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Festivals

Information about our favorite Film Festivals and the great features and shorts they’re showing.

Poe, Lovecraft, and an African Lake Monster Feature in MidWest WeirdFest’s 2021 First Wave Announcement

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.
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MidWest WeirdFest Presents Its Indiegogo Campaign to Support the Festival’s Fifth Edition

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.
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Eric’s Review: The Last Thanksgiving (2020) [Another Hole in the Head FF]

★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ The Last Thanksgiving is a gory '80s style slasher film that works on the decidedly soft premise that the Pilgrims succumbed to cannibalism to make it through the first Thanksgiving, and their descendants continue that tradition 400 years later. It delivers well on the hyper-violence, but it falls rather flat with character and plot. This is an empty calorie Thanksgiving feast.
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#Shakespeare’s Shitstorm (2020) (Another Hole in the Head Film Festival)

★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.

Inensity: 🩸🩸 for scatalogical nastiness

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.

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Eric’s Review: Murder Bury Win (Another Hole in the Head Film Festival)(2020)

★★★★★ 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!
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The Scariest Things Podcast Episode CXI: The Nightstream Recap

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.
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Eric’s Nightstream Review: Lapsis (2020)

★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ A grifter with good intentions, but in need of a lucky break, signs up for a job that seems too good to be true. Lapsis is a dystopian parable for the treadmill of old-fashioned hard work and the fear that technology is going to make you obsolete.
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Eric’s Nightstream Review: The Doorman (2020)

★★ 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.
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Lucky (2020) Review (Nightstream Festival)

★★★★ 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.
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Eric’s Nightstream Review: Mandibles (2020)

★★★★ 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.
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Eric’s Nightstream Review: May the Devil take You Too (2020)

★★★★ 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.
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Mike’s Nightstream Review: The Hunted (2020)

★★ 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.
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The Night (2020) Review: Nightstream Festival

★★★★★ 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.
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Mike’s Nightstream Review: The Queen of Black Magic (2020)

★★★★.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.
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Eric’s Review: The Deep Ones (Another Hole in the Head Film Festival) (2020)

★★★ 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.
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