Hope springs eternal for the communal experience of watching films with an audience – and there was no better demonstration of this at the Pop Up Screens ‘FORBIDDEN FOREST HALLOWEEN‘ season, which has been taking place in Peckham Rye, South East London, at the Copeland Park and Bussey Building, where a makeshift faux-woodland was erected in an interior building where audiences could sit in front of a relatively large cinema-sized screen and enjoy some deliciously dark classics.
Film And TV Now had the pleasure of experiencing the event and two bonafide cult horror classics from the 1980s and 1990s in the form of the late, great Wes Craven’s original 1984 version of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and Andrew Fleming’s 1996 offering THE CRAFT, which introduced Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich to the world in the same year they teamed for Craven’s 1990s classic SCREAM, which yielded three sequels and gave Courteney Cox a contrasting role as ambitious and bitchy reporter Gale Weathers.
For the uninitiated, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is the tale of a group of teenagers who are affected by the same nightmare, featuring a mysterious killer with a glove of razor-sharp knives who consumes them in the very nightmares that they have causing real death. One of them, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) is the most troubled, with a father who is the sheriff of her neighborhood (the late John Saxon) and when her friends, including Glenn Lanz (Johnny Depp in his first major role), start getting affected, Nancy has to face up to her demons….
THE CRAFT, written by Peter Filardi (who wrote the 1990 version of FLATLINERS with Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts amongst others), is the tale of Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney) who arrives as the newcomer to a Catholic school, where she falls in with outcast girls, Nancy (Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell) and Rochelle (Rachel True) who have an obsession with black magic. Sarah seems to have the power and the others see her as ‘the fourth’ in their dark circle. However, the bond they have for each other is about to yield even darker moments…..
So, what of the event itself? Well, this is a fantastic opportunity for people to experience a great movie in a very social environment with proper health and safety procedures – and a reminder that the communal experience of watching a movie with an audience should not be forgotten. The organisers certainly have got a winner on their hands – and dependent on lockdown issues at present, will certainly do the business again in November and December 2020 when the ‘Cinema In The Show’ event will (hopefully take place)
For more information on Forbidden Forest events, please click on the following link:
