Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Howdy, Neighbor! played on Wednesday, October 11.
When he was just a child, Benjamin Caldwell (Matthew Scott Montgomery, who also wrote this movie) was Bucky on the TV show Howdy, Neighbor! He’s been trying to hide his past but he’s asked to be in a web-based reunion before the show starts streaming again. Before that, his neighbor Chase (Grant Jordan) starts stalking him when he recognizes him from the show.
Ben shares this with neighbor Harley Walker (Debby Ryan) who suggests he contact the police. Benjamin wants to solve it all on his own which is the worst of all plans.
This entire movie is shot on screens, so if you spend all day in Teams calls like I do, it kind of feels like you’re back at work. For anyone else, this is an interesting way of seeing this story as the neighbor gets stranger and Benjamin keeps making some of the worst decisions.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Eight Eyes played on Monday, October 16.
Cass (Emily Sweet) begins to hear voices while backpacking through Yugoslavia with her husband Gav (Bradford Thomas). She thinks it’s just stress or maybe her marriage not working out. But then a local named Saint Peter (Bruno Veljanovski) offers to show them the real parts of his country and Gav goes missing.
Eight Eyes was shot using a variety of 16mm and Super8 cameras, such as the Aaton XTR Prod Super 16mm, Bolex H16 Super 16, Krasnogorsk 3 Super 16, Leica Leicina Special and Classic Pro Max 8 16×9. 16mm and 8mm film was used to get a vintage look, including animated shots and sequences that were all captured in-camera using a reflected-glass process.
This is also the first production by Vinegar Syndrome, who worked with Not the Funeral Home and Night Loops, the crew that creates Joe Bob’s The Last Drive-In. Director Austin Jennings also directs that show.
Ever since Cass meant Saint Peter, she’s been having hallucinations and hearing voices. And then this gets weird, as we see Gav’s 8mm footage and meet Saint Peter’s strange family and then we descend into folk horror and that kind of 70s occult weirdness that I love filtered through the torture-filled slashers of the mid 2000s.
This is yet another movie that tells me that I should never go to Serbia, the same as how I will never go to so many places that have terrified me so much through cinema.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Teques Chainsaw Massacre played on Friday, October 13.
Director Rodrigo Hernández-Cruz, wrote this movie with Carlos Marín and Alfredo Mendoza, has created this horror comedy about film students who head to Teques, Mexico with soap opera actress Ana Cecilia Burgos (Jessica Ortiz) to make a horror movie. Reynaldo (Juan Ugarte) is the director who thinks he knows more than he thinks he does. Virginia (Tatiana del Real), Tania (Florencia Rios) and Pau (Danae Reymund) are the crew stuck with making his movie look good.
They soon learn that the movie that they are making is based on a real killer. And that killer? He’s hunting all of them one by one. This movie goes from comedy to straight up slasher and doesn’t look back. If you’re looking for gore, well, this has tons of the sangre y tripas.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Cannibal Mukbang played on Monday, October 16.
This film was described as “An exploration of one’s relationships with food, sexuality, and revenge.”
Director and writer Aimee Kuge wrote this movie while experiencing a period of disordered eating and the end of toxic relationships. That led to a movie about an introverted nerd — Mark — who finds himself dangerously deep inside the crazy world of mukbanging after he falls head over heels for a mysterious woman named Ash. She’s super into mukbanging so he finds himself getting into it.
Also: Murder.
What is mukbanging?
The term is from South Korean and means “eating broadcast.” There, professional mukbangers make up to $10,000 a month not including sponsorships from food and drink brands. Basically, they eat huge amounts of food while interacting with their viewers.
Cannibal Mukbang is one strange movie and it looks really gorgeous. I’m excited to see what Kuge does next.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Faceless After Dark plays on Wednesday, October 11.
After starring in a killer clown horror flick, Bowie (Jenna Kanell, Tara from another killer clown movie, Terrifierand Terrifier 2) is held hostage by an unhinged fan posing as the slasher that she survived in her movie, which has now become her life.
Directed by Raymond Wood and written by Todd Jacobs and Jenna Kanell, Faceless After Dark starts with Bowie stuck working conventions and doing Cameos, barely holding on to any fame that she may have had. Meanwhile, her girlfriend Jessica (Danielle Lyn) is really enjoying getting to star in a superhero movie. It gets so bad that fans ask Bowie to take photos of themselves with Jessica, which really gets at her.
The man in the clown mask (Max Calder) has, however, found the wrong final girl for the movie in his head. Bowie has had it with her place in the world and is way more dangerous than the character she played on screen. After killing off one fan, she feels something she hasn’t felt in some time. Some level of control. Some level of being alive. And that clown won’t be the last. Bowie begins to invite all of the worst comments on her social media to Jessica’s house and then kills them, one by one, all while neon colors play on the screen and blood sprays.
