South of Chile, if not heaven, a trio of twenty-something women have formed a black metal band, Invoking Yell, and taken to the woods to record their first album. They decide that to capture their sound, they need to find psicofonias, quite literally the voices of dead children killed in a schoolbus accident, inside the forest. While they film their recording, things go wrong. Or right.
Directed by Patricio Valladares, who co-wrote this with Barry Keating, this brings back one of the ideas in their movie Embryoand has a music video in the woods that slowly unravels. It starts with a quote from Maximiliano Sánchez Mondaca, which claims that while the rise of black metal around the world led to more bands trying to record their own music, it also brought about more Satanic rites, vandalism and murder.
Andrea (María Jesús Marcone), Tania (Macarena Carrere) and Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich) are now in the same conundrum that artists like Snorre Westvold Ruch, Varg Vikernes, Euronymous, Samoth, Jorn Inge Tunsberg, Faust, Dead and Andreas “C. H. Surt” Kirchner, Sebastian “Dark Mark Doom” Schauseil and Ronald “Wolf” Möbus of Absurd — named for, yes, the George Eastman movie — found themselves in. How long can you pretend to be amoral and evil before you have to prove it for real?
A movie that claims to be found footage from Ruth’s video camera as the women recorded in 1997, this finds Tania and Ruth enjoying their time in the woods — drugs and drinks are had by all — while Angela seems devoted to reaching true kvlt status and following up on her goal of having music bringing suffering.
There’s plenty of enjoy here, as you learn how the women want to break out of just being used for their bodies and need to establish their own music. To stand out in a scene where church burning, suicide and seld-mutilation is the norm, however, they’re going to have to go too far to make that happen.
Chile is also known for its extreme music with nearly three thousand bands listed on Encyclopaedia Metallum as proof. There’s Skullshredder, Desecrator and Negro from Slaughtbbath, as well as Ecologist, Invocation Spells, Sol Sistere, Death Yell and many more. Just check out this Spotify list.
The moments of the girls talking about who is true and who isn’t may seem silly, but Euronymous used to be quoted saying stuff like, “I would rather sit at home and cut myself than go to parties.” and that he would only sign evil bands to his label, Deathlike Silence.
Beyond the music, I think that any fan of found footage will enjoy this, even if you don’t have an opinion on Immortal being better with or without Abbath.
I watched Invoking Yell at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Tilly (Anna Bullard), Monica (Annie Hamilton), Peter (Rory Alexander) and Allison (Grace Binford Sheene).are in a car crash and everyone survives except Allison, whose uncle blames them for her death. Monica has a plan for the summer, as she thinks they should all get out of town and go to the country. That way they can work through their grief and be away from the stares of people who think that they killed their friend. The summerhouse they are staying in is a welcome place of normalcy until a masked man shows up to make them all pay.
Directed by Alex Herron and written by Ulrvik Kraft, this Scandinavian-shot movie continues the trends of twentysomething teenagers from 90s horror. This movie feels like I Know What You Did Last Summer mixed with a home invasion, well, that’s what it is. The difference is the teens in that movie all felt a sense that their life had been destroyed by their secret. Maybe it’s the length of time since the accident, but not everyone here is working through it here. That said, the last ten minutes of this movie are intensely rough as everyone pays for their crime, but the final resolution feels too easy. But man, that drowning scene? Intense.
Dark Windows is far from perfect, but there’s something here. I think Herron and Kraft have a better movie in them and it will be great to see it happen.
Dark Windows is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
From the very beginning of this movie, you know that you are in the world of Alvaro Passeri and it is a very strange place.
The camera pans down a long hallway inside a hospital and there we see labs, operating rooms and storage rooms, all rendering in extreme detail but also looking like paintings. In one room, however, there are creatures still alive inside restraints, dead things inside jars and a man named Michael Corday operating on a human head.
One would wonder why the film suddenly cuts to Gayle Mainwaring and her photo studio, but this is, again, not our world. And one not like any other movie. There’s a model named Lucy shows up and gets raped and killed in a scene that shocked me. No one knows what to do before Corday takes charge and shows everyone how to get rid of the evidence. He takes her body and removes her green eye in a surgery scene much like the opening of the film.
