Candy (Chloe Macleod) used to be a good girl until the ice cream man delivered to her work and violently took her into the back room, injecting her with something this film never explains, an illness that makes her so sweet that her body becomes cake that everyone wants to devour. How strange that the sickness isn’t venereal disease; it’s a child that makes every secretion taste like dessert, and that no man wants to help her abort it. Instead, they want more of her, from her boyfriend Sid (Drew Forster) to Dr. Herschell Gordon (Charles Lysne)
Directed, written, edited and co-produced by Beca Kozak, this is body horror in a scumbag film made to upset people for a reason. And that’s fascinating, a film that takes bits of The Stuff, rape revenge films, John Waters and the name-checked Herschell Gordon Lewis to present a movie where a woman cuts into the cake that is her stomach to slice away the thing inside her as no one will help her. She must deliver this child, she must become the doll that Dr. Gordon wants, she must endure the plastic surgery ads that promise mothers that they can quickly become sexy again. The only reason people wish to consume her is to enjoy her, and like any good dessert, she’s melting and has a limited shelf life. That’s a great metaphor — better than calling the punk guy Sid — and points to something more here than just a film made to shock.
The most striking aspect is how this movie exploits the male gaze. The women are gorgeous in it, but as Candy starts to fall to pieces, the film does more to objectify her. There are moments where, as her body changes and she becomes larger, she worries that she’s losing her beauty or the ability to be seen by men. The opposite is true, even if it’s not for any good reason.
Another movie that I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
Check out Joseph Perry’s review of this film here.
Directed and written by Michael Fausti, this film takes place in 1968, 1983, and 1992, starting with Alice Kyteller (Ayvianna Snow) in 1992, telling the police that her husband, Austin (Adrian Viviani), has gone missing. The problem? When Detective Franc Alban (Amber Doig-Thorne) asks when she last saw him, the answer is eight years ago. And how does this tie to a series of murders in 1968 that Iris Young (Alice Stevenson), the daughter of TV psychic Cassandra Young (Dani Thompson) — who is now a professional dominatrix — claims to know the answer to?
Shot by Kemal Yildirim, this looks incredible, a film noir serial killer movie that transcends time and space to bring together seemingly unconnected people and times. There are so many questions. Why is Austin in photos with Detective Alban’s mother? Is every cop corrupt? And is every woman a femme fatale?
This is a movie set in a world that I would greatly enjoy living in, but I know I would never survive. It’s worth a visit.
“On January 8th, 2015, a man with a black umbrella broke into 818 Hilltop Drive at 3:38a.m., committing a double murder. The investigation that ensued proved that some murders shouldn’t be solved.”
Directed and written by Ricky Umberger (Project Eerie), this found footage film concerns a man being haunted by, well, precisely what the title promises: a man holding a black umbrella. There are numerous urban legends and creepypastas online about people seeing umbrella men, so this concept feels like it has a great idea behind it. However, generally, found footage becomes a movie with one person’s name repeatedly screaming or running while trying to hold a camera, and my brain shuts off. That’s on me, not this movie. If this is your thing, maybe you can find something in it t
You can learn more about this movie on the Instagram page.
Sally Harkley (Ellie Church) has recently lost a baby after a car accident and is at a career crossroads, having written two of three books in a planned trilogy. Her publisher wants to send her away to a cabin in the woods to get away from it all, but between her mental state and ruined marriage, it isn’t working. Then she meets her muse (Alyss Winkler) and things start to make sense, if by make sense you mean someone who will dance while you write and kill people for you.
Directed and written by Scott Schirmer (Found, Plank Face) and Brian K. Williams (Time to Kill), this film demonstrates that creation and destruction are closely intertwined. Sally blames her husband for much of her current situation and is sure he’s cheated on her; she’s less bothered when her demon lover jerks him off in the shower in what might be a fantasy or could be true. This is one of those films where a lot of what it’s about can be made up by you. Can the flow of menstrual blood be the flow of creativity? Can the loss of a cat — maybe not the movie for those who have recently lost an animal — help you process the death of an infant? Can lesbian scenes be in a horror film without feeling like exploitation and instead drive the narrative?
