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.

Bubblegum (2022): World’s Greatest Used Car Salesman Teddy Bupkis (Thayer Cranor) and his 13-year-old girlfriend Daphne Delamonte (Shauna Nunn) are running from the law — specifically detectives Daryl Hammond (Steve Jones) and Anal Retard (Paxton Gilmore) — and a crack dealer after they fail to murder Teddy’s wife Angela (Morgan Cooper).

Sounds simple? Well, when hitman Chuckie Fondue (Victor Godfrey) is run over before the hit. So Teddy decides that perhaps he should just stay with his wife and deal with it. He gives her a piece of bubblegum and she dies choking on it. Teddy and Daphne try to run, but after hitching a ride with Upchuck (Furly Travis), he reveals himself as a serial killer and kills her.

And somehow, the problems are just getting started.

Bubblegum was made for a few hundred bucks and shot on old used VHS tapes. Everyone in the movie is a non-professional actor and there was no crew and guess what? It looks and feels like it. You’re either going to love or hate this movie, which has old commercials take over at times, special effects that look anything but and John Waters-level colored wigs. It was probably a ton of fun to make and the kind of movie that would play well in a theater packed with everyone that helped out. As for how it plays with an audience of people that weren’t so involved, well…

I can appreciate what director and writer Jeffrey Garcia was going for here. How much will you like it? Have you ever found yourself accidentally smelling your hand after you finish taking a dump and then imagined seeing outside your body and then wondering what everyone you knew would think of you in this situation and then just started to laugh like an absolute moron? If yes, you’ve found your Citizen Kane.

You can learn more about Jeffrey Garcia at his official site.

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.

Johnny Z (2022): Johnny Z has been a movie I’ve been waiting to see for some time, ever since it was crowdfunded a mix between Land of the Dead and The Raid.

Directed by Jonathan Straiton (Night of Something Strange) and written by Straiton and Ron Bonk (House Shark, She Kills), this movie stars Michael Merchant (Amityville Death House) as Johnny, as well as Trey Harrison as Vin, Felix Cortes as Jonray, Ellie Church as Lars, David E. McMahon as Frank, Jason Delgado as Cristano and Wayne Johnson as Monster Boy.

The real stars of the show are the gore-strewn effects by Marcus Koch (We Are Still Here, Frankenstein Created Bikers, The Third Saturday In October V) and massive fight scenes that were choreographed by Dylan Hintz of the DC Stunt Coalition. Seriously, this movie is nearly all blood, guts, swords, guns and martial arts!

When the film was being funded, Straiton said, “Johnny Z has been a passion project of mine for over ten years and I know audiences will dig it. It’s straight action horror with tons of gore! This is my chance to show my more serious side to storytelling compared to NoSS. Black Mandala approached us about doing a NoSS sequel back in January, instead I expressed the importance of Johnny Z as my next project and they totally got it! They came on as producers and I signed on to direct Johnny Z and NoSS sequel, Dawn of Something Strange and very much look forward to returning to that world after Johnny Z.”

Johnny is half human, half zombie and all kickass. Within his blood just might be the cure to the zombie epidemic. Yet after escaping a medical prison called Nordac, Johnny comes under the guidance of Grandmaster Jonray and his brother Crisanto. This sets Johnny on the path to using his martial arts skills to find a doctor who can create the cure while also helping his master fight some personal demons.

Filmed in Central Virginia, this Spanish and English-speaking movie is seriously wall-to-wall fighting. It really does live up to its goal of being a direct-to-video fighting horror movie. It’s the kind of film that you can just sit back and watch the carnage. We all need that every once in a while.

You can learn more about Johnny Z 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.

The Brilliant Terror (2021): So many movies are released today — just look at Tubi or this site — because we have the tools to make a film with just our phones and the internet. Paul Hunt and Julie Kauffman have gone deep into the world of low budget modern filmmakers and why they do what they do, centered around Lancaster, PA filmmaker Mike Lombardo shooting the bloody bathroom of The Stall, in The Brilliant Terror.

These digitally made films are the children and grandchildren of the regional horror that we know and love so much, even if they don’t show the culture of where they’re made as often as Romero’s films so rooted in Pittsburgh or Brownrigg in Texas.

The movie also introduces us to Slapface creator Jeremiah Kipp, Gitchy maker Thomas Norman, Caveat creator Julie Ufema, Night of the Loup Garou director Micah Ginn and Movie Monster Insurance filmmaker Paula Helfley as well as giving them the opportunity to speak about why they love movies and what inspired them to make them.

If you’ve seen Justin McConnell’s Clapboard Jungle: Surviving the Independent Film Business, you may have already experienced a similar story. The best part of this movie is that it shows the real world issues driving the filmmakers and what may keep them from achieving their visions. There are also appearances by author Michael Gingold, screenwriter Stephen Romano, movie lover Scott Jeune and scholars Joanne Cantor, Noël Carroll and Cynthia Freelandoll who each explain horror from different angles, from personal experience to academic analysis.

