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.

Specter of Weeping Hill (2021): Lillian (Brianne Solis) comes back to an abandoned and fog-filled cemetery that has haunted her since childhood in an attempt to come to terms with the recent loss of her sister in this quick but gorgeous short film.

The directors The Barber Brothers (Matthew and Nathan, who also made Go Back and No One Is Coming with Solis) said that they saw this film being about “dealing with grief and the lengths at which it can take someone. The story of the titular Specter is inspired by a traditional theme in paranormal hauntings in which a ghost searches for a loved one that has long passed.”

Naming Glory — which had horror master Freddie Francis as its cinematographer — as well as The Changeling, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and the visual style/ editing of 70s horror films as inspirations let me know that I need to be on the lookout for anything they make. The fact that this looked amazing and was imbued with true emotion made it all that much the better.

You can learn more on the official website, Facebook and Twitter pages.

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.

Reel Trouble (2022): Arnaut Subotica (Sam Vanivray with director and co-writer — with Attiba Royster — Brian Asman as the voice) tried to make cartoons for Whitt Dabney (Kevin Allen) and the theft of his ideas and the way Dabney treated him caused him to make a cartoon that took a decade of his life. Then he committed suicide and the cursed film was kept from the public until the Internet released every bit of lost media from their prisons. Jason (Lyndon Hoffman-Lew) and Kyle (Baker Chase Powell) are trading videos — I see the snuck in WNUF Halloween Special blu ray — and this might just be one that they should have never watched.

This was an absolute joy to watch and felt like it could have been part of the true dark lore of Disney. It’s got just the right mix of humor and horror and knows when to switch into moments of sheer terror, even if they feature giant cartoon hands.

You can learn more about Brian Asman 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.

Meat Friend (2022): When Billie (Marnie McKendry) — sorry, I mean children — microwaves raw hamburger meat, it needs no old top hat to come to life. Instead, Meat Friend (Steve Johanson, who co-wrote this with director Izzy Lee) is alive and real and wants to teach her some valuable life lessons rooted in hatred and violence, no matter what her mother (Megan Duffy) does.

“More beef! Less cheese!” goes the refrain and the faithful demand the reanimation of the meat homunculus.

This was an absolute blast of strange and exactly what I needed during the fest, something that started odd and didn’t let up.

Izzy Lee has also directed the Lovecraft film Innsmouth, the “For a Good Time, Call…” segment in Shevenge and several shorts like Consider the Titantic, Disco Graveyard and Memento Mori. You can learn more about this movie — the kind of magic that has a pile of sentient 80% lean ground beef do rails of coke — right 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.

Checkpoint (2022): Man, what a ride! I loved this and it made me consider all of the many, many video game characters that I’ve led to grisly deaths over the years.

A man — that’s his name and he’s played by Brett Brooks — must navigate a hostile alien world, learning with each death — which moves him back to the beginning and later to the titular checkpoint — what he needs to do to get to the next level. And then the next. At the end, he realizes that it’s all for Victoria (Erin Ownbey), who he pushed away with his greed. Yet perhaps he’s not the only person — or sin — that has done so.

Directed by Jason Sheedy, who also did the sound, editing, effects and wrote and produced the film with director of photography Matthew Noonan, Checkpoint is filled with tons of gory deaths, as well as a message and heart within. I had an absolute blast watching it — the production design is also incredible — and you should check it out too!

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.

Mairzy Doats (2022): Directed by Seth Chatfield and written by Derek Curley and Mary Widow, who also play the leads Nick and Erica Finn, this film attempts to answer the question of “What happens when we die?” to the two leads, as they go from hearing voices in the woods to worrying about the end of the world before a very ordinary event ends up pushing them toward that answer instead of the horrific fate that we expect from this movie.

The song this is based on goes like this:

“I know a ditty nutty as a fruitcake goofy as a goon and silly as a loon

Some call it pretty, others call it crazy

But they all sing this tune: Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you? Yes!

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey

Sing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy””

It was such a big song — it was Decca Records biggest single of 1944 — that two dozen covers came out in two weeks. It was written by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston and originally was in the Laurel and Hardy movie The Big Noise. Perhaps it’s best and most famous use was in the first episode of season two of Twin Peaks.

Back to this short. Credit should be paid to cinematographer Caleb Heller and editor Adrian Hedgecock, who make this look beyond a low budget short and make me want to see more of what everyone in the film can do with more, particularly Chatfield, Curley and Widow.