The answer to all of these questions is yes, and I’m surprised. I wasn’t expecting anything, and yet I came away with a film that has kept me thinking.
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.
The President (“Chicken” George Zupp) believes that a nuke is going to drop on Texas, so he brings in Dr. Calypso (Furly Travis), who is in the middle of making women pregnant and killing Saddam Hussein. so he knocks up his assistant (Rebekah Porter) and pulls a baby out of her throat because babies are innocent angels and the atomic bomb is Satan. Meanwhile, Natty (Shauna Nunn) is cheating on her gambling husband, Leo (Steve Jones), who is in trouble with the mob. There’s also Junior High (Paxton Gilmore), whose girlfriend (Laura McKee) got so upset when he got sick of her that she did drugs and got caught in a deadly wreck with a bad boy. At the same time, his father (Tayer Cranor) and a barber named Bosco (C. Paul Cardoza) both try to make love to the somewhat innocent kid.
This all feels like it was shot on video, so I should love it. It’s filthy and has lines line, “I fuck to live and I live to fuck.” I know what Jeffrey Garcia, the director and writer, is going for. He also made Bubblegum, a movie that I said “was probably more fun to make than watch.” This maintains the same feel, with garish colors, plenty of wigs, gross-out humor, and people swearing more than in a Rob Zombie movie. It’s like how some people enjoy Troma movies; I’d rather enjoy a film that is weird because it’s naturally that way, rather than being intentionally odd. There is a way that can happen, I assure you.
But if you like that kind of Tim and Eric kind of feel, well, I won’t stop you from watching this.
GenreBlast Film Fest has announced its lineup for the ninth year of its international independent genre film festival. The three day in-person event will feature eleven feature films and roughly ninety short films from around the world as well as the results of their annual screenplay competition.
Emanating from the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia, GenreBlast continues to champion truly independent genre cinema and this year features an eclectic lineup of cross-genre films.
With horror, science fiction and fantasy, action, and offbeat cult and transgressive midnight offerings, the fest prides itself on being an eccentric mixtape of genres and filmmakers.
Of the eleven features selected this year, there are five world premieres, one international premiere, one North American premiere, one east coast premiere, one regional premiere, one Virginia premiere and a special advance screening.
Ricky Umberger’s latest found footage horror film, The Man With the Black Umbrella, makes its world premiere at GenreBlast IX. Other world premieres include Brian K. Williams and Scott Schirmer’s psychosexual horror/thriller Gush, along with local sci-fi flick Inter-State, directed by Sam Gorman. The world premieres are rounded out by Michael Smallwood’s end times sci-fi drama Tonight and Maybe Tomorrow and Michelle Iannantuono’s experimental meta comedy First Draft: The Outcasts.
Becca Kozak’s splatterpunk gut punch Sugar Rot will be an international premiere outside of Canada, and Mark Beal’s practical FX-heavy folk horror nightmare Marginalia screens as a North American premiere. UK pulp thriller Burnt Flowers, directed by Michael Fausti, is an East Coast premiere.
Meat Machine, Jeffrey Garcia’s whacked-out midnight movie sleazefest, has a regional premiere, and Izzy Lee’s trauma horror tour-de-force House of Ashes is a Virginia premiere.
A special advance screening of Cranked Up Films’ vampire action western noir Blood and Rust, directed by Jeremy Herbert, screens Saturday night, August 30th30th.
The fest runs from Friday, August 29th through Sunday, August 31st at the Alamo Winchester, concluding with a livestreamed awards ceremony followed by the GB Aftermath After Party.
Script table reads and a live comedy show will also be on the schedule during the fest. Weekend passes are now on sale at the Alamo Winchester website.
Additional information can be found at the fest’s official website.
Cryptids started its funding all the way back in 2013 and had an Indiegogo in 2020. These days, years feel so much longer, so I’m sure there have been some people excited to see this for some time.
