San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head Film Festival is well known for curating unique cinematic fare each year that ranges from the mind-boggling to the outrageous to the philisophical, and beyond. This year’s edition runs December 1–25, at theaters and also On Demand via Eventive and live on Zoom for those who cannot attend the live screenings. For more information, visit https://www.ahith.com/
Following are four films from the fest that are well worth a watch. Descriptions from Another Hole in the Head Film Festival’s website are in italics, followed by my thoughts on the movies.
Voidcaller
Several people with amnesia realize they may have been involved in something sinister on a cosmic scale.
Director Nils Alatalo’s decidedly weird black-and-white Swedish English-language indie headscratcher Voidcaller (2024) is the kind of film that you experience more than just watch. H.P. Lovecraft and David Lynch inspirations meet head on, as industrial noise and a fitting synthesizer score accompany the surreal cosmic horror on display.
Tie Die
When a series of mangled bodies begin appearing in the park, Ranger Jones (Lloyd Kaufman, President of Troma Entertainment and creator of the Toxic Avenger) and a state trooper (Joe Bob Briggs, Shudder’s The Last Drive In) are baffled by the attacks. It’s been a long time since a black bear has gone rabid in the park and never to this degree. The timing couldn’t be worse as the area is filling up with young musicians, hippies, and earth children. Can they stop the killings before things get worse, or will Ranger Jones miss the encore? Featuring an onslaught for the senses with psychedelic oscilloscopes, one of a kind practical effects, and musical performances by DELAIN (J.B. Tenney), TIE DIE ensures to leave you as breathless as the dead!
Writer/director/editor Morgan Miller’s freaky West Virginia-set horror comedy hearkens back to the heyday of regional filmmaking flavor often seen at drive-in theaters in the 1960s and 1970s. Tie Die serves up oddball fun without laying on the camp too thick, which I appreciate. I don’t want to give away too much, so suffice it to say that Tie Die boasts one of the more bizarre fear-fare villains in recent memory.
Dooba Dooba
Amna expected a relaxed night of babysitting but when she arrives, she learns that her ward is not only a sheltered sixteen year old girl who goes by Moony, but that she is being watched at all times by in-home security cameras. It quickly becomes apparent that Moony is unaccustomed to socializing and that she has a grave misunderstanding of the term friendship.
In my review published here for Nightmares Film Festival, I wrote “Horror film festivals are made for films like Dooba Dooba, and films like Dooba Dooba are made for horror film festivals. I felt uneasy from its opening moments, and after that, matters just got increasingly weirder . . . Writer/director Ehrland Hollingsworth crafts a film heavy on the unease and unshakable sense of dread. His use of video, archival footage, and presentation slides — edited in such a way as to hold viewers’ attention for fear of missing a quick visual — give the feeling that anything could pop up on the screen at any time, and whatever that is won’t be comforting.”
Decibel
When a struggling singer-songwriter gets the opportunity of a lifetime to work with a tech-obsessed music producer, her art and life are put in peril as she is forced to help create the perfect AI music algorithm.
In my review published here for FilmQuest, I wrote “Few creatives will argue against AI sapping the soul out of the various forms of art, and director Zac Locke explores that notion winningly in his science fiction/horror hybrid Decibel . . . Locke, working from a screenplay by Stephen Christensen and Matt Wise, crafts a thought-provoking genre film that boasts fine performances, impressive original songs written by Caitlin Scholl, and atmosphere to spare.”
