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Joseph Perry

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San Francisco's Unnamed Footage Festival Announces Full Program for 5th Edition

San Francisco’s Unnamed Footage Festival Announces Full Program for 5th Edition

Found footage and POV horror and science fiction aficionados, take note! The fifth edition of the Unnamed Footage Festival is chock full of intriguing entries in the subgenre, from alien encounters to demonic terror to slasher attacks and beyond. The festival takes place from March 17-20 in San Francisco. Following is the official press announcement. After a year in cyber captivity, the Unnamed Footage Festival is returning to theaters of San Francisco for four days of found footage horror, faux documentary, and first person POV programming from March 17th through March 20th. Opening night will be held at the screening room of the Mission District gallery Artist’s Television Access, followed by a late-night screening at the Roxie Theatre on Friday, and culminating at the historic Balboa Theater for two full days of shorts and features. Following the success of last year’s virtual event, UFF has brought on Dread Central as the official media sponsor for the 2022 festival. Dread Central

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 23, 2022
Movie Review: “The Burning Sea” (2021) 

Movie Review: “The Burning Sea” (2021) 

The Burning Sea is the latest in a string of great-looking, well-acted Norwegian disaster films. It comes from The Quake director John Andreas Andersen and The Wave writer Harald Rosenløw-Eeg, the latter of whom cowrote this feature with Lars Gudmestad. The result is a thrilling epic boasting highly impressive CGI effects, fine performances, and solid direction. Andersen, Rosenløw-Eeg, and Gudmestad focus on making emotionally relatable characters that viewers can get behind before the titular catastrophe occurs. Sofia (Kristine Kujath Thorp in a terrific emotional and physical performance) is a submersible drone pilot who shares a loving relationship with her boyfriend Stian (Henrik Bjelland), an oil rig technician who has a young son. She also has a well-grounded professional relationship with her work partner Arthur (Rolf Kristian Larsen). Viewers get to know these characters well, so that when things inevitably go awry with the effects of offshore oil drilling on continental plates, we are genuinely invested in what happens to these

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 22, 2022
Wisconsin's MidWest WeirdFest Invites You to Experience Monsters, Mayhem, and the Mysterious

Wisconsin’s MidWest WeirdFest Invites You to Experience Monsters, Mayhem, and the Mysterious

If you have a cinematic taste for the odd, the unusual, and the frightening, Wisconsin’s MidWest WeirdFest has just what you are craving! The film festival has announced the full lineup for its March 4-6 run this year, and it’s fantastic! Along with two films previously reviewed on Horror Fuel — Night Caller and Crabs! — the fest serves up a smorgasbord of cinematic strangeness. The official press announcement follows. MidWest WeirdFest announces its full program for 2022 today. The 6th annual film festival – a cinematic celebration of of all things fantastic, frightening, paranormal, and just plain weird – takes place March 4-6, 2022 at the Micon Downtown Cinema in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Among the fest’s fantastic line-up of horror, sci-fi, underground and documentary cinema, are a number of films world premiering at the event. One of these is HAIR-TRIGGER, a genre-bending crime caper come rural horror movie. “HAIR-TRIGGER is truly a product of the region,” says the feature

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 16, 2022
UK's Horror Channel Serves Up a Killer Thriller Week for March

UK’s Horror Channel Serves Up a Killer Thriller Week for March

Horror Channel turns up the tension in March with KILLER THRILLER WEEK, featuring the UK premiere of mystery thriller PARADISE COVE, staring Mena Suvari and the channel premiere of cat-and-mouse road thriller COP CAR, starring Kevin Bacon. The ultimate 7-day suspense ride also includes Gus Van Sant’s revival of the Hitchcock classic PSYCHO (1988), the 2014 version of erotic thriller THE LOFT starring Karl Urban, Colin Minihan’s deliciously warped WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE, Rod Lurie’s 2011 pulsating remake of STRAW DOGS and BAD SAMARITAN, starring a cunningly murderous David Tennant. Plus, there are four additional UK TV premieres, highlighted by the late Johnny Kevorkian’s last film, AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS, a powder keg of throat-grabbing suspense, Cronenbergian intensity and mind-bending body horror, starring Sam Gittins, David Bradley, Grant Masters and Holly Weston, slasher thriller WIRED SHUT, CASTLE FREAK, Tate Steinsiek’s reboot of the 1995 Stuart Gordon film by the same name and Jesse Thomas Cook’s dark zombie thriller DEADSIGHT. There are

