Preview: Frightfest, Odeon West End, London

The up-and-coming British horror director Jake West brings his new film, Evil Aliens, to this year's Frightfest. This is the UK's biggest horror and fantasy film festival, with the The Odeon West End in London playing host to 22 films screened over four days. Evil Aliens, about an alien abduction on a remote Welsh farming island, is West's second film. His debut film, Razor Blade Smile (1998), was about a female vampire-assassin. "It is splat-stick - gory sci-fi horror comedy," says West. "It is influenced by Shaun of the Dead and The Evil Dead films." What is the goriest part in the new film? "When numerous aliens get mown down by a combine harvester."

The festival's opening film is Land of the Dead, by the legendary horror director George A Romero. There will also be screenings of his Living Dead trilogy. Other highlights are the world premiere of Wild Country, a Scottish werewolf film, directed by Craig Strachan. Antibodies, by the German director Christian Alvart, is a bleak look at the serial killer. The closing-night film, Wolf Creek, a debut for the director Greg McLean, is based on the true story of the backpacker-killer who held the Outback in a grip of terror in the early 1990s.

The Evil Aliens cast includes Jodie Shaw, who plays the actress sent by a television crew to do a reconstruction of the alien abduction. "She transforms from a moaning actress to a full-on action heroine," says West about her role. "I made it as a valentine to a lot of the fun and gory splatter movies that I saw as a kid.

"A lot of good film-makers started in horror," West points out. "Sam Raimi [who made the Evil Dead trilogy] went on to do Spiderman I and II, and Peter Jackson [responsible for the ultimate splatterfests Bad Taste and Braindead] went on to do the Lord of the Rings films and King Kong. I am trying to follow in those film-makers' footsteps."

26-29 August (0871 221 4007)