But then this goes from a mad scientist movie to a giallo, as everyone at the party gets murdered. Except no giallo would have the budget to be in the Arctic and the pyramids, as this movie takes us, but it’s through the low res CGI that Passeri is the master of. There’s also an incredible dive into molten steel.
Now, you may ask, why do a cave explorer, a construction worker, a foundry foreman, a mountaineer, a famous fashion photographer, an archaeologist and the world’s best eye surgeon all get together and randomly assault and murder young women?
This movie has BS science the likes of which Argento and Cozzi could never dream of, visuals that no one has ever seen before and absolute disregard for making a film that in any way fits into any definition of normal. You can’t look away from a single second of it but sometimes you have to, because this is the kind of film that overwhelms you with how dense it is.
The only bad thing about it is that its the fifth of Passeri’s films and the last he made. By reading his website, it seems like he’s concentrating on making automatons. If he ever wants to make another movie, I’m willing to kickstart as much cash as he needs.
Roulette One is a flying luxury casino filled with millionaires and a casino manager who plans on robbing them thanks to his computer programmed to cheat. But then the plane flies through a cloud and everyone on board starts to either become a monster or become eaten by those monsters.
If anyone else made this movie, I’d be calling out how much of it rips off The Thing, Alien and maybe even The Langoliers. Instead, it’s an Alvaro Passeri movie and I’m celebrating it.
Soon, the crew of Carol (Sinne Mutsaers), Janet (Basia Wajs), Don (Eric Bassanesi) and Pat (Giulia Bernardini) are dealing with alien monsters that explode out of people and I’m loving every moment on this CGI-generated plane. And by CGI, I mean everything looks unreal beyond belief. And then Janet has an alien literally crawl between her legs and impregnate her.
I’ve never even considered a movie made with Amiga-level computer animation that has mini-golf on a luxury jet and chess that people bet on. Everything looks soft and brightly colored, like candy that I can’t wait to let my eyes devour. There are also so many lens flares.
Why do they have a flamethrower on this plane? Actually, of all the questions I have, that’s the simplest one. The big one is who are these movies for outside of Passeri? Every one of his films is so idiosyncratic and outright strange and not in the way that says, “Look how wacky I am!” They are absolutely earned strangeness, pure joy captured and ready to reach those ready for it.
Also: Every review that I read where people talk about how bad this movie is or how horrible the effects are, I don’t get mad. I feel bad for these people. I am saddened for them and their lack of imagination and aesthetics.
I also totally appreciate that of all the things that Passeri has ripped off for this movie, the ending of Nightmare Cityis one of them.
I used to worry that I would run out of berserk Italian movies, especially when the 1990s give way to the 2000s but that shows what I know, because The Mummy Theme Park is one of the most baffling, weird, wonderful and just plain strange movies that I’ve seen.
An earthquake reveals the underground City of the Dead in Egypt and Sheik El Sahid get the somewhat bright and probably more deranged idea to take all of the mummies and fit them with animatronics and turn them into a Jurassic Park in the sands. He wants it to be a big deal, so he calls over photographer Daniel Flynn (Adam O’Neil) and his co-worker Julie (Holly Laningham) to take photos of the place, which as far as I can tell is one room with mirrors and miniatures and all manner of in-camera and in-post special effects working as hard as they can and then some to make this movie look bigger than it is while also looking cheap while also appearing to be one of the most charming movies I’ve ever seen. It’s neon, it’s glitter, it’s robot mummies, it’s insane.
And yet, this isn’t a movie made goofy on purpose. It’s deliriously sure of itself and yet unaware of what it is at the same time and that’s the combination that I love more than any other when it comes to weird movies.
Can the flash of a camera bring mummies back to life? Are women’s breasts the only thing that can stop them? Will heads get torn off? Will someone puke up everything inside them? Can a chase scene go on forever? Will there be long scenes of fashion that pad the running time? Will there be a model train that goes through a sphinx? Is there also an evil sorceress? Will the sheik’s harem fight against one another and will one of them also be a hologram? Will there be a souvenir shop that has pharaoh heads that spit out beer?
