Vienna, Austria’s SLASH Filmfestival spotlights horror, science fiction, fantasy, and other genre films from around the world — both features and shorts — and the fest is now open for submissions for two outstanding events this year. Following is the official press announcement.
Kerry Prior, who directed the 2009 horror outing The Revenant, made a found-footage film in 1999 that was considered lost since that time. Recently found, The Blare Rabbit Project will have its world premiere in March at Wisconsin’s MidWest WeirdFest.
Wisconsin’s MidWest WeirdFest reliably features some of the most unusual, exciting, and entertaining narrative features and documentaries from around the world, and the fest’s first wave announcement for this year shows that the tradition continues. From Lovecraft and Poe to Mokele-Mbembe and far, far beyond, the first seven features announced are something to look forward to as the fest’s March 5–7 dates quickly approach. Following is MidWest WeirdFest’s official press announcement.
Genre-film fans with an interest in the paranormal, UFOs, cryptids, and offbeat cinema fare absolutely need to know about Wisconsin’s MidWest WeirdFest. Each year, the festival features superb narrative and documentary features and shorts from around the globe, and this year, the fest has launched an Indiegogo campaign to help continue its tradition of bringing the fine fare for which it is known and to support its home base, Eau Claire’s Micon Downtown Cinema.
★1/2 out ★★★★★ If you have a conventional sense of social norms.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ if you are a Troma fan and appreciate trashy and depraved satire.
Lloyd Kaufman and team Troma return to their Shakespearean roots and turn this loose-bowel take on The Tempest into a skewering of the social norms of today’s culture. This is the strongest, funniest, and most consistent Troma film I have seen since the ’80s Troma glory days but it also pushes the censorship limbo bar so low that there may not be room to go more lowbrow than this.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ A super stylish and exceptionally well-scored film that’s partially in Danish and partially in English and…wait for it…features a character who’s half Danish and half American.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
A grieving widower performs a dark ritual with consequences that lead to An Unquiet Grave
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
More fun then you can stuff in a duffle bag!
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Sharks, rotting corpses/ghosts, and a survivor guilt haunt a young woman in this psychological horror.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
After failing to crowd-fund their board game “Murder Bury Win”, three young game designers get the opportunity of a lifetime to present their ideas to a scion of the game industry and finally get the big break they have been looking for. After initial fun and games, their dream pitch turns into a nightmare with tragic (and comic) consequences. Great characters + unique concept + greed motives = cinema gold!
From supernatural horror to the immediacy of pandemic terror, Female Voices Rock Film Festival’s After Midnight block offers a unique selection of remarkable fright-fare shorts.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Is it a ghost story? A time travel story? The Return is a bit of both. Director BJ Verot’s first feature film is a tightly scripted sci-fi and haunted horror production, and it was one of the highlights of 2020’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.
We have seen the future of Horror Film Festivals, and it was the big Nightstream festival. While it was disappointing not to be able to go to these events in person, the streaming digital festival delivered a wealth of great movies, shorts, and special events that both horrified and delighted us. Listen in to the Scariest Things team report on our favorite moments.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
This independent Chilean sci-fi/horror feature serves up gore galore and an intriguing approach that should appeal to fans of The X-Files and similar fare.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
|If Goosebumps with gore sounds like a winning combination to you (and it is!), check out this tale of three tweener friends who try to close the doorway for demons that one of them unknowingly opened.
★★★ out of ★★★★★ A trippy third act and solid performances highlight this vampire outing. Directed by Aaron Pagniano Writer/director […]
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Breaking Surface will have you on the edge of your seat and gasping for breath.
★★ out of ★★★★★
The Doorman is a throwback action movie, starring Ruby Rose as an ex-special forces soldier turned doorman battling Jean Reno and his squad of art thieves. The film gets bogged down in stale clichés and surprisingly bland action pieces. Not everything on Nightstream was awesome, or even horror.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
May (Brea Grant) is an author who finds herself under repeated attack by a mysterious would-be killer. She mounts successful defense after successful defense, but each time she wins, the assassin disappears. It’s an exercise of frustration and futility for May as nobody believes her and her proof proves to be elusive.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Sweeping cosmic weirdness has been achieved in The Hill and the Hole, an adaptation of a 1942 Fritz Leiber short story. Buoyed by stellar cinematography but burdened by an inscrutable plot, this film might be best understood under heavy hallucinogens.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Two French dullards discover a giant housefly in the trunk of a car that they stole, and they realize that this monstrous insect could be their ticket to fame and fortune. Toro! From Quentin Dupieux, the director and twisted imagination behind Rubber (2010), the bonkers Mandibles was the festival closing feature for Nightstream.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ This French offering is one of the better horror anthologies you are likely to see this […]
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The sequel to the Indonesian horror hit May the Devil Take You is a more than worthy successor to the storyline. Alfie, the survivor of the first film is drafted by a group of orphans to assist with the exorcism of their demon spirit of their wicked caretaker. Strong Sam Raimi and Wes Craven influences are in abundance in this bloody and fun showcase of what Indonesian Horror has in store.
★★★ out of ★★★★★ Exit is an experimental U.K. film with surreal, sometimes trippy elements that combines social and political […]
★★ out of ★★★★★ What in the world happens when filmmakers run out of ideas? Well, it’s rather simple. A) In most cases they go back to the well, B) there’s always a sequel, or prequel, or a reboot, C) the idea is reimagined through the lens of an out of copyright idea, story, or myth, or D) they just run out of ideas. Sadly, for 2020’s The Hunted, the answer is D.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
An exhausted Iranian couple that is struggling with fitting in their arrival in America crash in a hotel after a night of bickering. The hotel presents them with some hard, hard truths and becomes a haunted prison rather than the refuge they sought. Tightly scripted and wonderfully acted, the film finds its power through suggestion and implied concepts.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★ In the latest installment of “If you’re not watching Indonesian horror movies, you’re blowing it,” brings us 2020’s The Queen of Black Magic. It’s true. Indonesia is the new incubator for the creepiest crawlies that the horror genre has to offer. Every country has had their day in the sun. The UK plastered us with Hammer and Amicus throughout the 1960s. The US reimagined the genre with slashers and super killers throughout the 1970s and 80s. And Japan brought a whole new slate of water and hair-borne frights in the late 1990s and in to the early 2000s. Now it’s Indonesia time to shine.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Creative, gory, action packed and absolutely hilarious- Bloody Hell, it’s great!
★★★ out of ★★★★★
There’s literally something fishy about this little beachside community, as a vacationing couple get entangled with a strange beachside community ritual. This is what you get if you mashup Rosemary’s Baby with Humanoids from the Deep. The film telegraphs its punches, but it is clearly for fans who like their Lovecraft stories with a thin slice of sleazy.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ There exists that great space in documentaries that take place decades after the event occurred. It’s this beautiful melange of revisionist history, lucid thoughts, purposeful sleepwalking, and repressed memories. All answers are correct and infallible when the documentary is filtered through the iconic lens of a single and thoughtful directorial darling. THE William Friedkin is the ultimate bridge between Hollywood’s glorious beginnings and the revolutionary young guns of the 1970s. It should come as no surprise the Friedkin has some rather insightful things to say about one of the greatest films of the 1970s, possibly the greatest horror film of all time, and in some camps, THE greatest film ever put down on celluloid — the Exorcist.
