In this, the concluding part of my review of the cinematic highlights of the Abertoir horror festival (for the first part, click here) I cover the other half-dozen films I enjoyed over the closing weekend. Among them are the strongest and most controversial of the week’s offerings. Indeed, no horror festival feels complete without at least one film that sharply divides opinion – triggering boozy, impassioned debate among attendees late into the night, long after the projector has been switched off – and Abertoir supplied us with a couple. I’d like to be able to say the first film I’m covering, Antiviral, wasn’t controversial, inasmuch as it’s unquestionably a very powerful, clever and unsettling film, though doubtless some didn’t find it to their personal tastes.

Intriguingly, it was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David Cronenberg, the Canadian director who’s widely credited as the master of ‘body horror’. Judging by Antiviral, this apple didn’t fall very far from the metaphorical tree. Antiviral is set in an uncomfortably plausible, very near future, where fans try and get even closer to celebrities by being infected by the same diseases caught by their pin-ups and heroes, exclusive viruses extracted from their idols for the purpose by dedicated clinics. Our protagonist works for one such organisation, but also moonlights pirating particularly rare diseases from big names to sell on the black market. Matters get complicated when he smuggles one such virus out of the clinic by infecting himself, only to discover it might be lethal…

There aren’t really any likeable characters in Antiviral, and the setting is resolutely cynical and bleak in a grim, clinical fashion. It was also one of a number of medical horrors on over the week – anybody squeamish about hypodermics and such should prepare to squirm on a regular basis (I gather the numerous scenes involving syringes weren’t faked). With those provisos, I’d recommend Antiviral to anyone who enjoys skilful, dark, compelling filmmaking. It has something to say – that maybe celebrity culture isn’t just crass and moronic, but toxic and pathological – and says it with subtlety and chilling style: One of the best films of 2012 in my opinion.

Next up was a blast-from-the-video-nasty-past, in the peculiar shape of the offbeat 1981 Italian zombie flick The Beyond, introduced at Abertoir by its charming star Catriona MacColl. It was directed by Lucio Fulci, and initially enjoyed notoriety for its excessively gory effects. However, The Beyond, alongside the other films in the director’s unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy – City of the Living Dead and House by the Cemetery (the latter also screened at Abertoir) – subsequently began to attract more serious accolades from fans who identified a unique, nightmarish surrealism in Fulci’s best work. The real question remains whether this hallucinatory element was deliberate, or an incidental consequence of the low budget, rushed schedules and problems inherent in a multi-lingual production, issues certainly evident in some painful shortcomings in the dialogue and such.

Ms MacColl helped throw a little light on matters. She recalled that she had long thought the scriptwriting was poor, but subsequently reached the opinion that The Beyond had started as a sophisticated, well-written story, but had suffered badly from a third rate translation from Italian to English. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Today, The Beyond elicits at least as many giggles as horrified gasps, and it’s difficult to believe it was once heavily cut, or even banned in many territories. Whether a torrid work of surreal genius or a happy accident propelled by exquisitely bad taste, Fulci’s masterpiece remains a supremely entertaining cinematic experience.

American Mary was certainly Abertoir’s most eagerly anticipated preview, and soon also became the most controversial, with much of the controversy caught up in that anticipation. For American Mary has been taking the international festival circuit by storm, an assault led by a relentless charm offensive headed by the film’s glamorous writer-directors Jen and Sylvia Soska. The self-styled ‘Twisted Twins’ have successfully launched a PR blitzkrieg, online and in person at film events, which has seen them soar from film school to the forefront of the indie film pack in just a few short years. The issue then, of course, is whether the film can match the hype – the answer, inevitably perhaps, being that it depends who you ask…

Most reviews begin by observing how far the Soskas have come since their debut Dead Hooker in a Trunk, which I saw when it first previewed in 2009. Being frank, I can’t agree. Dead Hooker… was what it was – a good, mischievous film school project that got gloriously out-of-control, but a film school project all the same. American Mary has evidently had much more money, and hence technical experience and expertise thrown at it, but it has almost identical problems. In common with so many first features, Dead Hooker… was way too long (though I gather it was cut before it as released on DVD), and American Mary could stand to lose at least 20 minutes. The pacing’s uneven, and the plot meanders unsteadily from one superfluous scene to the next, while character development remains largely indiscernible, as characters awkwardly conform to increasingly implausible plot demands. None of which would matter, perhaps, in an exploitation film.

