Miyabi (Kaho Seto) has lost her daughter when she falls from the balcony, which puts her in a dark place, working as an escort in a basement somewhere with two other women. Sure, she has a new guy, but one of her co-workers — Aiwaza (Daiki Nunami) — loses her mind and kills a whole bunch of people with a knife.

One of Aiwaza’s prize clients — Oka (Satoshi Oka) — now needs someone to take care of his needs, so Miyabi takes over. His needs? He takes photos of women, slowly, strangely and in ways that make them feel like they’re being dissected. Yes, that’s strange. But what’s strange is that his house is either always pitch black or blindingly red. Strange enough? What if he had no vocal cords and now spoke through the sound system of his home at body-rattling volume? And what if, with each photo that Oka takes, Miyabi gets closer to seeing her dead daughter?

Also, none of this could be happening. Or all of it.

Directed and written by Keishi Kondo, this is not a movie to go into hoping for a straight-up horror film. But for those willing to journey toward its heart of darkness, there’s something strange and wonderful here.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Directed and written by Nathan Blackwell, this film presents a captivating and unconventional narrative that delves into friendship, creativity and redemption themes. The story centers on Marshall (portrayed by Adam Rini), who grapples with a profound sense of urgency as the world faces imminent destruction. He is compelled to take bold action with only thirty days left to live, revealed through a mysterious voice in their minds.

In a heartfelt bid to reconnect with his past and find meaning in his final days, Marshall decides to gather a diverse group of friends and acquaintances—among them, his ex-wife Audrey (played by Megan Rini). Together, they embark on the ambitious journey of completing a science fiction film that Marshall and his childhood friends had started but never finished during their high school years.

To assemble his team, Marshall reaches out to his old friends, Lance (played by Ryan Gaumont) and Arthur (portrayed by Craig Curtis), who share his passion for filmmaking. Despite the chaos and uncertainty surrounding them, the trio rekindles their camaraderie and begins to revisit their youthful dreams and aspirations. They channel their collective energy into the creative process, using the act of making the film as a way to confront their fears and desires.

As the narrative unfolds, the film takes on a distinctly uplifting tone, celebrating the transformative power of cinema. Despite the looming threat of the world’s end, Marshall and his friends find joy and purpose in their collaboration. The filmmaking experience becomes not just a project but a therapeutic journey that enables Marshall to confront his past mistakes and grow as an individual.

Throughout the film, there are moments of poignant reflection and humor, showcasing the resilience of the human spirit even in the face of an apocalyptic reality. The camaraderie among the group, combined with their shared commitment to the art of filmmaking, underscores the message that creativity can flourish even in the darkest of times.

Ultimately, this film serves as a testament to the enduring impact of storytelling. It encourages viewers to appreciate the present and find solace in our connections with others. As the narrative reaches its conclusion, the uplifting spirit of the film leaves audiences with a sense of hope, suggesting that while the world may be ending, the legacy of their collective artistry will continue beyond the final frame.

The Chattanooga Film Festival runs from now through June 29. Click here to get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

On the Seed & Spark site that helped fund this movie, it literally says “The Exorcist convinced the world that Ouija Boards are a dangerous tool that shouldn’t be considered a game, but The Haunting of Hype House wants to make Ouija Boards fun again.”

I mean, as someone who has a list of a few hundred Ouija-based movies, I can agree.

Back in 1969, an unspeakable death took place on a quiet mountainside somewhere around the outskirts of Los Angeles.

Now, Jared Zenith (Matt Farren), a social media star, and his assistant Mike make the vlogs that the internet loves, ones filled with not just pranks but out and out jump scares. Jared’s brother Eric (Michael Salamone) is in town and Jared has some sibling issues to deal with but he’s probably just going to make his brother look like a moron on the internet.

Eric sees something he thinks is an actual supernatural event.

And then out comes the Ouija board.

Farren came up with the idea for this movie in a very simple way: “I came up with this idea THREE YEARS AGO when I thought of one simple question: what if a ghost possessed a really unlikeable guy, and his friends realized they liked the ghost more than their buddy?”

Farren co-directed this with Brandon Douglas and wrote the script. It has some budget issues, sure, but it’s a great idea and the cast is pretty fun. The acting could use a little work, but I can say the same thing for some big budget films.

You can learn more on the official site.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Co-writer, producer and star Steph Holmbo makes her feature film debut in this film, which has been described as “an enigmatic tale of #MeToo psychological horror inspired by real events.”

Holmbo has decided to share her experiences through “phantasmagoric and supernatural lenses.”

