del Toro's creative auspices are extremely noticeable, giving the film the same kind of dark fairytale feel as Pan's Labyrinth, only more horror-orientated, but it suffers from being over-reliant on cheap jump scares. Not quite as enjoyable as last year's opener Hatchet II, but a good start to the proceedings nonetheless!

Just before Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, however, was a short film from friend of FrightFest Jake West (Evil Aliens, Doghouse), who presented the first of a few such movies that will be showing throughout the long weekend as a replacement for Adam Green and Joe Lynch's brilliant Road to FrightFest shorts from years previous. Titled Escape from London, West's film featured a who's who of festival regulars in, as you may have guessed from its name, a parody of John Carpenter's Escape from New York that played out as a countdown to FrightFest and the opening picture. It was a fun way to light the torch as it were and start things off.

Between poster giveaways and the likes of Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Ti West (The Innkeepers) and The Woman director Lucky McKee mingling with the fans, Final Destination 5 3D and anthology film The Theatre Bizarre played to a packed house. We didn't stay for the latter as we'd already seen it, but Final Destination is a lot of fun and was very well received going by the riotous laughter and appreciation for the inspired – and brilliant – death sequences, which are some of the best of the entire franchise.