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.

Eating Miss Campbell (2022): Every time Beth (Lyndsey Craine) dies — at her own hand — she wakes up in another horror movie. This time, it’s a cannibal romantic comedy. And that idea, that Beth wants to die but might learn something from each new film, is a great one. It doesn’t come back into this film at all, which is the first of the misfires that this movie commits.

Director and writer Liam Regan, my enthusiasm for this diminished somewhat when a Troma logo came across the screen. As for the story, well, only one student at Henenlotter High School — get it? get it? the film seems to nudge you; the same school also is the setting of Regan’s My Bloody Banjo — can win the “All You Can Eat Massacre” contest and get a handgun of their own with which they can either soot their fellow students or kill themselves.

Yet there may be hope. Beth has a crush on English teacher Miss Campbell (Lala Barlow) which seems to play out as a need to consume human flesh. This is the exact opposite of her vegan ethos yet eating one’s enemies is such sweet revenge.

The rest of the film uses teen movie stereotypes from Heathers, Tragedy Girls and Mean Girls to move along its tale of girl cliques and male sexual predators. Of all the imagery and ideas taken by this movie, I liked that one of the female bullies favors Road Warrior Hawk makeup.

The movie — well, the evil teacher Nancy Applegate (Annabella Rich) — refers to Beth as “the millennial product of the American high school trope” and that would be an intriguing meta comment were it not so on the nose. Sure, her mother is dead, she has a horrible stepfather and school sucks, but why does she want to end her existence beyond a “woe is me” attitude? Far be it from me to expect good taste in film, much like exploitation, but I do definitely demand a character who has a reason for their deepest desire, even if it is dying.

If she really wants to live in a movie life that isn’t nostalgic horror, why does she play into the same cliches throughout? That motivation is never truly explored. Instead, there are endless references to other movies — if this were a Marvel comic, there’d be an editor note in every panel, cluttering this up with reference upon reference — and can you top this gross-out humor. Trust me, I love humor like that. Lloyd Kaufmann saying “Alex Baldwin” and blowing out his brains is anything but wit.

To be satire, one must have some position from which to state why something is worthy of ridicule, lest it becomes exactly what it is deriding. If you want to make fun of direct-to-video horror, that’s not that hard. If you want to make a satire about hot button issues like date rape and teen suicide, go for it. But you better bring your best material. And if this is it, well, I have no interest in 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.

The Barn Part II (2022): I’d put off watching The Barn for so long; it just seemed like a rather silly for silly sake Troma-esque mining of the wonderous golden age of the slasher. Man, I was wrong. This movie completely rocks on every level and is way, way better than I had no idea it could have been.

The Halloween ban is now lifted in Helen’s Valley and the sorority girls of Gamma Tau Psi place Michelle (Lexi Dripps) — once the final girl, destined to be the final girl again — in charge of their haunted house. Yet she still hasn’t come to terms with what happened in the first movie and believes that she survived what was only a ritualistic attack that killed all her friends.

Working with her best friend Heather (Sable Griedel), they start planning the haunt and decide to use it to memorialize the still missing Sam (Mitchell Musolino) and Josh (Will Stout). While the story of the first movie has become only an urban legend, the truth is that The Boogeyman, Hollow Jack and the Candy Corn Scarecrow are back. And if you don’t know their story, Drive-In Joe (Joe Bob Briggs!) will handle the exposition.

There’s also a battle to outlaw Halloween again, led by Sara Barnhart (Linnea Quigley) and battled by DJ Dr. Rock (Ari Lehman). They’re not the only great cameos. Lloyd Kaufmann is the town’s mayor, Diana Prince plays a nurse, Doug Bradley plays Sam’s father, Mister Lobo shows up and even Ben Dietels from Neon Brainiacs is in it!

Director and writer Justin M. Seaman has created a movie that lives up to 90s DTV horror and can also stand on its own. I had an absolute blast watching this movie. See it in a theater — or a drive-in! — if you can or with as many people as you can. It’s filled with goofy monsters — including two new ones — as well as inventive kills and all kinds of gore.

You can order DVDs and blu rays here and learn more at the official Facebook page.

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.

Please Don’t Abandon Me (2022): Helena (Valentina Sumavsky) has been living with her boyfriend Jesus (Jesús Meza) and things have been going well. But the past, well, the past has made Helena constantly wonder when her happiness will end. Drugs, emotional issues, past damage — she knows that this relationship will end soon and it starts to take her into a very dismal place.

Directed and written by Antonio Rotunno, the movie quickly moves into Helena dispatching of Jesus in a long, drawn-out sequence with plenty of stabbing. So much stabbing. And then more stabbing. Followed by her sewing job reminding her of that skinny blade going in and out of skin, over and over. Concealing the defensive wounds under sunglasses, she keeps up the appearance of a normal life, but when others want to see Jesus and people start asking questions, it gets harder and harder to keep the corpse of her once alive lover in the house, leading to her having to dispose of the body as well as anyone who gets too close.

I was hoping for more in this movie but it gets to its most dramatic moments early and then the close — which echoes The New York Ripper‘s dog reveal — seemed like too cute of a button after all the horror that I’d just seen. Maybe it’ll work better for you or it’s meant to be watched with others, because it all left me rather cold.

You can see the trailer to this movie 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.

Follow Her (2022): Jess Peters (Dani Barker, who also wrote the film) is a struggling actress and live streaming influencer who has been getting somewhat famous answering job listings from creepy men and then sneak filming and either revealing their behavior or kink-shaming them.

Now, she’s found a job that asks her to go to a remote cabin and co-write a script with Tom Brady (Luke Cook) — not the athlete — and playact as the two main characters in his psychosexual murder mystery. She finds herself attracted to him but plans on using this as content for her streaming channel. But what if she’s someone else’s content?

Originally known as Classified Killer, this is the full-length debut of director Sylvia Caminer. I really don’t want to get much deeper into the twists and turns of the movie, except to say that the first one actually got me. This film gets more intense as it goes on and it totally took me for a ride. It works hard to get you to like Jess, who has a pretty unlikeable online character and makes you wonder who is behind the people that you live vicariously through social media.