Writer/director Brian Shephard delivers good old-fashioned creepiness in his debut short film, Terror Road. Recalling 1980s horror movies and such television favorites as Monsters and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the short is both a fun throwback film for adults and a fine “introduction to horror” work for younger audiences. This two-hander sees wife […]
When I reviewed the gothic dark fantasy Kiss the Devil in the Dark for Gruesome Magazine‘s Super Scary Shorts Saturday last year during the film’s award-winning film festival run, I called it “an eye-popping visual feast that blends a dark Faustian fantasy with shades of classic Hammer Film Productions and Eurohorror vibes.” Now fright-fare fans […]
Horror-on-Sea celebrates its eighth year in 2020 as it returns to Southend once again, with its biggest blood-soaked line up of independent films yet. One of the U.K.’s biggest independent film festivals, Horror-on-Sea was originally formed to promote independent horror films, giving an opportunity to fright-fare features and shorts that are not normally played on […]
Director Zoe Dobson’s U.K. horror short The Cunning Man is an eerie folk horror outing. Though animal cadavers are part of the story, which may potentially disturb some viewers, they are ultimaely used for a positive reason and toward charming effect. Afran Harries (Simon Armstrong) collects dead animals in the Welsh countryside. A knackerman (Ali […]
Few things in horror films beat that cathartic moment of a good comeuppance to a villain, and few are more disturbing than an innocent person falling into a dangerous situation when they merely tried to help someone. The latter of these cases is the situation for the protagonist in director Ryan Gaff’s short film Black […]
Blood in the Snow (BITS) film festival, the biggest celebration of Canadian horror, is back with a fresh slate of northern chills! BITS 2019 takes placefrom November 21 to 26 at the Royal Cinema in Toronto. With six nights of the best horror fare in the nation — including feature films, shorts, webseries, and the […]
Writer/director Ryan Oksenberg balances the macabre and the meditative, the ghoulish and the gorgeous, and the pensive and the putrid in his beautifully shot horror short Together. Characters suffering from damaged souls and physical sickness find themselves in close quarters with one another, and the result is an intriguing, contemplative work. Arielle Hader (of Recovery […]
The schedule is all set and tickets are now on sale for Buried Alive Film Festival 2019! The fest runs November 13-17 at 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, and the lineup looks to be stellar. I have been fortunate enough to see three of the five features submitted to the jury for Buried Alive, and can give high recommendations for […]
Seclusion in snowy climes is often a fine springboard for horror movies, with The Abominable Snowman (1957), The Shining (1980), and this year’s The Lodge springing to mind. Writer/director Can Türedi places the protagonist of his new short film Glass Cabin in just such an environment, and the result is a fine slice of psychological […]
If you subscribe to the notion that full moons can affect human behavior, just wait until you see what happens when the titular phenomenon occurs in eerie Canadian short film Red Moon (2019). The film, which won the Best Short award at this month’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, stretches beyond what are usually considered common […]
Nightmares Film Festival is one of the most highly regarded horror film fests in the United States, and here’s proof: It has been called one of the world’s best horror film festivals by virtually every major genre outlet, and has maintained its position as the world’s top-rated genre festival on the submission platform FilmFreeway for […]
After androgynous high school student Cassie (Bianca Sanchez) is bullied by a quartet of mean-girl classmates in a campus bathroom, her mother (Melissa Connell) calls upon satanic forces to seek revenge in writer/director Aaron Immediato’s Bathroom Troll. This short film pays homage to Brian De Palma’s 1976 screen version of Stephen King’s Carrie while giving […]
The Buried Alive Film Festival is excited to announce its 14th year in Atlanta, Georgia, and wants you to save the dates for November 13th through 17th. Buried Alive is a horror and genre film festival that prides itself in showcasing the some of the most disturbing, visually appealing, and scary independent films in the world. The festival […]
The Mexican horror short 9:40 plays like a classic episode of The Twilight Zone with a climax on steroids. The story may feel a bit familiar, and many genre film fans might well guess where it is headed, but writer/director Jorge Morrell and his cast and crew make the ride an intriguing one, nevertheless. Kristyan […]
The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival has consistently presented jaw-dropping line-ups of fright fare, and was recently named to Moviemaker Magazine’s 30 Bloody Best Genre Fests in the World. This year is the fests’s fourth edition, and it offers up another superb batch of features and shorts during its October 17–24 run. Among the films slated […]