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 15, 2022
Synapse Films Brings '70s Zombie Shocker THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE to Blu-ray This June

Synapse Films Brings ’70s Zombie Shocker THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE to Blu-ray This June

Aficionados of 1970s fright fare and classic Eurohorror, mark June 7, 2022 on your calendars, as that is when Synapse Films releases its restored version of The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue on Blu-ray! This Spanish/Italian coproduction is considered to be one of the best zombie films ever made. Following is the official press announcement. With its revolutionary mix of shocking-for-its-time violence and sociopolitical themes, George A. Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead quickly proved to be enormously influential with filmmakers around the world, and few were able to match its power like Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. Mixing a strong environmental statement with unforgettably terrifying set pieces, Grau’s film stands on its own as a horror classic, and now it’s been restored to its horrifying glory on Blu-ray by Synapse Films! A strange twist of fate brings two young travelers, George (Ray Lovelock, The Cassandra Crossing) and Edna (Christine Galbo, The House That Screamed),

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 3, 2022
MidWest WeirdFest Premieres New UFO Documentary Featuring Whitley Strieber

MidWest WeirdFest Premieres New UFO Documentary Featuring Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber is well known as both a horror novelist (The Hunger and Wolfen) and for his nonfiction work as someone who has experienced the paranormal (Communion). He appears in the film Alien Abduction: Answers, a new documentary on UFOs that will receive its world premiere in March at MidWest WeirdFest in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Following is the official press announcement. A major new documentary on the UFO subject will world premiere at the 6th annual MidWest WeirdFest. The film festival takes place at Micon Cinemas in downtown Eau Claire, Wisconsin from March 4-6, 2022. The documentary, Alien Abduction: Answers, is directed by John Yost. It features world famous writer and alien abductee Whitley Strieber, author of the best-selling Communion book series. “By articulating the ordeal of abduction in his uniquely brilliant and personal style in Alien Abduction: Answers, Whitley Strieber has allowed all of us to share in experiences that challenge ordinary reality and the meaning of life itself.”

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 3, 2022
Watch Cosmic Horror Short "While Mortals Sleep" Now on Short of the Week

Short-Film Reviews: “While Mortals Sleep,” “Huella,” and “Kitchen Sink” (Sundance Film Festival)

While Mortals Sleep In writer/director Alex Fofonoff’s brilliant short While Mortals Sleep, Susan (Carie Kawa) is a cold case novelist who is going through a difficult patch so bad that she is rather reluctantly getting away from it all for a while at the vacation home of some friends. She spies a man named Eddy (Will Brill) ostensibly repairing a problem with black gunk who claims he is taking care of the property along with a woman named Abby (Grace Morrison). Abby asks the hesitant Susan to join her for tea, and things quickly get increasingly peculiar because of a startling sound before going full-on outré. Fofonoff packs his short with one mind-bending surprise after another in a story that blends a few different horror subgenres. The three leads are all superb, and excellent, startling visual effects and sound design combine to create an unsettling atmosphere and an unnerving slice of cinema that lingers long after the closing credits. Huella

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 1, 2022
Movie Review: “Something in the Dirt,” “You Won’t Be Alone,” and “Emily the Criminal” (Sundance Film Festival)

Movie Review: “Something in the Dirt,” “You Won’t Be Alone,” and “Emily the Criminal” (Sundance Film Festival)

Something in the Dirt The filmmaking duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead consistently turn out compelling, thought-provoking genre films, and their fifth and latest feature, Something in the Dirt, may be their best yet. The duo proved in 2017’s The Endless that they are as solid in front of the camera as behind it, and they bring that multihyphenate magic on both sides once again here in a spellbinding tale of two men who witness what seems to be a supernatural miracle in one of their apartments. The event sends hard-luck case Levi (Benson) and religious neighbor John (Moorhead) down a rabbit hole where one conspiracy theory leads to another and so on. These two men, living on the fringes of society, see this as their big opportunity to get rich quick by way of putting together a documentary about the strange phenomena that they witness. This being a horror movie, things of course don’t turn out the way

