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Joseph Perry

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Movie Review (Another Hole in the Head Film Fest): The Dead Ones (2019)

Director Jeremy Kasten’s The Dead Ones tackles current hot-button issues about high school violence, including school shootings and bullying, with a supernatural spin. The film will likely take many viewers out of their comfort zones, and this challenging outing is bound to remain in the minds of those who see it for a good while. Four teenagers — introverted Alice “Mouse” Monroe (Sarah Rose Harper), former juvenile hall charge Scottie French (Brandon Thane Wilson of 2011’s Lovely Molly), psychologically troubled Katie Foster (Emily Davis of Lovely Molly and 2010’s Ghosts Don’t Exist), and Katie’s violence-prone boyfriend Louis Friend (Torey Garza) are tasked by school faculty member Ms. Persephone (Clare Kramer of Tales of Halloween [2015], the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, and Kasten’s The Thirst [2006]) to spend what would have been their summer vacation in detention, cleaning up a huge mess at their high school. As these characters are introduced and that initial set-up is begun, The Dead

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Joseph Perry

Dec 10, 2019

Film FestivalsNews

Canada’s Blood in the Snow Film Festival Announces Its 2019 Award Winners

Alberta director Brandon Christensen and his film Z claimed the awards for Best Feature and Best Director at Blood in the Snow Film Festival’s 2019 Bloodies Awards ceremony, held with the presenting partnership of Hollywood Suite. The festival ran November 21–26, 2019, at the Royal Cinema in Toronto, Canada. Z tells the story of a young boy and his supposedly imaginary friend, and the havoc that the latter wreaks on the child’s family. Dead Dicks (reviewed here) took three awards including Best Screenplay, Best Actor for lead actor Heston Horwin, and the Montreal-based co-directors Chris Bavota and Lee Paula Springer were recognized as 2019’s Rising Stars. The 2019 Vanguard award went to Toronto director Audrey Cummings, whose film She Never Died was her third feature to screen at Blood in the Snow. The Vanguard award is presented in recognition of an individual or group who is a trailblazer in the independent Canadian horror industry. She Never Died star Oluniké Adeliyi

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Joseph Perry

Dec 6, 2019

Film FestivalsNews

Another Hole in the Head Film Fest Preview: Four Fright Films to Drool Over

SF IndieFest’s Another Hole in the Head Film Fest celebrates its 16th year with two weeks of a “cinematic excursion into the realms of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other assorted genres . . . [pulling] together a diverse collection of films representing all varieties and budgetary considerations,” according to the film’s website. The fest takes place from December 1st –15th at New People Cinema in San Francisco’s Japantown. The festival states, “From your buddy Keith’s skateboarding footage in an enchanted forest to Burt Reynolds in Space, to tomorrow’s cult classic destined for Lionsgate, Another Hole in the Head provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema.” With a mind-blowing lineup of feature films and short films from around the planet — many making their world, U.S., or regional debuts — Another Hole in the Head has a wide array of selections to get excited about. Following are four of the features that yours truly is especially looking forward to, with

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Joseph Perry

Nov 28, 2019

Film FestivalsForeign

Movie Reviews (Blood in the Snow Film Festival): Majic and Hunter’s Moon (both 2019)

Imagine slowly beginning to find out that almost every major conspiracy theory for the past several decades was not only true, but somehow connected to the Roswell crashed flying saucer incident. This is the reality that debunker, skeptic, and video blogger Pippa Bernwood (Paula Brancati) is beginning to have to take into consideration in the Canadian science-fiction chiller Majic. Initially an atheist who believes nothing without concrete evidence, she finds her world turning upside down after meeting with elderly Anderson (Richard Fitzpatrick), who claims to have worked for a secret agency during the Cold War. Though the man seems confused and disoriented at times, he weaves a fascinating, complex tale that intrigues Bernwood enough to continue meeting him. The more she goes down the rabbit hole, the more her view of reality gets distorted and baffling. Director Erin Berry, who cowrote the screenplay with David Pluscauskas, weaves a gripping tale that should be enthusiastically welcomed by lovers of such fare

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Joseph Perry

Nov 25, 2019

Film FestivalsMovies

Movie Reviews (Blood in the Snow Film Festival): Puppet Killer and Dead Dicks (both 2019)

Canadian horror comedy Puppet Killer delivers in both the gore and gags departments. You know what you are in for pretty early on when the lead character, a high school student, is portrayed by a 50-year-old actor, taking the “they look to old to be high schoolers” trope to beyond its normal range. Aleks Paunovic toplines as that student, Jamie, who lost his mother (director Lisa Ovies) to cancer when he was a youngster. His stepmother tried to trash both his VHS horror movie collection that he watched with his mom and his beloved pink hand puppet Simon, and this being a fright flick, you can imagine how that turned out for her. Ten years later, Jamie and a group of his classmate friends plan to return to the cabin where the stepmother was slaughtered, against the wishes of his psychiatrist and reluctant father. Jamie’s girlfriend Jessie (Lisa Durupt) finds Simon hidden away, and after she brings him out, very

