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.

The Barn Part II (2022): I’d put off watching The Barn for so long; it just seemed like a rather silly for silly sake Troma-esque mining of the wonderous golden age of the slasher. Man, I was wrong. This movie completely rocks on every level and is way, way better than I had no idea it could have been.

The Halloween ban is now lifted in Helen’s Valley and the sorority girls of Gamma Tau Psi place Michelle (Lexi Dripps) — once the final girl, destined to be the final girl again — in charge of their haunted house. Yet she still hasn’t come to terms with what happened in the first movie and believes that she survived what was only a ritualistic attack that killed all her friends.

Working with her best friend Heather (Sable Griedel), they start planning the haunt and decide to use it to memorialize the still missing Sam (Mitchell Musolino) and Josh (Will Stout). While the story of the first movie has become only an urban legend, the truth is that The Boogeyman, Hollow Jack and the Candy Corn Scarecrow are back. And if you don’t know their story, Drive-In Joe (Joe Bob Briggs!) will handle the exposition.

There’s also a battle to outlaw Halloween again, led by Sara Barnhart (Linnea Quigley) and battled by DJ Dr. Rock (Ari Lehman). They’re not the only great cameos. Lloyd Kaufmann is the town’s mayor, Diana Prince plays a nurse, Doug Bradley plays Sam’s father, Mister Lobo shows up and even Ben Dietels from Neon Brainiacs is in it!

Director and writer Justin M. Seaman has created a movie that lives up to 90s DTV horror and can also stand on its own. I had an absolute blast watching this movie. See it in a theater — or a drive-in! — if you can or with as many people as you can. It’s filled with goofy monsters — including two new ones — as well as inventive kills and all kinds of gore.

You can order DVDs and blu rays here and learn more at the official Facebook page.

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.

Please Don’t Abandon Me (2022): Helena (Valentina Sumavsky) has been living with her boyfriend Jesus (Jesús Meza) and things have been going well. But the past, well, the past has made Helena constantly wonder when her happiness will end. Drugs, emotional issues, past damage — she knows that this relationship will end soon and it starts to take her into a very dismal place.

Directed and written by Antonio Rotunno, the movie quickly moves into Helena dispatching of Jesus in a long, drawn-out sequence with plenty of stabbing. So much stabbing. And then more stabbing. Followed by her sewing job reminding her of that skinny blade going in and out of skin, over and over. Concealing the defensive wounds under sunglasses, she keeps up the appearance of a normal life, but when others want to see Jesus and people start asking questions, it gets harder and harder to keep the corpse of her once alive lover in the house, leading to her having to dispose of the body as well as anyone who gets too close.

I was hoping for more in this movie but it gets to its most dramatic moments early and then the close — which echoes The New York Ripper‘s dog reveal — seemed like too cute of a button after all the horror that I’d just seen. Maybe it’ll work better for you or it’s meant to be watched with others, because it all left me rather cold.

You can see the trailer to this movie here.

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.

Follow Her (2022): Jess Peters (Dani Barker, who also wrote the film) is a struggling actress and live streaming influencer who has been getting somewhat famous answering job listings from creepy men and then sneak filming and either revealing their behavior or kink-shaming them.

Now, she’s found a job that asks her to go to a remote cabin and co-write a script with Tom Brady (Luke Cook) — not the athlete — and playact as the two main characters in his psychosexual murder mystery. She finds herself attracted to him but plans on using this as content for her streaming channel. But what if she’s someone else’s content?

Originally known as Classified Killer, this is the full-length debut of director Sylvia Caminer. I really don’t want to get much deeper into the twists and turns of the movie, except to say that the first one actually got me. This film gets more intense as it goes on and it totally took me for a ride. It works hard to get you to like Jess, who has a pretty unlikeable online character and makes you wonder who is behind the people that you live vicariously through social media.

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.

Fresh Hell (2021): Created by a group of Chicago theatre artists locked out of their livelihoods by the pandemic, Fresh Hell was a movie I thought I’d struggle through. No offense to directors Ryan Imhoff (who also wrote the script and plays The Stranger) and Matt Neal, but I’m on Microsoft Teams all day for work and struggle to get through up to ten virtual meetings a day. Could I handle one in my non-work free time?

Grace (Lanise Antoine Shelley), James (Randolph Thompson), Kara (Christine Vrem-Ydstie), Cynthia (Crystal Kim), Brian (Tyler Owen Parsons), Scott (Will Mobley), Todd (Rob Fagin) and Laura (Christina Reis) all gather for a video chat and by the end, The Stranger appears in place of their friend Laura. Their call ends with him knowing too much about them, hints that Laura is dead and the sinister man slicing his own cock off and showing the bloody wound left behind.

This is where the film changed and brought me in. Grace lost her sister in the early days of COVID-19 and while everyone else thinks Laura’s death is some kind of joke, she worries that what they’ve seen may be real. That’s when The Stranger starts coming for everyone else.

Meanwhile, Scott has become an alt-right firebrand, human puppies show up in the background of the others when Grace tries to warn them and then the finale is an on-stage talk show with the surviving characters and The Stranger, which again, is unexpected.

I’m glad I stuck with this movie. I was honestly expecting it to be background noise, but it becomes more deranged, unsettled and surprising as it goes on. And isn’t that what we want from movies these days? Trust me: stick around for that first videochat and then buckle up.