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jan 31, 2022
Movie Review: “The Civil Dead” (Slamdance Film Festival)

Movie Review: “The Civil Dead” (Slamdance Film Festival)

If you are in the mood for something decidedly different, director Clay Tatum’s The Civil Dead delivers in spades. This offbeat horror-adjacent comedy gets dark and delivers an emotional gut-punch of a climax. The Civil Dead begins with quirky humor as unemployed photographer Clay (Tatum), left to his own devices when his wife goes on a business trip, scams people when he poses as a real estate agent and takes deposit money from potential renters, when showing his own home that he has no intention of leaving. One day while out shooting photos, he runs across acquaintance Whit (Whitmer Thomas) from his old hometown, and ends up reluctantly inviting him home for drinks. The next morning, Whit is still hanging around, and confesses he has nowhere to go — because he is a ghost. Whit just wants a friend because of the loneliness of being a specter, but Clay is a misanthrope and the idea of having unwanted supernatural company

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jan 29, 2022
IFC Midnight's Unsettling Horror 'Hatching' Out Today On Digital And VOD

Movie Reviews: “Hatching” and “Resurrection” (Sundance Film Festival)

Sundance Film Festival is absolutely killing it with its horror selections! Following are capsule reviews of two absolutely bonkers, can’t-miss features. Hatching Finnish/Swedish coproduction Hatching (Ruva, 2022) finds pre-teen gymnast Tinja (Siiri Solalinna in a captivating debut performance) trying to live up to the expectations of her domineering mother (Sophia Heikkilӓ), who vlogs about the wonderful life of their seemingly perfect family. Naturally, the online presence is merely an illusion, as evidenced earlier on when Tinja captures a bird that flew into their house, only to see her mother break its neck. Soon after, Tinja finds a bird’s egg near her home, and promises to take care of what will hatch from it. Big mistake, what with this being a horror film. It would be a shame to go into too many details here about Hanna Bergholm’s astonishing directorial debut Hatching, so suffice it to say that there are some amazing creature and body horror effects on display of both

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jan 28, 2022

More from Joseph Perry

San Francisco's Unnamed Footage Festival Announces Full Program for 5th Edition

San Francisco’s Unnamed Footage Festival Announces Full Program for 5th Edition

Found footage and POV horror and science fiction aficionados, take note! The fifth edition of the Unnamed Footage Festival is chock full of intriguing entries in the subgenre, from alien encounters to demonic terror to slasher attacks and beyond. The festival takes place from March 17-20 in San Francisco. Following is the official press announcement. After a year in cyber captivity, the Unnamed Footage Festival is returning to theaters of San Francisco for four days of found footage horror, faux documentary, and first person POV programming from March 17th through March 20th. Opening night will be held at the screening room of the Mission District gallery Artist’s Television Access, followed by a late-night screening at the Roxie Theatre on Friday, and culminating at the historic Balboa Theater for two full days of shorts and features. Following the success of last year’s virtual event, UFF has brought on Dread Central as the official media sponsor for the 2022 festival. Dread Central

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 23, 2022
Movie Review: “The Burning Sea” (2021) 

Movie Review: “The Burning Sea” (2021) 

The Burning Sea is the latest in a string of great-looking, well-acted Norwegian disaster films. It comes from The Quake director John Andreas Andersen and The Wave writer Harald Rosenløw-Eeg, the latter of whom cowrote this feature with Lars Gudmestad. The result is a thrilling epic boasting highly impressive CGI effects, fine performances, and solid direction. Andersen, Rosenløw-Eeg, and Gudmestad focus on making emotionally relatable characters that viewers can get behind before the titular catastrophe occurs. Sofia (Kristine Kujath Thorp in a terrific emotional and physical performance) is a submersible drone pilot who shares a loving relationship with her boyfriend Stian (Henrik Bjelland), an oil rig technician who has a young son. She also has a well-grounded professional relationship with her work partner Arthur (Rolf Kristian Larsen). Viewers get to know these characters well, so that when things inevitably go awry with the effects of offshore oil drilling on continental plates, we are genuinely invested in what happens to these

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 22, 2022
Wisconsin's MidWest WeirdFest Invites You to Experience Monsters, Mayhem, and the Mysterious