I mean, this is the kind of movie where a dude gets his head sliced in half and the results look like those cutaway pages in encyclopedias we all used to obsess over. And for that reason and so many others, this is perfect. Man, I’m still processing this movie. I keep reading reviews laughing about how cheap this movie looks and we should be so lucky to have this in our lives.
*Under that name, that is. There’s also the rumor that he’s Massimiliano Cerchi, the name under which he’s directed seventeen movies including The Penthouse that came out this year. Unless there are two directors and special effects guys who have the same name and I’ve been surprised before and if you do the math, Cerchi was making those movies when he was eight. IMDB used to have them as the same person and now they’re separated, so perhaps…who can say!?!
Let me just let Alvaro Passeri tell you what this movie is about.
“It’s Christmas Eve and the snow is falling gently all around a log cabin. This is the home of Mary. who lives here with her family. She has a serious case of flu and is lying in bed with a very high temperature. Gathered around her is Kevin her young brother. her mother Nancy and her grandfather. Kevin opens the Christmas gifts and finds a book called The Golden Grain He starts to read it. Out in distant space, the Little People’s Castle is threatened by the Black Fortress. ruled by Makeb. The king of the castle calls the Queen of Hope for help. Her name is Jade and when she reaches the Fortress she gets drawn into a dangerous computer game with Makeb. She is attacked on all sides by huge balls of fire. slashing swords. laser rags and a terrible monster. Back at Mary’s house. Jethro, a nasty neighbor, is trying to take the place of Nancy’s husband who is missing, presumed dead. When the game comes to an end Makeb plays the Joker and a flood sweeps Jade away. At the same time Mary’s heart stops beating! Then Jade reappears again alive and well. The death ray hits Makeb. whose mask falls off to reveal the face of Jethro. Jade triumphantly reaches the Castle of the Little People and is presented with a grain of corn as her reward. which begins to glow in the palm of her hand. She throws it and it lands by Mary’s cabin. Suddenly cured. she leaps out of bed. ripping off the scarf around her head, to reveal the face of Jade! At that moment the door opens and Mary’s father comes in. having escaped from a mine he had been trapped in for weeks. At midnight the family gathers around the fire. happy and united once again. It’s going to be a happy Christmas.”
This is literally the description of the movie and it gives most of the film away.
Let me tell you something.
You could be told word for word everything that happens in this movie and in no way will you be ready for it.
This is The NeverEnding Story that I had hoped that movie would be when I saw the trailer as a kid. Alvaro Passeri is the closest director that I’ve ever seen to Luigi Cozzi at his wildest. This is also very The Princess Bride if that movie also had a Satanic figure whose face looks like he came directly out of Ron Ormond’s The Burning Hell.
The first of Passeri’s films I saw was The Mummy Theme Park and this delivers the same delirious world of gigantic factories filled with tiny rooms of drones, all creating death machines, all preparing to fire mind cannons at the Queen of Hope. Yet these are all human beings inside those cubicles from Hell, all moving and living and breathing.
There are puppet people, there’s an entire bar filled with skeletons — and the dog hero also bites one of the leg bones and runs with it — and so much charm. This is a movie that I have run through my head again and again, way more often than movies with budgets thirty times more.
A video game puppet stop motion Christmas movie with an alternate reality inside a book that brings you back to a potential snowbound tragedy. All of Passeri’s movies have a sense of childlike wonder, but they often have eyeballs getting torn out and bodies being destroyed. This one is kid-friendly, even if it might be the oddest movie your children ever see.
It’s rare for Becca to get as upset about a movie as Plankton, but I’ve heard about this movie repeatedly since she watched it with me and with good reason. It’s the kind of movie so bad that it circles the sun like Christopher Reeve Superman and comes back twice as horrible as it was before.
In short, this is the kind of movie I get on here and write a thousand words about.
Alvaro Passeri made The Mummy Theme Park and for that he gets a lifetime pass to make movies this horrifically rough. The editing gets so frenetic at one point that I was waiting for Çetin İnanç to fly over from Turkey and tell him to settle down.
Also known as Creatures from the Abyss, this film has the absolute nadir of special effects within it, as radioactive fish mutate and then take over humans and you want everyone to die, particularly Bobby, who makes some of the worst jokes in the history of horrible jokes. In fact, this movie is pushing me to look up new synonyms for worst, awful, bad and poor.