This anthology is united by a radio show called The Truth Serum hosted by Major Harlan Dean (Joe Bob Briggs). The subject is cryptozoology and the wildcat line is jammed up as each caller tells an increasingly stranger story about the myths and monsters that lurk at night, all while Dean worries that a prank caller and those very same monsters may be even closer than he thinks.
This project was put together by Justin M. Seaman and Zane Hershberger, the same guys who created The Barn, The Barn Part II, 10/31, 10/31 Part 2 and Force to Fear. They’ve brought along several indie filmmakers to create the different stories within Cryptids, including Brett DeJager (Bonejangles), Max Groah (Bong of the Living Dead), Johnny William Holt (The Dooms Chapel Horror), Billy Pon (Circus of the Dead) and FX artist Robert Kuhn.
What I loved most about this was how much it felt like listening to the old days of Coast to Coast. This was confirmed when I read some info about the film, as well as it being inspired by Monsters You Never Heard Of by Daniel Coen, a Scholastic book that I read so many times that the cover fell off and I needed to repeatedly tape it back on. In fact, so many of the books of Cohen inspired me to write, including his novel The Monster Maker and his non-fiction books The Greatest Monsters In the World, The Encyclopedia of the Strange, Super-Monsters (with a cover featuring the monster from the end of Night of the Demon) and The Ancient Visitors.
As the calls come in, you get to get in deep — very, very deep in some cases — with the Hopkinsville Goblins, Melonheads, the Loveland Frogman, The Beast of Bladenboro, Chupacabra Death Machines and Bigfoot. As always with anthologies, the stories can be a mixed bag. That said, the gore is more than up to the task to smooth over any cracks and the main story is absolutely perfect thanks to Joe Bob giving a way better performance than in most of the movies he showed on MonsterVision.
This is a great idea for a film and I’m excited that the filmmakers finally got to realize their vision. I don’t want to give too much of a spoiler for one of the later stories, but man, there’s a facial wound in this that really caught me. Like I said — the grisly stuff looks gorgeous.
Cryptids was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
Here’s the last set of shorts that I watched at GenreBlast Film Festival.
Knit One, Stab Two: This essay film examines the representation of knitters and knitting, in over sixty horror films made by women, from the 1920s – 2020s, across South America, Europe, North America and East Asia. Alison Peirse — who also made Three Ways to Dine Well about eating in horror movies — explores these questions: What happens when the woman knits in a horror film? What might the representation of knitting tell us about social and cultural expectations around gender, genre and age?
Knitting is just one of many stereotyped representations of aging women across over a century of horror cinema, a fact that this movie attempts to get around. It’s really interesting, as is so much of Peirse’s work, which you can find on her website. For a list of the films in this, check out the Letterboxd list I made. This is so worth your time.
Peccadillo: Lorenzo (Huitzili Espinosa) is an 18-year-old boy struggling to come out to his religious family of female tailors. It’s difficult as he must be a man filled with machismo, yet he stares longingly at the dresses that they work day and night to create. But to them, being gay, much less wearing female clothes, the kind of sin that is stuck in his mind so much that he constantly has vision of the devil (Pablo Levi), who appears in song and dance numbers whenever the urge to be who he want to be strikes Lorenzo.
Director Sofia Garza-Barba has made a work of art that beyond sings. I loved every single moment of this, a movie that not only has something to say but looks like a painting come to life while it does so.
Some Visitors: Jennifer (Jackie Kelly) is home alone, mourning the loss of her child and worried about a recent series of home invasions. Then the door rings and brings Jeff (Clayton Bury) into her life. Jennifer seemingly makes the worst mistakes, like letting Jeff into her home, telling him that she’s there alone and revealing way too much about her life. But just like The Strangers, Jeff is not alone. There are two other intruders (Carlie Lawrence and Richard Louis Ulrich).