Wisconsin’s MidWest WeirdFest Invites You to Experience Monsters, Mayhem, and the Mysterious

If you have a cinematic taste for the odd, the unusual, and the frightening, Wisconsin’s MidWest WeirdFest has just what you are craving! The film festival has announced the full lineup for its March 4-6 run this year, and it’s fantastic! Along with two films previously reviewed on Horror Fuel — Night Caller and Crabs! — the fest serves up a smorgasbord of cinematic strangeness. The official press announcement follows. MidWest WeirdFest announces its full program for 2022 today. The 6th annual film festival – a cinematic celebration of of all things fantastic, frightening, paranormal, and just plain weird – takes place March 4-6, 2022 at the Micon Downtown Cinema in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Among the fest’s fantastic line-up of horror, sci-fi, underground and documentary cinema, are a number of films world premiering at the event. One of these is HAIR-TRIGGER, a genre-bending crime caper come rural horror movie. “HAIR-TRIGGER is truly a product of the region,” says the feature

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 16, 2022
UK's Horror Channel Serves Up a Killer Thriller Week for March

UK’s Horror Channel Serves Up a Killer Thriller Week for March

Horror Channel turns up the tension in March with KILLER THRILLER WEEK, featuring the UK premiere of mystery thriller PARADISE COVE, staring Mena Suvari and the channel premiere of cat-and-mouse road thriller COP CAR, starring Kevin Bacon. The ultimate 7-day suspense ride also includes Gus Van Sant’s revival of the Hitchcock classic PSYCHO (1988), the 2014 version of erotic thriller THE LOFT starring Karl Urban, Colin Minihan’s deliciously warped WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE, Rod Lurie’s 2011 pulsating remake of STRAW DOGS and BAD SAMARITAN, starring a cunningly murderous David Tennant. Plus, there are four additional UK TV premieres, highlighted by the late Johnny Kevorkian’s last film, AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS, a powder keg of throat-grabbing suspense, Cronenbergian intensity and mind-bending body horror, starring Sam Gittins, David Bradley, Grant Masters and Holly Weston, slasher thriller WIRED SHUT, CASTLE FREAK, Tate Steinsiek’s reboot of the 1995 Stuart Gordon film by the same name and Jesse Thomas Cook’s dark zombie thriller DEADSIGHT. There are

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 15, 2022
Synapse Films Brings '70s Zombie Shocker THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE to Blu-ray This June

Synapse Films Brings ’70s Zombie Shocker THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE to Blu-ray This June

Aficionados of 1970s fright fare and classic Eurohorror, mark June 7, 2022 on your calendars, as that is when Synapse Films releases its restored version of The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue on Blu-ray! This Spanish/Italian coproduction is considered to be one of the best zombie films ever made. Following is the official press announcement. With its revolutionary mix of shocking-for-its-time violence and sociopolitical themes, George A. Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead quickly proved to be enormously influential with filmmakers around the world, and few were able to match its power like Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. Mixing a strong environmental statement with unforgettably terrifying set pieces, Grau’s film stands on its own as a horror classic, and now it’s been restored to its horrifying glory on Blu-ray by Synapse Films! A strange twist of fate brings two young travelers, George (Ray Lovelock, The Cassandra Crossing) and Edna (Christine Galbo, The House That Screamed),

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 3, 2022
MidWest WeirdFest Premieres New UFO Documentary Featuring Whitley Strieber

MidWest WeirdFest Premieres New UFO Documentary Featuring Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber is well known as both a horror novelist (The Hunger and Wolfen) and for his nonfiction work as someone who has experienced the paranormal (Communion). He appears in the film Alien Abduction: Answers, a new documentary on UFOs that will receive its world premiere in March at MidWest WeirdFest in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Following is the official press announcement. A major new documentary on the UFO subject will world premiere at the 6th annual MidWest WeirdFest. The film festival takes place at Micon Cinemas in downtown Eau Claire, Wisconsin from March 4-6, 2022. The documentary, Alien Abduction: Answers, is directed by John Yost. It features world famous writer and alien abductee Whitley Strieber, author of the best-selling Communion book series. “By articulating the ordeal of abduction in his uniquely brilliant and personal style in Alien Abduction: Answers, Whitley Strieber has allowed all of us to share in experiences that challenge ordinary reality and the meaning of life itself.”

