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.

Tistlebu (2022): Shot at the folk hotel Nordigard Blessom in Vågå, which is near the Jutulporten “The Troll Gate,” Tistlebu is all about a young urban couple who decides that a working vacation at the Tistlebu farm will help them better connect with nature. Well…nature really becomes connected to them.

A dark and moody folk horror film, Tistlebu could easily have been two hours longer and I would have stick with every moment. Director Simon M. Valentine, who also wrote the script with Alexander Delver, has crafted something unreal in all the very best of ways here.

In the folk tale of the Jutulen and Johannes Blessom, Johannes is told not to look back as the gate opens to the world of fantasy.He refuses to listen, turns and his neck is always crooked for the rest of his life. Perhaps the young couple in this, Sanna (Sacha Slengesol Balgobin) and Karl (Sjur Vatne Brean) should have just stayed unawares in the city, far from where the rules of reality no longer apply.

Tistlebu is a gorgeous film with images that will stick with me for some time.

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.

Nasty (2022): A very simple premise: “The weird girl in class invites the hottest guy in school to her fruity dinner party.”

Paige Dillon’s Nasty, however, looks incredible and if you’re someone who doesn’t like to watch people eat, it’s going to upset you to no end.

There are gross meals, bloody teeth, pears being turned into sacrificial Mr. Potato head-type beings, food going on peoples’ faces, food spit into peoples’ faces and a horrific final repast. Maybe save your meal until way after.

In her director’s statement, Dillon said, “On set, we finished shooting early and laughed all day. Everyone walked away having had one of their best student-set experiences. I am so proud of myself for cultivating an environment that was simultaneously productive and fun; everything I believe filmmaking should be.”

While the end to this feels too fast from the set-up, I definitely think this deserves more time. I’m looking forward to 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.

Swole Ghost (2022): This movie answers a very important question, one that’s been plaguing us all for years: how come the ghost in my house doesn’t give me any message, any inkling of how I can escape this mortal level of reality? Maybe your ghost is weak. Maybe your ghost needs trained. Maybe your ghost needs a montage.

Swole Ghost is seven minutes of your life that could be incredibly valuable if only to know that ghosts can also be the scorpions in the scorpion and the frog scenario. Be careful when you mix the fitness industry and the spirit world.

Directed, written and produced by Tim Troemner, this plays like a quick sketch but that’s fine — just the image of someone spotting a ghost on the weight bench is enough, all this has to live up to, and it goes much further.

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.