And yet I love it.
But how can I hate a movie that has a cyclopean mermaid clock that talks to everyone and says cute things and comments on the film? Why is there an anthropomorphic clock in an aquatic slasher film? Why is there an endless vomit scene and an even more intense fish-stomping scene?
I nearly had a seizure several times in this movie from laughing and the strobing editing. And then some woman started growing crab claws out of her head that were basically crab claws tied to her head, perhaps via the magic of sweatband. And I nearly forgot that the shower has an artificial intelligence that just wants to see people have sex with each other or themselves while it watches.
I owe my wife an apology and you one as well, because as always, I’ve probably made this sound way better than it is. I’ll probably watch it at least ten more times and fall in love with it even more, because it is obviously made by someone who has no idea that it was approaching John Waters levels of upsetting moments when all he wanted to do was make a silly little horror movie.
That said, I’ve watched every movie that Passeri has made and he definitely has a style. It’s unlike any movies that I’ve seen anyone else make.
ake a trip to the dark side and indulge your taste for wild films, outrageous events, and shocking surprises all under one roof. World-famous genre festival Fantastic Fest is back for its eighteenth edition featuring 29 World Premieres, 24 North American Premieres, and 18 U.S. Premieres. The festival will once again possess Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX from September 21st – 28th. Badges are available now at FantasticFest.com.
The opening night film for Fantastic Fest 2023 is the world premiere of Legendary Pictures’ The Toxic Avenger, a hilarious and action-packed reimagining of the classic Troma film from director Macon Blair that features an all-star cast including Peter Dinklage who will pick up the infamous mop to become the toxic hero that no one knew they needed (or wanted) as well as Jacob Tremblay and Taylour Paige with Elijah Wood and Kevin Bacon.
Fantastic Fest is also honored to present one of Angus Cloud’s final performances in the world premiere of the thriller Your Lucky Day. Cloud gives an incredible performance as a charismatic and opportunistic criminal in the tense debut feature from Dan Brown.
The closing night film will be the world premiere of Director Nahnatchka Khan’s slasher-comedy from Prime Video and Blumhouse Television, Totally Killer. Starring Kiernan Shipka as a time-traveling teen out to stop the infamous “Sweet Sixteen Killer,” Totally Killer is equal parts comedic charm and tense thrills. Shocking kills will keep the Fantastic Fest audience on their toes, and the outrageous 1980s setting will be a fitting lead-in to the closing night festivities.
Other major studio films include NEON’s noir thriller Eileen, director William Oldroyd’s pitch-perfect adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed novel, starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway, 20th Century Studios’ sci-fi epic The Creator from FF alumnus Gareth Edwards, Paramount+’s Pet Semetary: Bloodlines, a prequel to the iconic Stephen King novel, and Bleeker Street’s stone age thriller The Origin.
Fantastic Fest is also proud to present the world premieres of two highly anticipated limited series: the second season of HBO’s 30 Coins from renowned Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia and Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher from genre maestro Mike Flanagan. Plus, there’s director JT Mollner’s Strange Darling, starring Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallnerm, which is shot on gorgeous 35mm film by Giovanni Ribisi in his feature debut as Cinematographer; Jackdow, an outrageously entertaining action film from Jamie Childs (The Sandman and His Dark Materials) and a brand new installment of the found footage horror anthology V/H/S with V/H/S/85 from Shudder.
And it’s not all new movies.
This year’s repertory sidebar is dedicated to creepy crawlies. Centered around the North American Premiere of the spider-infested horror film Vermin, Fantastic Fest programmers in partnership with the American Genre Film Archive are bringing you a trio of critters to haunt your nightmares, with The Nest, Bugged! and Centipede Horror.
AGFA are also bringing two newly restored 35mm prints to the fest: the artful nightmare Messiah of Evil and the Cult of AGFA Trailer Show.
Other notable restorations at the fest include the 2k restoration of Paul Vecchiali’s giallo thriller The Strangler, Bleeding Skull’s new preservation of the infamous underground queer crime movie Blonde Death and a gorgeous 4k restoration of Gregg Araki’s Nowhere from Strand Releasing.
