Miyabi (Kaho Seto) has lost her daughter when she falls from the balcony, which puts her in a dark place, working as an escort in a basement somewhere with two other women. Sure, she has a new guy, but one of her co-workers — Aiwaza (Daiki Nunami) — loses her mind and kills a whole bunch of people with a knife.

One of Aiwaza’s prize clients — Oka (Satoshi Oka) — now needs someone to take care of his needs, so Miyabi takes over. His needs? He takes photos of women, slowly, strangely and in ways that make them feel like they’re being dissected. Yes, that’s strange. But what’s strange is that his house is either always pitch black or blindingly red. Strange enough? What if he had no vocal cords and now spoke through the sound system of his home at body-rattling volume? And what if, with each photo that Oka takes, Miyabi gets closer to seeing her dead daughter?

Also, none of this could be happening. Or all of it.

Directed and written by Keishi Kondo, this is not a movie to go into hoping for a straight-up horror film. But for those willing to journey toward its heart of darkness, there’s something strange and wonderful here.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Instead of going to jail, Willem (Stephen Phillips) takes a different sentence, in which he has to stay all alone in an isolated facility. Phillips takes on so much in this, because he’s largely on screen all by himself for the entire run time.

While watching the monster, Willem reflects on his life, like how everything went downhill after the death of his wife Carrie (Cecilia Low), a return to heroin and the loss of his two daughters. We also actually see his memories in the form of what looks like actual home movies.

However, Willem isn’t alone. There’s some kind of creature, one that he’s sure is just in his head, that is watching him. Is it his past pain come to life? Is it how he sees his addiction? Is it going to shred him when he goes to sleep? And why do the government agents keep asking so many questions, none of them about this monster, and shock him when he lies?

Directed by Tristan Barr (who also plays Dalesky) and written by Vincent Befi, this is a movie that puts its lead through hell yet so much of that is of his own making. This is unlike any movie I’ve seen and worth your time.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Director and writer Anthony Edward Curry told the Asbury Park Press, ““I always felt that TRAP was a story that needed to be told,” Curry said. “It was a movie that found itself over years of production because it was constantly morphing — because the real-life characters, they were evolving before my eyes. So I was constantly re-writing. Every day I was changing because the characters are changing in front of me.”

The title means The Real Asbury Park and it’s a story that Curry originally wrote when he was 17. How true to life is the film? Curry made national press when a video confession from former Neptune High School classmate Liam McAtasney was secretly recorded in 2017 was a key piece of evidence leading to McAtasney being found guilty of murder.

According to the New York Post, “In December 2016, artist Sarah Stern, 19, went missing and her car was found abandoned on a bridge in Belmar, NJ. In the aftermath of her disappearance, Curry remembered his high school friend Liam McAtasney, who was close with Stern, pitching an idea for a movie in which he killed a girl. He came to the shocking realization that this wasn’t a tale that simply lived in his friend’s imagination — and he went to the police, who helped him set up a sting. Curry filmed McAtasney’s chilling confession — leading to his conviction and a life sentence.”

With a cast made up of some actors, some real street people and the director himself, TRAP tells the story of a young criminal about to face life in prison and the dark path that got him there. It’s really uncompromising and if it feels lived in, obviously it is. It might be playing in this festival surrounded by horror genre films, but it truly might be one of the more frightening movies playing.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Known in its native Lithuania as Rūpintojėlis (Caregiver), this is at once a teen drama, a folk horror and a slasher and when it leans into the latter, it goes all the way. Once known as Pensive, the new title is a much better explanation of what happens in this shocker.

After their graduation party location gets canceled, a group of teens are saved by Marius (Šarūnas Rapolas Meliešius), who has been one of the more misunderstood and unpopular students. His mother has an empty property that she’s been trying to sell forever and he knows where she keeps the keys. It seems like the perfect strategy to get his crush, Brigita (Gabija Bargailaitė), all alone.

Sounds like a teen sex comedy, maybe? Well, when the students arrive, there are statues all over the property, wooden figures that one of them claims are representations of grief and loss, as the last person to live here lost his family in a fire, which led to his suicide. When they go inside, the walls are covered with black soot. Yes, people died here.

Let’s party?

Once the drink starts to flow, someone gets the idea to destroy the statues. But those pieces of wooden remembrance have a caretaker willing to give out the same treatment to flesh that has been visited upon wood.

The difference with nearly every other slasher that you’ve ever seen is that these aren’t disposable teens. Some of them are quite nice. But just because they’re at the house and were around when the statues were defaced, they must all pay.

If this were the 80s, Hollywood would hire director Jonas Trukanas (who co-wrote the script with Titas Laucius) and have him direct the next sequel in a horror franchise. As it is, the wood-masked charred caretaker named Algis (Marius Repsys) just might be a better Cropsy than the one that shows up in The Burning. It also takes most of the things that you expect from a traditional slasher, references them and then throws them into a blender where they come up bloody and unrecognizable yet perfect in their new execution.

This is a movie to get excited about.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Directed by Sam Curtain, who co-wrote this with Benjamin Jung-Clarke, Beaten to Death starts with Jack (Thomas Roach) being brutalized by Ricky (Justan Wagner) as the body of his wife Rachel (Nicole Tudor) lies dead next to them. Barely alive, Jack stabs the man in the throat and stumbles out of the room. He runs into his neighbor Ned (David Tracy),, but that’s just the start of his torture.

That title should tell you everything, because Jack gets destroyed in this movie, which moves across multiple timelines and spends much of its time showing a blinded Jack wandering the Australian outback screaming, covered in blood and dirt and near death.

There’s long moments of a man in absolute pain just yelling alternating with moments of extreme violence and an ocular assault that awakened the dead body of Fulci who was probably either smiling or annoyed to be awoken from his slumber. You’re either going to love how audacious this is or hate that there’s this much endless gore. But hey — the cinematography is gorgeous and in no way does this movie do anything less than go hard and then somehow find a way to go even harder.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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 Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.