Director and writer Paul Hibbard mentioned on Letterboxd that this is going to become a feature, so I don’t want to ruin what happens for anyone. I’ve seen some say that it’sFunny Games if Brian De Palma directed it. And that’s close — the split-screens and super quick jump edits that hammer home the reveal do that pretty well — but this film feels like even more than that. I thought that once one of the masks from The Purge showed up that this was going to just be all the basics of home invasion and modern horror played out in a shorter film, but then I realized by the end that Some Visitors was using everything that I expected against me and when it happens, when you get it, it’s jaw dropping. So well done.
Raja’s Had Enough: Raja is a creature — an angel? — in human form working at The Afterlife Bureau, the place where souls are processed into the next life after their death. Fed up after years of processing femicide victims, Raja (Anisa Butt) decides to change fate and go to Earth with the goal of stopping the murder of Zooey (Veronica Ellis), a woman she doesn’t even know.
Directed by Ekaterina Saiapina and written by Axelle Ava and Lisa Gaultier, Raja’s Had Enough has a unique look and concept as well as an audience-pleasing idea. Raja may not understand humanity, but she can comprehend that all of the death that she sees as paperwork has actual pain within it. Perhaps some computer error can change things for the better.
Ikala: We always like to think that we are the Rebellion, but more often, it feels like we’re the Empire. In this short, directed by Maninder Chana, a Sikh prisoner trapped in solitary confinement turns to his faith to make a daring escape before U.S. forces destroy a Mujahideen camp to cover up their role in funding the runaway terrorist organization. The attack goes FUBAR and everyone is dead except for the Sikh prisoner trapped in a solitary cell with little light or hope of getting out. Now the U.S. bombers are on their way to erase what’s left of the base. This film is one that shows us the other side and is quite daring in how it does so.
The Erl King: The erl king is “a sinister elf who lingers in the woods. He stalks children who stay in the woods for too long, and kills them by a single touch.” In this film, directed by Genevieve Kertesz, who wrote the script with Keith Karnish and Rachel Weise, a young woman named Leora (Emma Halleen) leaves her strict village when she is seduced by the erl king (Marti Matulis). That said, his love is as horrible as the rules of the people who she has grown up with, leading her to having no place in the world other than alone. This film has incredible effects and the erl king looks as realized as a larger budget film. Really well made and intriguing short.
Bowling 4 Eva: Kristina (Olivia Claire Liang), a troubled teen girl, spends her time talking to men online and bowling with her grandfather, all while she is increasingly medicated by her psychiatrist. Directed and writer Aelfie Oudghiri, this gets a lot of the 90s right and not just the gigantic bell bottomed jeans. This is the kind of movie that I hope for when I watch shorts in a festival, one that shows me a world that I am not part of and never will be and lets me feel like I am inhabiting it.
I also never thought that I would watch a movie where insane bowling score monitor illustrations come to life.
Partnr: This is the story of Jackie (Melinda Nanovsky), whose bionic boyfriend Ethan (Brian Barnett) has just proposed marriage. Directed and written by Kaylin Allshouse, this is the story of finding a happily ever after as well as what love with an actual human can feel like. When a perfect love is created, is it really all that perfect? Or is it just what you think that you want? This film asks that question and tries to answer it.
Even in the future, people will still go to bars and sing karaoke. That is one of the many things that I have learned from this movie. I also really liked the black and white color scheme of the scenes between Jackie and Ethan as they are in bed versus the colors in the other scenes.
A Ben Evans Film: Directed by Bret K. Hall and James Henry Hall, who wrote the script with Josh Malerman, this is about a kind, yet delusional man named Ben Evans (Sky Elobar) who makes a film starring his recently dead parents. Yes, if you can get past the idea that a man is moving around the bodies of two deceased old bodies, well, you may enjoy this.
I wonder how much of this movie was inspired by the films of Charles Carson, who the documentary A Life On the Farm went into detail on earlier this year.
Exactly like the short The Lizard Laughed, Elobar is so great in this. What a strange concept and well made short.
These shorts were watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
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