Burnt Ends, the sidebar dedicated to micro-budget outlier cinema., will also return with esoteric world premieres like Kenichi Ugana’s splatterific Visitors (Complete Edition) and Nate Wilson’s kaleidoscopic Teh All Golden, this idiosyncratic sidebar also includes the Texas premiere of Vera Drew’s acclaimed and infamous The People’s Joker.
A variety of badges are available for purchase to attend the festival. CULT MEMBER badge purchasers will receive 3 free months of Alamo Season Pass, in addition to exclusive merchandise and events.
CULT MEMBER, FAN, and 2ND HALF Badges for Fantastic Fest 2023 are available for purchase here.
100 Yards: Shen An wages war on the streets of Tianjin after losing control of his martial arts academy in a humiliating duel with his father’s apprentice.
Acid: In a world messed up by climate change, a girl and her divorced parents must cross a devastated France under strange clouds pouring acid rain.
The All Golden: In veteran Fantastic Fest filmmaker Nate Wilson’s kaleidoscopic and labyrinthine deconstructionist satire, a laid-up polyamorous bicycle courier discovers that her older, scholarly boyfriend has been keeping a sinister secret in his closet.
The Altman Method: A struggling actress questions her husband’s account of a brutal act of heroism that has won him national recognition and saved his failing business.
The Animal Kingdom: Emile’s dad moves him to southern France, where his mom is held in a facility for patients afflicted with an illness that mutates them into animals.
Animalia: Separated from her husband during a state of emergency, pregnant Itto is stranded in a village, where she starts to experience mysterious phenomena.
Baby Assassins 2: The Baby Assassins have been suspended from the Assassin Guild and it’s hard to find a new job when you’ve got a fanboy assassin duo out to kill you.
Bark: A businessman tied to a tree deep in the woods struggles to convince an outdoorsman to cut him free after the hunter sets up camp to watch him die.
Blonde Death: Bleeding Skull presents a tale of death, drugs, and Disneyland in James Robert Baker’s essential chapter of queer cinema history.
Blood Diner: A brain in a jar orders his cannibal nephews to dismember call girls in their diner’s kitchen to patch together a perfect body for an ancient goddess.
The Book of Solutions: Michel Gondry returns with a tongue-in-cheek satire about an idiosyncratic filmmaker who will do anything to execute his vision.
Bugged!: Following a freak lab accident, a woman hires the Dead and Buried Exterminators to rid her house of some overgrown crickets but they all soon realize the bugs are radioactive beasties with a lust for blood!
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut: Art historian Thomas Negovan offers a new cut of one of the most decadent movies ever made, using outtakes to reconcile the film to its original script.
Centipede Horror (Presented by AGFA and Error 4444): After his sister dies under mysterious circumstances while on vacation, Wai Lun decides to take matters into his own hands. Soon enough, he discovers a family curse, battling wizards, and centipedes.
Cobweb: Director Kim Jee-woon’s ravishing and raucous tale of a director trying to finish his magnum opus in the censorship-prone 1970s Korean film industry.
The Coffee Table: Sometimes a gaudy coffee table is just a coffee table, and sometimes it’s the catalyst for a nightmarish descent into ruination.
Connan: Fantastic Fest favorite Bertrand Mandico is back with his uniquely beautiful and bizarre time-traveling spin on the myth of Conan the Barbarian.
Concrete Utopia: A magnetic Lee Byung-hun and Park Seo-joon lead this dark, high-stakes disaster parable of Korea’s fevered obsession with real estate and class forms.
The Creator: From director/co-writer Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) comes an epic sci-fi action thriller set amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence.
Crumb Catcher: An anxiety-inducing chamber piece that will make you fondly remember the worst high-pressure sales pitch you’ve ever delivered (or endured).
The Cult of AGFA Trailer Show (Presented by AGFA): The world premiere 35mm screening of AGFA’s wildest mixtape yet.
The Deep Dark: A group of coal miners unintentionally free a bloodthirsty creature after accompanying a professor down to a hidden crypt discovered deep in the mine.
