FilmQuest, one of MovieMaker Magazine’s “30 Bloody Best Genre Fests in the World in 2019,” has announced a stellar lineup of more than 190 features and shorts highlighting some of the finest genre film selections in the industry. The Provo, Utah-based fest has quickly grown to become one of the nation’s leading purveyors of genre cinema, awarding its winners with the coveted Cthulhu Trophy.
This year’s edition kicks off on September 6th with Epic Pictures’ The Fare, a mystery/thriller/romance mash-up with touches of the classic The Twilight Zone television series about a cab driver (Gino Anthony Pesi) and his captivating fare (Brinna Kelly), who find themselves trapped in a time conundrum.
Other features on tap include the regional premieres of two SXSW hits. Villains sees outlaw lovers on the lam Mickey (Bill Skarsgård) and Jules (Maika Monroe) finding their lucky streak of robberies coming to a quick, brutal end when they break into a house owned by a couple (Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgewick) and discover a young girl chained up in the basement. This well-acted black comedy thriller dishes up heaps of laughs and suspense, along with a fair amount of nastiness and bloodletting. Daniel Isn’t Real stars Miles Robbins as a young man troubled by his childhood imaginary friend (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who definitely has a sadistic side to him.
Also screening are the world premiere of Justin Dix’s Australian WWII action–horror film Blood Vessel, starring Nathan Phillips and Alyssa Sutherland; the U.S. premiere of the star-studded genre-bending animated feature film To Your Last Death, featuring Morena Baccarin, Ray Wise, and William Shatner; the gruesome, exciting horror thriller The Black String, starring Frankie Muniz in a superb performances as a young man whose attempt at a romantic evening turns into a nightmare; The Sonata, an effective supernatural horror drama that recalls the well-crafted Eurohorror films of the 1970s, featuring Rutger Hauer in one of his final roles; Swing Low, a thriller about a nature photographer who fights her way out of a mess but is taken for a meth addict, starring Bruce Dern and Annabelle Dexter-Jones; and Academy Award-winner Barney Burman’s grindhouse-flavored Wild Boar, in which a colony of mutant pig-men seek out human prey.
Past FilmQuest winners include Academy Award-winner Joel Harlow, Doug Jones, Pedro Pascal, Kathleen Quinlan, Minnie Driver, George Blagden, Kyle Gass, Bonnie Aarons, Toby Froud, and Netflix’s Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil.
“Our 2019 season continues to solidify our growing status as one of the most influential genre festivals in the country,” said festival Founder and Director Jonathan Martin. “With the incredible talent on display forming an ever-expanding alumni base, FilmQuest is proving itself to be one of the go-to destinations to find not only great genre cinema, but also discover the next big thing in up-and-coming talent within the genre industry today.”
Guest highlights of the 2019 festival includes an interactive workshop with noted genre directors Michael and Peter Spierig, a screenwriting lab from Pet Semetary writer Matt Greenberg, and a film financing seminar with Saban Film’s, David Wardle, VP of Business and Legal Affairs. The festival, presented in part by the Utah Film Commission and Utah Film Studios, is set to run through September 14. For tickets and additional information, visit www.filmquestfest.com.
He is a contributing writer for the "Phantom of the Movies VideoScope" and “Drive-In Asylum” print magazines and the websites Horror Fuel, Diabolique Magazine, The Scariest Things, B&S About Movies, and When It Was Cool. He is a co-host of the "Uphill Both Ways" pop culture nostalgia podcast and also writes for its website. Joseph occasionally proudly co-writes articles with his son Cohen Perry, who is a film critic in his own right.
A former northern Californian and Oregonian, Joseph has been teaching, writing, and living in South Korea since 2008.