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 3, 2022
Watch Cosmic Horror Short "While Mortals Sleep" Now on Short of the Week

Short-Film Reviews: “While Mortals Sleep,” “Huella,” and “Kitchen Sink” (Sundance Film Festival)

While Mortals Sleep In writer/director Alex Fofonoff’s brilliant short While Mortals Sleep, Susan (Carie Kawa) is a cold case novelist who is going through a difficult patch so bad that she is rather reluctantly getting away from it all for a while at the vacation home of some friends. She spies a man named Eddy (Will Brill) ostensibly repairing a problem with black gunk who claims he is taking care of the property along with a woman named Abby (Grace Morrison). Abby asks the hesitant Susan to join her for tea, and things quickly get increasingly peculiar because of a startling sound before going full-on outré. Fofonoff packs his short with one mind-bending surprise after another in a story that blends a few different horror subgenres. The three leads are all superb, and excellent, startling visual effects and sound design combine to create an unsettling atmosphere and an unnerving slice of cinema that lingers long after the closing credits. Huella

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Feb 1, 2022
Movie Review: “Something in the Dirt,” “You Won’t Be Alone,” and “Emily the Criminal” (Sundance Film Festival)

Movie Review: “Something in the Dirt,” “You Won’t Be Alone,” and “Emily the Criminal” (Sundance Film Festival)

Something in the Dirt The filmmaking duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead consistently turn out compelling, thought-provoking genre films, and their fifth and latest feature, Something in the Dirt, may be their best yet. The duo proved in 2017’s The Endless that they are as solid in front of the camera as behind it, and they bring that multihyphenate magic on both sides once again here in a spellbinding tale of two men who witness what seems to be a supernatural miracle in one of their apartments. The event sends hard-luck case Levi (Benson) and religious neighbor John (Moorhead) down a rabbit hole where one conspiracy theory leads to another and so on. These two men, living on the fringes of society, see this as their big opportunity to get rich quick by way of putting together a documentary about the strange phenomena that they witness. This being a horror movie, things of course don’t turn out the way

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jan 31, 2022
Movie Review: “The Civil Dead” (Slamdance Film Festival)

Movie Review: “The Civil Dead” (Slamdance Film Festival)

If you are in the mood for something decidedly different, director Clay Tatum’s The Civil Dead delivers in spades. This offbeat horror-adjacent comedy gets dark and delivers an emotional gut-punch of a climax. The Civil Dead begins with quirky humor as unemployed photographer Clay (Tatum), left to his own devices when his wife goes on a business trip, scams people when he poses as a real estate agent and takes deposit money from potential renters, when showing his own home that he has no intention of leaving. One day while out shooting photos, he runs across acquaintance Whit (Whitmer Thomas) from his old hometown, and ends up reluctantly inviting him home for drinks. The next morning, Whit is still hanging around, and confesses he has nowhere to go — because he is a ghost. Whit just wants a friend because of the loneliness of being a specter, but Clay is a misanthrope and the idea of having unwanted supernatural company

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jan 29, 2022
IFC Midnight's Unsettling Horror 'Hatching' Out Today On Digital And VOD

Movie Reviews: “Hatching” and “Resurrection” (Sundance Film Festival)

Sundance Film Festival is absolutely killing it with its horror selections! Following are capsule reviews of two absolutely bonkers, can’t-miss features. Hatching Finnish/Swedish coproduction Hatching (Ruva, 2022) finds pre-teen gymnast Tinja (Siiri Solalinna in a captivating debut performance) trying to live up to the expectations of her domineering mother (Sophia Heikkilӓ), who vlogs about the wonderful life of their seemingly perfect family. Naturally, the online presence is merely an illusion, as evidenced earlier on when Tinja captures a bird that flew into their house, only to see her mother break its neck. Soon after, Tinja finds a bird’s egg near her home, and promises to take care of what will hatch from it. Big mistake, what with this being a horror film. It would be a shame to go into too many details here about Hanna Bergholm’s astonishing directorial debut Hatching, so suffice it to say that there are some amazing creature and body horror effects on display of both

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jan 28, 2022
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