Divinity: A mad scientist’s serum grants perfect bodies and immortality, but at a cost: rampant infertility leads to an undying society based only on pleasure.
Door: A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged door-to-door salesman in this forgotten home invasion masterpiece.
Eileen: Set during a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, young secretary Eileen becomes enchanted by the glamorous new counselor at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret — throwing Eileen onto a sinister path.
Enter the Clones of Bruce: In the wake of Bruce Lee’s sudden death, film studios rushed to capitalize on the irreplaceable icon, and a new subgenre was born — Bruceploitation.
The Fall of the House of Usher (Episodes 1 & 2): Roderick Usher, CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company, must face his past when brutal and mysterious incidents start affecting his family.
Falling Stars: Three brothers set out on the first night of Harvest to check out the desiccated remains of the witch that their friend has buried in the desert.
The Fantastic Golem Affairs: After his best friend falls to his death and shatters into pottery shards, Juan uncovers a secret world of living golems in this offbeat comedy.
Found Footage Festival Volume 10: Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher take you on a guided tour through their latest and greatest VHS finds.
Four’s A Crowd: Álex de la Iglesia’s new movie! Two unexpected passengers complicate an Uber driver’s plan to declare his feelings for one of his regular customers during a 300 km drive to Madrid.
A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree: Padraig (James O Healy) is pulled into a dark world of Irish Mythology and magic as he struggles to deal with his past actions.
I’ll Crush Y’All: A retired boxing champion and his dog must defend his family’s country farm from wave after wave of gangsters in this bloody, bare-knuckle brawler.
In My Mother’s Skin: A Filipino girl living under Japanese occupation learns the tragic consequences of making deals when a fairy’s gifts extract pounds of flesh.
The Invisible Fight: After martial artists take out his Soviet post on the China border, a mechanic seeks kung fu mastery at a monastery in this wuxia-inspired comedy.
Jackdaw: Former motocross champion Jack Dawson embarks on a dark odyssey through his decaying Rust Belt town after being double-crossed by the local kingpin.
The Jar (Charon): Terror Vision presents a restoration of this insane movie! After hitting an old man with his car, Paul is left with a jar holding a demonic creature that opens a portal to strange worlds and psychotic visions.
Kennedy: Kennedy works as a contract killer for a corrupt police commissioner with the hope of exacting vengeance on the man who murdered his son.
Kill Dolly Kill: Dolly Deadly is out to win Serial Killer of the Year, and she’ll violate all sense of good taste to snatch the crown and look fabulous while doing it.
Killing Romance: A toxic masculinity-bashing karaoke musical phantasmagoria from the magical mind of LEE Won-suk, Killing Romance will stick in your head for months.
Kim’s Video: An aspiring filmmaker with fond memories of browsing the shelves of a defunct NY video store attempts to rescue its singular collection of VHS tapes.
The Last Stop In Yuma County: A traveling salesman and a waitress face down two murderous bank robbers while waiting for gas at the last pump before a hundred miles of desert.
The Last Video Store: Blaster Video’s only employee teams up with his best customer’s daughter to fight off an onslaught of B-movie baddies made real by a VHS necronomicon.
Letters to the Postman: A naive postman finds himself corresponding with a mysterious woman in Felix Dembinski’s auspicious and bewitching folk fable.
Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow: A hilarious, action-packed documentary chronicling the fascinating life of indie filmmaker Cliff Twemlow and the industry he built in Manchester, UK.
#Manhole: The premise is a simple one: After a night of hard drinking on the night before his wedding, a man falls into an open manhole. How will he escape?
Messiah of Evil (Presented by AGFA and Radiance Films): AGFA and Radiance Films present a brand new, restored 35mm print of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz’ artful nightmare.
Mushrooms: An old lady stumbles upon a lost couple while picking mushrooms. They beg for help getting out of the forest, but she senses that something is off.
The Nest (Presented by AGFA and Shout! Factory):Roaches have never tasted flesh… Until now.
Nowhere: A bunch of LA teens realize they’re witnessing the apocalypse as they seek out a wild party in this 4K restoration of Gregg Araki’s cult classic.
One-Percenter: An aging stuntman caught in a brutal feud between yakuza gangs finally shoots the pure action thriller he’s been obsessing over his entire career.
