The GenreBlast Film Festival is entering its sixth year of genre film goodness. A one-of-a-kind film experience created for both filmmakers and film lovers to celebrate genre filmmaking in an approachable environment, it has been described by Movie Maker Magazine as a “summer camp for filmmakers.”

Over the next few days, I’ll be reviewing several movies from this fest, based in the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. This year, there are 14 feature films and 87 short films from all over the world. Weekend passes are only $65 and you can get them right here.

Pretty Pickle (2022): Samuel (Brennan Urbi) is getting closer to his girlfriend Samantha (Whitney Masters). And in between all the great sex — she’s GGG for more than even he may be ready for — he wonders what she’s all about. I mean, we all have our strange little things and part of the new relationship journey is discovering and living with those quirks. So after Samuel hacks her iPhone by getting her Netflix password, he starts looking through her private photos. Mostly, it’s photos of Larry the cat (played by a cat named Captain Pancakes, who has his own IMDB, Facebook and web pages). But then he finds something else.

Director and writer Jim Vendiola has made something strange and wonderful here. This is something I’ve never had happen to me and I thought I had truly seen it all. I guess now I have. Wow — you can still be shocked.