After Fantasia International Film Festival announced that this year’s edition will be an exciting virtual event composed of scheduled live screenings, a program library, panels, and workshops, taking place from August 20th to September 2nd, 2020 — along with its breathtaking first wave of films — Canada’s premiere genre-film fest unleashes its mouth-watering second wave of […]
Italian short shocker Ferine is a grisly tale that borrows from nature, particularly from species that see the female kill her partner after the act of mating. It’s simply told, beautifully presented, and absolutely chilling. Anna Della Rosa stars as a feral woman who breaks into a house, bathes and dresses up, and then goes […]
A ronin who failed to protect his deceased shogun is on a quest to avenge that master’s death in director Kevin McTurk’s brilliant, beautiful stop-motion short The Haunted Swordsman. This is gorgeous animation artistry that must be seen to be believed. The Swordsman (voiced by Jason Scott Lee) is accompanied on his journey by The […]
COVID-19 can’t keep South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) — Asia’s largest genre film fest — down, as the fest has officially announced that it will take what it calls a hybrid approach for its 2020 edition, running July 9–16. The fest will screen 174 features and short films from 42 countries on […]
Andrew Bowser wrote, directed, and stars in the creepy, fun horror short Little Willy (2019), and he does an ace job with all three tasks. A modern spin on the plot chestnut of a ventriloquist doll driving its owner isnane— á la Magic (1978) or Devil Doll (1964) — with an obvious nod to the […]
FANTASIA’S UPCOMING VIRTUAL EDITION ANNOUNCES FIRST WILD WAVE OF PROGRAMMING WITH NEIL MARSHALL’S THE RECKONING TO OPEN FESTIVAL Nobuhiko Obayashi’s LABYRINTH OF CINEMA, Brea Grant’s 12 HOUR SHIFT, Makoto Tezuka’s TEZUKA’S BARBARA, Anthony Scott Burns’ COME TRUE, and Chino Moya’s UNDERGODS are among the first titles announced for the festival’s 24th edition Tuesday June 9, […]
A pandemic can’t keep a good film festival down, as film aficionados have seen in recent weeks. Portland Horror Film Festival, the Pacific Northwest’s premiere horror genre film festival, is joining the new trend of film fests going virtual this year. Horror fans can dive into a terror-filled smorgasbord of more than 60 short and […]
Horror short The Springfield Three, prolific writer/director Samuel Gonzalez Jr.’s latest effort, is inspired by the true-life missing person case involving friends Suzanne Streeter and Stacy McCall, and Streeter’s mother, Sherrill Levitt, who went missing from Levitt’s Springfield, Missouri home on June 7, 1992. It should be noted that this is a fanciful narrative short […]
Filmmaker Christopher G. Moore’s latest short film Backward Creep is his strongest outing yet, building on an admirable filmography that includes Gut Punched and Knob Goblins. Moore’s latest takes a more serious tone than those two fine darkly comic efforts, weaving a tale of terror that is making an award-winning run on the film festival […]
Writer/Director Dan Sellers and his Wreak Havoc Productions cast and crew deliver a stellar Stephen King adaptation with their latest short film, Uncle Otto’s Truck. The short story of the same name — part of King’s Dollar Baby Program — was published in the author’s Skeleton Crew collection, and Sellers has done the tale great […]
Grue-Believers, mark your calendars now for May 22–25 because the Chattanooga Film Festival — revered by horror and genre cinema fans for its eclectic movie fare and incredible special events — has announced a mind-blowing virtual edition for this year, and you only have to wait until next week! The May 22–25 event boasts fear-fare […]
With Welcome to Helltown, cowriters/codirectors Maxwell Frey and Dominic Reno have created an endearingly oddball portmanteau short film. The vibe is offbeat and the humor is quirky in this outing set in Helltown, Ohio, “Population . . . You!”. Toby Radloff — star of Killer Nerd (1991), Bride of Killer Nerd (1992), and Spirit Animal […]
Winner of MidWest WeirdFest’s Best Horror Short award, Zeshaan Younus’ Prefigured combines elements of both alien abduction and Lovecraftian cosmic horror. It weaves its spell slowly without a drop of blood or sensational special effects, nevertheless leaving viewers with a highly disquieting sense of eeriness. Scarlett Redmond (of the series My Haunted House and True […]
The United Kingdom has been home to eye-witness reports of alien big cats (ABCs) — large, wild felines not native to the region — since the 1700s. The United States is no stranger to such sightings, as shown in renowned author Linda S. Godfrey’s debut as a film director, Return to Wildcat Mountain: Wisconsin’s Black […]
Several recent horror anthology films comprise short films already completed and sometimes screened, with a new wraparound filmed to try and give them some sort of common theme. Other fright-fare portmanteau films are composed of new segments from different directors. Although many of these types of movies work, some feel disjointed because they lack a […]