But American Mary only thinks it’s an exploitation film. The real deal is more crass, brash, cynical and nasty, while American Mary is never as shocking as it likes to believe. Taking body-modification as its central theme was probably a mistake, as it’s not really been edgy or transgressive for many years. Adding a rape-revenge plot to try and keep things moving and suggest a feminist subtext just felt sort of cheap and sleazy – and not in a good or convincing way – though it’s bound to play well to the gallery in many audiences. As indeed it did at Abertoir, with many leaving the cinema convinced they’d seen a masterpiece. I left wondering if this was evidence that the world depicted in Antiviral – where an obsession with personalities eclipses our understanding of the quality and substance of products – was already with us.

In some respects, John Dies at the End proved equally divisive, though this time I found myself on the opposite side of the divide. Based on a cult novel by the Cracked writer David Wong and directed by Don Coscarelli, it was my favourite film of the week, and possibly the year. Coscarelli was long best known for the Phantasm films (1979-98), which like Fulci’s Gates trilogy combine surrealism and splatter, and to be honest I’d always assumed that their distinctive nightmarish quality owed at least as much to slapdash filmmaking as deliberate design. I’m now certain I was wrong. Of his generation of filmmakers, arguably only Coscarelli is still making movies in the 21st century with a distinctive style – first with the wonderful Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) and now with John Dies at the End – an auteur who specialises in blending the grotesque and absurd in films that generate genuine emotional resonance with the most improbable material.

John Dies at the End seriously shouldn’t work on paper. It has a plot that refuses to adhere to any demands of narrative or logic, let alone narrative logic. Characters may or may not be who we – or indeed they – think they are, while much of the film’s most important exposition is delivered via a bratwurst sausage. Yet somehow or other – even though explaining it to someone afterwards would prove a formidable challenge – as delivered by Coscarelli and his talented cast it all makes perfect sense on the screen. John Dies at the End positively fizzes and sizzles with fervid creativity, playing games with the audience that nobody should get away with – and I know some viewers found it disorientating to the point of exasperation – but I adored every demented, hilarious second of it.

Following something as unusual and frenetic as John Dies at the End would be a challenge for any film, and the downbeat urban chiller Citadel did struggle a little. Set in a horrifically bleak Scottish housing estate, Citadel is the very opposite of a feel-good film – a feel-shit flick? – which fits broadly into the ‘hoodie horror’ subgenre, where victims are terrorised by tracksuit-clad members of the UK’s teenaged underclass. Citadel captures the misery and menace of these neglected urban wastelands very well – perhaps too well as casual audiences may find the experience too grim and harrowing by half. The metaphors are laid on with a trowel, and I’d have preferred it if Citadel had been either more of a straight horror or a grotesque kitchen sink drama, rather than hanging somewhere in the middle for much of its running time. But this is undeniably potent filmmaking, using the horror genre to construct a disturbing reminder of the soul-destroying despair that haunts deprived districts in cities across the nation.

It’s traditional to finish horror festivals with a bang and a giggle – a film that combines uncontroversial quality with crowd-pleasing humour – and at this year’s Abertoir Sightseers was in the frame. It was made by Brit director Ben Wheatley, whose previous films – the 2009 gangster film Down Terrace and the 2011 horror thriller Kill List – had enjoyed broad critical acclaim, but left me cold. (Shades of American Mary mayhaps?…) I’m happy to be able to report that Sightseers is by far my favourite of his films to date, a very British pitch-black comedy that, to my mind, suited Wheatley’s understated, almost improvisational style far better than his previous films. Imagine Natural Born Killers remade by the depressingly homely Yorkshire playwright Alan Bennett and you’ll get some idea of the tone of this wonderfully droll little gem. I’ve noticed it’s playing at our local cinema in a few weeks, and I’m planning on taking my parents to see it. Now you can’t say that about many films previewed at horror festivals…