North West Premiere of THE DESCENT 2, a Gala Screening with Director Jon Harris and stars Myanna Buring and Anna Skelton attending.

FRIDAY PREMIERES!
Friday sees the world premieres of THE REEDS and rural shocker THE FALLOW FIELD, UK premieres of the psychopathic TONY, the savage 7th HUNT, the North West Premiere of the nerve-jangling DREAD, and the outrageous SOMEONE’S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR – which is screening the same weekend at Gorezone’s Halloween bash, but not till after it shows at GRIMM, so we might actually have the UK Premiere of this!

SATURDAY PREMIERES!
Saturday offers UK Premieres of Zombie buddy comedy THE REVENANT, postmodern desert shocker THE GRAVES, rambunctious Romanian vampire comedy STRIGOI, and flies the flag for the North West with the locally produced psycho-shocker SPLINTERED.

SUNDAY PREMIERES!
Sunday is no day of rest, either. While Zombies rampage around Manchester, we’ll be premiering the long-awaited undead horror, AUTUMN, from the cult novels by David Moody, the outback slasher SLAUGHTERED, and the bloody and beautiful BATHORY.

And of course the rest of the programme is pretty damn strong meat as well, even if we do say so ourselves

FEAR IS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE!
The whole world is currently going through a horror renaissance. And so much of the best horror in recent years has been languages other than English. The French and Belgians have unleashed a ferocious assault on the senses by taking on the traditional themes of American backwoods horror and cranking them all the way up to ELEVEN. The Japanese and Koreans have forced us to re-imagine the ghost story and have confronted us with new levels of depravity and outrage. – check out the bloodsoaked high camp excess of VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL if you don’t believe us! And the cerebral Scandinavians have started to find new ways to deal with all of that unwanted angst. Here at GRIMM, we are not content to go rummaging through all-too-familiar viscera and digging around in all of the usual graveyards to shock and amaze our audiences. We intend to look further afield, off that beaten track and out into the wilds. We want to stretch t hat definition of horror to its very limit. This year, we bring you the eerie and beautiful SAUNA, from Finland, the darkly hilarious STRIGOI from Romania, and the bold and bloody historical epic BATHORY. If you are in search of something rich and strange, a change of pace from the slashers and the cannibals and the unquiet dead, these could be the films for you.

Don’t say we don’t think about our audience!

But just WHAT we think is something else again!

Expect to hear from us again,

THE GRIMM TEAM