Directed by Perry Home Video and written by Holmbo with Joseph Kolean and Zachary Gutierrez, this has the woman moving out and being on her own, but what seems like a place of respite turns horrific with moments small — a refrigerator inexplicably filled with rotting food — and huge — red light bathing everything.

There’s also a moment where a watermelon pays the price.

Soft Liquid Center may not appeal to everyone — literally it sits in place for some time and just has ambient audio for some parts — but for those who catch the vibe, it may feel just right.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

H. P. Lovecraft (Jeffrey Combs!) tells his cabby (Brian Yuzna) to wait outside the monastery — he’s got a Necronomicon to find. As he races to find a copy before the monks stop him, he’s locked inside a room where he gets to discover the future through the book.

The first story, “The Drowned,” is loosely based on “The Rats in the Walls.” It tells the story of Jethro De Lapoer (Richard Lynch!), whose wife and child died in an accident, causing him to set a Bible ablaze at the funeral. He brings them back to life with the Necronomicon, but the green glowing eyes of his family as they rise upset him so much that he leaps to his death. His nephew has no such compunctions and brings back his wife Clara (Maria Ford), who comes back in the same way, nearly causing his death. Stuart Gordon’s Castle Freak was also inspired by this same story. This story and the framing story come from Yuzna.

“The Cold” is based on the short story “Cool Air” and has Dr. Madden (David Warner!) injecting spinal fluid and staying inside a chilled room to stay alive forever, at least until the power goes out. Dennis Christopher, Gary Graham and Millie Perkins are also in this story, which you may have seen in Alberty Pyun’s H. P. Lovecraft’s Cool Air or the Jeannot Szwarc-directed, Rod Serling-written Night Gallery episode. This was directed by Christopher Gans, the director of Brotherhood of the Wolf and Silent Hill.

“Whispers” is based on “The Whisper in the Darkness.” This one has monster bats and all the gore you’ve been looking for, as if the last segment wasn’t packed with enough melting people. This one comes from Shusuke Kaneko, who made the Heisei era Gamera movies Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, Attack of Legion and Revenge of Iris, as well as Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

At the end, Lovecraft avoids the monks and runs into the night. This film may not be completely successful at making an anthology of his stories, but it’s pretty entertaining. It was well-received in the U.S., but a much bigger success in Europe and Asia, where it played theaters.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Robert Rundle is a maniac.

Seriously, who knew that the director of Cybernator and Run Like Hell— as well as scarecrow #1 in Dark Harvest, ninja guard #1 in Big Sister 2000 and Bo Stompkins in Raw Energy — and writers Randall Frakes (Rollerblade, Hell Comes to Frogtown) and Tanya York (Frogtown II) would be able to create such a piece of outright lunacy? I always discuss movies seemingly made by aliens that have no idea what humanity is like and beam us their ideas and as such they’re so strange that nothing seems like anything a human being would do.

This is the movie we send back to them.

The Vampire of Los Angeles (Don Stroud) is the kind of killer that only direct-to-video can give us. He randomly picks up women and does all manner of odd things to them, like keeping their skulls for cereal bowls and injecting their blood into his veins. Oh yeah — one of the skulls talks to him and has gotten inside his head and not in the way that skulls should be in your head. Stroud is absolutely going for it in this movie and seeing as how the last four movies he did before this were Donald Jackson roller blade-related movies, I get the feeling he had the chance to really stretch his wings as an actor. And by stretching his wings, I mean screaming at the top of his lungs and taking Polaroids of himself in the mirror.

In the very same neighborhood is a house of priests: the Monsignor (Erik Estrada, whose first name is misspelled in the credits), Father Thomas (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Father Daniel (Michael M. Foley, Tracer from WMAC Masters). Most of the time, the priests are all sitting at a table eating dinner, reading their lines off of the newspapers in front of them and interacting with their maid Merna. Yes, the priests have Judy Landers as their maid.

Have you started to figure out why I love this movie yet?

As we get into the stories of the Vampire draining women of their blood and Father Michael kicking ass for the Lord as a vigilante priest complete with a cross-decorated gun and throwing stars, we also get nearly an entire song by a lovely young lady named Hiroko. She’s also in Miracle Beach, a beach blanket movie that unites Ami Dolenz, Pat Morita, Alexis Arquette, Allen Garfield, Martin Mull and Vincent Schiavelli.

I have no idea how a Japanese pop idol got to America much less why she’s in this sleazy movie and even less why she got to sing almost all of her song “My Love’s Waiting.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn6K0z28nWs

Otis the vampire has a new target, a girl named Kim (Carrie Chambers, Karate Cop), who is a psychic just like him. Yes, that’s right. He’s not just a vigilante cop who has a gun with a cross on it, he’s also a psychic vigilante cop who has a gun with a cross on it. Kim brings the two stories together, even if I can’t remember how Robert Z’Dar, Jim Brown and Scott Shaw (more Donald Jackson crossover) are part of this.