Of everyone in this, I appreciated Heidi Honeycutt the most, as she speaks to the opportunity for these movies to give creators an opportunity to “make our own art, our own alternative messages in film.” Instead of worrying about people sending negative messages and how society views them, the filmmakers here that have a chance of doing exactly that are the ones who push through and concentrate on a true vision. This movie inspired me to track down so many of their films, which makes me consider this movie a success.

You can learn more about The Brilliant Terror at the official website.

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.

Extraneous Matter Complete Edition (2021): Directed and written by Ken’ichi Ugana, who also made the incredible short Vierailijat, this film takes an image that we associate with the pornographic — sexualized tentacles — and applies it to how being in some relationships is lonelier than being all by yourself, as well as alienation and fear of the unknown, across several episodes.

A young woman (Kaoru Koide) trapped in a loveless and definitely sexless relationship is attacked by an octopus alien that hides in her closet and while at first this is assault, it soon becomes the only thing she looks forward to. By the end, everyone in her life, including her boyfriend, has partaken in the sexual nirvana that this creature can create.

Another tale is about a man attempting to win back an ex-lover while training a creature with sweets. As the aliens multiply across Earth, humanity battles back in the third story, with soldiers gathering and killing them. One of those men finds an injured octopus creature and tries to protect it. Finally, two strangers meet in a bar after the aliens have been driven out.

Extraneous Matter Complete Edition does the opposite of what so many of the stories of alien sex in Japanese culture usually do: the story goes on past the sex. In fact, the tentacles being inside humans is such a small part of the story. It’s what is truly inside, the hidden reasons why we do what we do, that get explored within this film. Whether you can see that through all the glistening tentacles and strange looking eight-limbed soft-bodied monsters is your call.

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.

Stag (2022): Directed and written by Alexandra Spieth, Stag is about Jenny (Mary Glen Fredrick) and her attempts to reconnect with her former best friend Mandy (Elizabeth Ramos) during a bachelorette party at a seemingly haunted campground.

What drove these friends apart? Why does Jenny have such difficulty connecting with anyone? Why are the religious beliefs of sisters Constance (Katie Wieland) and Casey (Stephanie Hogan) just so strange? Is this what it’s really like when women get together?

We can all feel for Jenny. Her only anchor in this unfamiliar territory is Mandy. There’s something unspoken that drove them in two directions yet there’s still some love between them. Yet as everyone else’s motivations are so unclear at best and malevolent at worst, it makes me glad that I skipped that bachelor party weekend I was supposed to go to last month.

What the film misses in proper lighting and color balance — the outside footage nearly washes out the movie at times — it makes up for it in writing and acting. A better budget would have done wonders, but let’s just forget that. Let’s concentrate on a movie that takes a great elevator speech — “What if Bridesmaids and Midsommer had mimosas?” — and delivers something special.

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.

Eating Miss Campbell (2022): Every time Beth (Lyndsey Craine) dies — at her own hand — she wakes up in another horror movie. This time, it’s a cannibal romantic comedy. And that idea, that Beth wants to die but might learn something from each new film, is a great one. It doesn’t come back into this film at all, which is the first of the misfires that this movie commits.

Director and writer Liam Regan, my enthusiasm for this diminished somewhat when a Troma logo came across the screen. As for the story, well, only one student at Henenlotter High School — get it? get it? the film seems to nudge you; the same school also is the setting of Regan’s My Bloody Banjo — can win the “All You Can Eat Massacre” contest and get a handgun of their own with which they can either soot their fellow students or kill themselves.

Yet there may be hope. Beth has a crush on English teacher Miss Campbell (Lala Barlow) which seems to play out as a need to consume human flesh. This is the exact opposite of her vegan ethos yet eating one’s enemies is such sweet revenge.

The rest of the film uses teen movie stereotypes from Heathers, Tragedy Girls and Mean Girls to move along its tale of girl cliques and male sexual predators. Of all the imagery and ideas taken by this movie, I liked that one of the female bullies favors Road Warrior Hawk makeup.

The movie — well, the evil teacher Nancy Applegate (Annabella Rich) — refers to Beth as “the millennial product of the American high school trope” and that would be an intriguing meta comment were it not so on the nose. Sure, her mother is dead, she has a horrible stepfather and school sucks, but why does she want to end her existence beyond a “woe is me” attitude? Far be it from me to expect good taste in film, much like exploitation, but I do definitely demand a character who has a reason for their deepest desire, even if it is dying.

If she really wants to live in a movie life that isn’t nostalgic horror, why does she play into the same cliches throughout? That motivation is never truly explored. Instead, there are endless references to other movies — if this were a Marvel comic, there’d be an editor note in every panel, cluttering this up with reference upon reference — and can you top this gross-out humor. Trust me, I love humor like that. Lloyd Kaufmann saying “Alex Baldwin” and blowing out his brains is anything but wit.

To be satire, one must have some position from which to state why something is worthy of ridicule, lest it becomes exactly what it is deriding. If you want to make fun of direct-to-video horror, that’s not that hard. If you want to make a satire about hot button issues like date rape and teen suicide, go for it. But you better bring your best material. And if this is it, well, I have no interest in seeing what comes next.

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.