The Origin: A group fights for survival against an unknown adversary in this stone age thriller.
The Other Laurens: When his niece shows up at his door looking for help, shaggy-dog P.I. Gabriel Laurens is unwittingly drawn into his twin’s shady criminal underworld.
The People’s Joker: The Joker finds new purpose in Gotham City after transitioning and opening an illegal comedy club in Vera Drew’s handcrafted superhero genre parody.
Pet Semetary: Bloodlines: In 1969, a young Jud Crandall and his childhood friends band together to confront an ancient evil that has gripped their hometown. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is a terrifying prequel based on chapters from Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary.
Project Silence: A car pileup on a foggy bridge pits survivors against a pack of vicious dogs in this satirical horror pitched between The Host and Train to Busan.
Property: A gang of disenfranchised farmhands traps a traumatized woman in her armored car in Daniel Bandeira’s Brazilian take on the home invasion.
Rage: The only child in a rundown gated community mourns his mother’s death as suspicious events lead him to suspect that his father may be a werewolf.
Restore Point: A detective investigates a double homicide in a near-future world where technology allows those who die violently to be rebooted from a data backup.
Riddle of Fire: Three children go on an epic quest to uncover the password for their TV, finding themselves in their own video game-like adventure in the real world.
River: Kikaku Theater Group, the team behind our 2021 Audience Award winner Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes returns with more two-minute time loop hijinks.
The Sacrifice Game: Disillusioned demon worshipers end a string of grisly murders by interrupting a boarding school’s quiet Christmas in this ‘70s-era Satanic Panic romp.
Salem: A former gang member begins to believe that his daughter will be their slum’s new messiah after a rival curses the neighborhood with his dying breath.
Scala!!!: The story behind London’s legendary Scala Cinema, which screened the most outrageous movies before it was sued and shuttered for showing A Clockwork Orange.
Sleep: Somnambulism takes on a frightful new meaning in this clever, claustrophobic Korean chiller from former Bong Joon-ho assistant director Jason Yu.
So Unreal: Amanda Kramer’s documentary collage looks back at the subgenre of films concerned with cyberspace, hackers, and the first days of the internet.
Spooktacular!: A new documentary tells the warts-and-all story behind America’s first horror theme park, Spooky World.
Sri Asih: The Warrior: An aspiring boxer discovers she’s a reincarnation of the goddess Asih in this Indonesian superhero movie focused on punching terrible men in the face.
Stopmotion: A stop-motion animator puts up with her overbearing, sick mother in Robert Morgan’s haunting debut.
Strange Darlingi: One day in the life of a serial killer.
The Strangler: A killer and a detective cross paths as they hunt for an answer to their respective feelings of loneliness in the world premiere of the restoration of this 1970 Giallo.
Suburban Tale: A young woman reluctantly returns home for her estranged sister’s wedding only to discover that her family is hiding a possessed boy in their home.
Suitable Flesh: Directed by Joe Lynch. A casual, intimate encounter with a patient leads a psychologist into the cosmic, kinky world of Lovecraftian horror headlined by Barbara Crampton and Heather Graham.
There’s Something In the Barn: After inheriting an old cabin in Norway, an American family moves there with the intention of turning the adjoining barn into a bed and breakfast. They end up disturbing a barn elf who will go to deadly lengths to drive the family away.
Tiger Stripes: A dreamy horror fairy tale about a teenage girl who notices strange, transformative changes in her body soon after getting her first period.
Totally Killer: When the infamous “Sweet Sixteen Killer” returns 35 years after his first murder spree to claim another victim, 17-year-old Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) accidentally travels back in time to 1987, determined to stop the killer before he can start.
The Toxic Avenger: A horrible toxic accident transforms downtrodden janitor Winston Gooze into a new evolution of hero: The Toxic Avenger!
Triggered: Procuring a job as a night watchman as a re-entry back into civilian life, ex-soldier Miguel finds himself caught in a gun battle between a drug cartel and a corrupt police unit.
UFO Sweden: A rebellious teenager seeks out the help of a disgraced meteorologist’s ufology society to locate her father years after he vanished into thin air.
