GENREBLAST FILM FESTIVAL: Marginalia (2025)

Directed and written by Mark Beal, Marginalia is about Sister Trista, who comes to Karnstein Abbey to help her fellow nuns mourn the recently departed abbess. As often happens in movies like this, the sisters all end up being devil worshippers, and Trista must stop them from their sinister ways.

There are also killer rabbits — rendered in stop-motion — in this black-and-white Eurohorror-style movie, which has way more art direction and sound design than the films that inspired it. Filled with practical effects and dripping with atmosphere, this is the kind of movie that I wished I’d seen in a theater instead of on my laptop. Hopefully, it plays here, and I can rectify that situation.

This is the kind of church that I always thought the nuns in my Catholic school went back to after they taught us. But yeah, it only exists in the movies. Additionally, the demon in this bears a striking resemblance to Patch in Santa Claus.