Is it a home invasion movie if you invite them into the house?
You’re either going to see this as a cathartic blast of getting back at horrible people or an entitled woman who just can’t get it together. I’m on the former side of the argument, but I can see some loving this and some just hating every minute.
That said, Kanell is great and the movie looks absolutely gorgeous.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Somewhere Quiet plays on Wednesday, October 18.
Meg (Jennifer Kim) is trying to find a new normal after being part of a brutal kidnapping that she barely escaped. One way that she’s achieving self-care is to take a trip to Cape Codd with her husband Scott (Kentucker Audley). His family has a huge countryside compound that will give her the peace that she needs until his cousin Madeline (Marin Ireland) shows up. Her snobbery unleashes nightmares in Meg as she starts to deal with what she’s live through as well as the truth behind why she was abducted.
Meg and Scott’s relationship begins to unravel as an old woman shows up in the woods and Meg begins to feel that Madeline and her husband are keeping secrets from her. Of course there’s a much darker story behind all of this, as you just knew there was.
Director and writer Olivia West Lloyd has put together a movie that slowly makes you wonder who is right, why Meg has gone through all of this and whether anyone can be trusted. I always wanted to see a movie where a Final Girl tries to deal with the PTSD that had to come from dealing with a horrific situation. This does that but puts her into an even worse one.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. Empire V plays on Wednesday, October 18. You can learn more about this movie on the official site.
Run and find this movie.
Based on a novel by Russia’s leading contemporary writer Victor Pelevin, Empire V is one of the wildest movies I’ve seen since, well, ever.
I honestly haven’t seen a more original vampire movie in my life. The sell copy claims that it’s “a dark satire on contemporary culture and global capitalism and a universal coming of age story of an average young man challenged by a Faustian gift of power and knowledge, forced to make his way in a post-moral world.”
But man, it’s so big in scope that I just couldn’t believe it.
In this universe, vampires are the Fifth Empire, the ruling class of the world, the elite that we all aspire to be. They even created mankind from apes. But the don’t feed on us. Well, not our bodies. Instead, they seek bablos, the state of money created by the human monetary gland that is the very seal of human vitality. No one knows this and vampires exist through glamour that makes people feel inferior and spend more money, while they also spread disinformation that obscures what the world is truly about.
Roman (Pavel Tabakov) is a normal twenty-something living at home and unloading trucks when grafitti promises an escape from being poor. This takes him to the mansion of Brahma (Vladimir Epifantsev), who turns him into a vampire — using The Tongue, which takes one drop of blood — and gives him his estate.
He’s trained for this new life by Loki (Bronislav Vinogrodskiy and discovers that clear liquids of famous people can be ingested to learn their skills, such as a moment where he learns to drive like Steve McQueen. Roman soon becomes Rama II and falls for a fellow young vamp, Hera (Taya Radchenko), while battling his nemesis Mithra VI (Oxxxymirin).
There’s a lot to love here, including a deep dive into the history of this universe, the fact that vampires fund all the movies made about them so that humans never know who they are, a goddess named Ishtar (Vera Alentova) that appears in CGI form and a climatic battle in the form of poetry.
You have to love a movie that upsets the government so much that Russia banned it. This reminds me of the energy that I felt when I first saw Nightwatch. Even more exciting, this feels like only the beginning of this story. Director Victor Ginzburg, who wrote this with Pelevin, has created something incredible.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival stands as a cornerstone of the horror genre, boasting the largest and longest-running festival of its kind in the United States. You can learn more about this year’s festival by checking out the official site. What You Wish For played on Thursday, October 12.
Ryan (Nick Stahl) has left the boring life of working in a chain hotel kitchen to travel to the rainforests of Latin America and meet up with his culinary school classmate Jack (Brian Groh). It may not have been by choice that Ryan has left his job, as he’s run up some bad debts and has someone even worse after him.
Jack is living the life that Ryan always wanted. So when his friend disappears and gives him the chance to take over his life — and his money and status — well, sign Ryan up. The problem? Jack wasn’t exactly working his dream position. Now, Ryan has all of his problems.
Directed and written by Nicholas Tomnay, this finds Ryan working for some of the most horrific rich people ever, lorded over by their employee Imogene (Tamsin Topolski), and forced to stay one step ahead of both their frightening culinary demands and the police who are looking for the real Jack, who by the way hung himself this morning.
Ryan always wanted to make a meal more exciting than roasted chicken. This meal is way more interesting — and maybe final — than any he imagined. What an interesting idea for a film and one that really delivers.
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