The Uncle: A family prepares for their uncle’s Christmas visit, but the festivities are dampened by the fact that he’ll return in a few days to celebrate again.
V/H/S/85: The iconic found footage series returns with an array of explosive, bloody scares set in a decade obsessed with serial killers and the Satanic Panic.
Vermin: A critter collector’s purchase of a venomous spider turns his entire apartment building into a death trap after it escapes from its shoebox enclosure.
Visitors (Complete Edition): A rock ‘n’ roll band drop in unannounced on a friend and find themselves plummeting into a wackadoo reverie of monsters and mayhem.
The Wait: The gamekeeper of a wealthy man’s rural hunting grounds accepts a bribe from the local hunting guide, which spirals downward into dire consequences.
Wake Up: Gen Z activists are violently picked off by a deranged night watchman after sneaking into an environmentally destructive big-box furniture store.
We Are Zombies: Canadian filmmaker collective RKSS returns with a hilarious, violent take on a post-apocalyptic world where zombies are misunderstood, unalive citizens.
What You Wish For: A down-and-out sous-chef gets more than he bargained for when he steps into the life of an old culinary school pal, a private chef for the über-rich.
When Evil Lurks: Two brothers uncover a deadly secret festering in their village and are soon in a race to contain a demon threatening to extinguish their community.
Where the Devil Roams: After a fatal trespassing incident, Eve steals a terrifying artifact from a fellow carnival performer in the hope of bringing her parents back.
You’ll Never Find Me: A strange woman desperate for shelter from a harrowing storm picks the wrong trailer to seek refuge… or did she choose exactly right?
You’re Not Me: Aitana shows up at her estranged parents’ home for a surprise Christmas visit and discovers they’ve replaced her with a strange live-in caretaker.
Your Lucky Day: After a dispute over a winning lottery ticket turns into a deadly hostage situation, the witnesses must decide exactly how far they’ll go — and how much blood they’re willing to spill — for a cut of the $156 million.
Director and co-writer Alice Maio Mackay is just eighteen years old, but across her last two films — So Vamand Bad Girl Boogey — she’s improved from an already solid start. Now, with T-Blockers, co-written with Benjamin Pahl Robinson, there’s another leap forward.
Sash VO (Joni Ayton-Kent Sash) is a young horror filmmaker with a cop dad that lives in a town that doesn’t seem too open to a trans girl. Yet Adam (Stanley Browning), who she goes out on a date with, does seem unfazed, even if whatever secret he tells her is so upsetting that she runs home and drinks, smokes and does coke with her roommates to the point of sickness. And Adam? Well, he’s taken into a cult of men who have been rejected and indoctrinated into their sinister ways.
The entire town is becoming contaminated by something evil in the water, something beyond just passing laws against trans kids, something supernatural. And Sophie has gained the ability to grow sick any time she’s around people who are under the influence of this darkness as they transform into zombies.
There’s also a movie within the movie, monologues by Australian drag performer Etcetera Etcetera and a budget of around $6,000, which blows my mind, because it’s all on the screen and then some. I loved how each side of the battle has their own unique color scheme and yeah, some people are going to be put off by how stereotypical so much of this movie is, but it’s a teenager making the movie she wants to make, telling it on her terms, so when you can say you’ve made three movies and a TV series by 18, then you can show how it’s done too.
T-Blockers is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
Directed and written by Nathan Blackwell, this film finds Marshall (Adam Rini) at the end of the world, deciding that he should bring together a group of friends and strangers — and his ex-wife Audrey (Megan Rini — to make the movie he never finished in high school.
How does everyone discover that the world will end? A voice in their head, giving them thirty days, as the simulation that is our reality is ending. That’s what makes Marshall look up his old friends Lance (Ryan Gaumont) and Arthur (Craig Curtis) to finally complete their science fiction movie in the face of a very science fiction reality.
This could be a dark film, yet it has so much heart — and joy in the power of movies — that I couldn’t help but love it. It seems like the making of this movie was the same labor of love as the film that Marshall puts together. A movie that finally gets him past his issues and has him grow up. Sure, it’s in time for the world to end, but I’d like to think everyone escapes because the movie ends before the world does.
The Last Movie Ever Made was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
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