This is the kind of movie where you watch Don Stroud eat corn flakes out of a human skull and make smoothies with blood and beer, all while the psychic cop also has a crucifix knife ready to hear that killer’s deathbed confession.

Thanks to my weird movie pals across the pond The Schlock Pit, I learned that Stroud was paid $1,000 a day for this movie. He should have made way, way more than that, because he’s giving this movie everything he has left.

This is the kind of movie that people get mad at and I get happy about. It’s just so oddly made, so poorly paced and has the cast equivalent of a horror movie convention, but you know I’d buy every 8×10 Judy Landers has on her table.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Director Louis Crisitello has created this documentary all about Pensacola musician Phil Thomas Katt, whose show The Uncharted Zone has built and encouraged a scene all its own. I didn’t know anything about this music, these videos or the man himself, but this film was plenty of fun and made me want to know more.

Known as the “Dick Clark of the Gulf Coast music scene,” Katt believes that anyone can make good music. It’s great that even as the world becomes more commercialized and homogenized, there are people out there willing to put their time and energy into championing music that no one else would hear or see.

He’s still out there, still making The Uncharted Zone and the idea that music of all kinds is encouraged brings a smile to my face.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Germán Alonso is trying to finish his first movie, Mexman, but he’s battling with the documentary crew following him, trying to get taken seriously as a filmmaker and dealing with fickle love.

Directed and written by Josh Polon, I got the idea that yes, Germán is a genius and makes incredible shorts and puppets. When producer Moctasuma Esparza (the producer of Selena, The Milagro Beanfield War and The Telephone) is interested in making his film, Germán and the writers he’s working with — Tyler and Ben Soper — start to have conflicts because its show business, you know. Business. And geniuses don’t always do well at business.

It takes more than just the ability to animate and dream to direct, because you are the one in charge. You need to be on schedule, you need to be organized and you need to have people respect you. The problems start when Tyler and Ben take the writing credit and give Germán the credit of just story. This sends him over the edge and things never improve from there.

I feel bad for Germán, but when you have an opportunity, you need to focus. The idea of falling for a woman who may not be all that into you and spending forever talking about ideas instead of doing them is infuriating. For all his talent, it feels sadly wasted.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Instead of going to jail, Willem (Stephen Phillips) takes a different sentence, in which he has to stay all alone in an isolated facility. Phillips takes on so much in this, because he’s largely on screen all by himself for the entire run time.

While watching the monster, Willem reflects on his life, like how everything went downhill after the death of his wife Carrie (Cecilia Low), a return to heroin and the loss of his two daughters. We also actually see his memories in the form of what looks like actual home movies.

However, Willem isn’t alone. There’s some kind of creature, one that he’s sure is just in his head, that is watching him. Is it his past pain come to life? Is it how he sees his addiction? Is it going to shred him when he goes to sleep? And why do the government agents keep asking so many questions, none of them about this monster, and shock him when he lies?

Directed by Tristan Barr (who also plays Dalesky) and written by Vincent Befi, this is a movie that puts its lead through hell yet so much of that is of his own making. This is unlike any movie I’ve seen and worth your time.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Director and writer Anthony Edward Curry told the Asbury Park Press, ““I always felt that TRAP was a story that needed to be told,” Curry said. “It was a movie that found itself over years of production because it was constantly morphing — because the real-life characters, they were evolving before my eyes. So I was constantly re-writing. Every day I was changing because the characters are changing in front of me.”

The title means The Real Asbury Park and it’s a story that Curry originally wrote when he was 17. How true to life is the film? Curry made national press when a video confession from former Neptune High School classmate Liam McAtasney was secretly recorded in 2017 was a key piece of evidence leading to McAtasney being found guilty of murder.

According to the New York Post, “In December 2016, artist Sarah Stern, 19, went missing and her car was found abandoned on a bridge in Belmar, NJ. In the aftermath of her disappearance, Curry remembered his high school friend Liam McAtasney, who was close with Stern, pitching an idea for a movie in which he killed a girl. He came to the shocking realization that this wasn’t a tale that simply lived in his friend’s imagination — and he went to the police, who helped him set up a sting. Curry filmed McAtasney’s chilling confession — leading to his conviction and a life sentence.”

With a cast made up of some actors, some real street people and the director himself, TRAP tells the story of a young criminal about to face life in prison and the dark path that got him there. It’s really uncompromising and if it feels lived in, obviously it is. It might be playing in this festival surrounded by horror genre films, but it truly might be one of the more frightening movies playing.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.