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Joseph Perry

Nov 21, 2019

Film FestivalsForeignMoviesNews

U.K.’s Horror-on-Sea Film Festival Announces Its Stellar 2020 Lineup

Horror-on-Sea returns to Southend once again in 2020 with its biggest blood-soaked line up yet of independent film as the fest celebrates its eighth year. One of the UK’s biggest independent film festivals, it was originally formed to promote independent horror films. The fest gives an opportunity to fright-fare features and shorts that are not normally played on the big screen. Taking place at The Park Inn Palace Hotel (Southend-on-Sea), the festival will run over two weekends, from Friday, January 10 to Sunday, January 12, and then Friday, January 17 to Sunday, January 19. Many of the screenings of more than 36 features and 62 shorts will include introductions by the filmmakers themselves. I have reviewed the incredible Bloodsucker’s Planet for Horror Fuel (read here), and can highly recommend adding that film to your must-see list. Among the other announced features that I am greatly looking forward to are Peruvian fear-fare anthology Witch Tales, U.K. home invasion horror outing Nefarious,

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Joseph Perry

Nov 11, 2019

Film FestivalsNews

Atlanta’s Buried Alive Film Festival Offers Witches, Werewolves, and Weirdness

The 2019 edition of Atlanta’s Buried Alive Film Festival is chock full of outstanding, outrageous horror features and shorts from around the world. The fest is scheduled for November 13–17 at 7 Stages Theatre. Following are the features that I am most looking forward to seeing, either for the first time or once again. My thoughts in italics follow the fest’s official descriptions for each film. Antrum: The Deadliest Movie Ever Made Dir. Michael Laicini and David Amito – USA – 95min Antrum, a feature length film shot in the late 1970’s, is cursed. In 1988, a movie theatre in Budapest that was screening the film burnt to the ground, killing the 56 people who were in attendance. This incident follows the inexplicable deaths of a number of film festival programmers that had received Antrum as a submission and died shortly after watching the film. These events culminated with a riot during an exhibition in San Francisco, after which the

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Joseph Perry

Nov 8, 2019

Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews

Movie Reviews: Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

Special guest coauthor: Chris Weatherspoon The 23rd Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), the largest genre film fest in both its home of South Korea and of Asia as well, took place about a month earlier than its preceding editions (running June 27–July 7 this year) and delivered one of its strongest lineups in recent memory. BIFAN boasted horror, thriller, action, and other genre films of all stripes from around the world. Following are our thoughts on five of the fest’s offerings. Chris Weatherspoon: Irish horror-comedy Extra Ordinary is the feature debut for writing/directing team Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman. Comedian Maeve Higgins (Inside Amy Schumer) stars as Rose Dooley, a bumbling spinster who earns her living as a driving instructor; however, Rose is far from being an ordinary, lonely middle-aged woman, as the movie’s title notes. Rose has the ability to communicate with the dead and to exorcise ghosts, but a childhood incident has left her traumatized, and for

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Joseph Perry

Nov 4, 2019

DocumentariesFilm FestivalsThriller

Movie Reviews (Frightening Ass Film Fest): After Midnight, Greenlight, and Wrinkles the Clown (all 2019)

After Midnight (formerly titled Something Else) is an odd beast, in the best way. It pushes boundaries on genre blending, resulting in a creature feature film that may be too slow for those hoping for an outright horror outing, but it will highly reward viewers interested in the current trend of quieter, personal fright fare. Writer and codirector (with the film’s cinematographer Christian Stella) Jeremy Gardner (who also helmed, scripted, and starred in The Battery [2012]) stars as Hank, a man content with settling down at his old family home, which is in a state of disrepair, and hunting with buddies when not comanaging the bar he owns with long-time girlfriend Abby (Brea Grant of Beyond the Gates [2016] and Dead Night [2017]). When Abby leaves suddenly with only a short note that doesn’t explain much to announce her departure, Hank becomes isolated and his behavior becomes erratic, including seemingly battling nightly with what he claims to be a monster.

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Joseph Perry

Oct 31, 2019

Film FestivalsMovies

Movie Reviews (Brooklyn Horror Film Festival): 1 BR (2019) and This Is Our Home (2019)

A young woman finds out that the old adage “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” can be horrifyingly true in the nerve-wracking chiller 1BR. Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom in a superb performance) moves to Los Angeles without a job or apartment, angry after her recently widowed father takes up with a new lover. She lucks out — or so she thinks — when she wins out over several competitors and lands a highly sought-after apartment in a community where everyone knows each other and has community barbecues. Strict rules are in place, though, and Sarah learns a terrifying lesson when she breaks one of them. This is just the beginning of her problems, though, as 1BR heads into territory that it would be a disservice to spoil here. Suffice it to say that the film is filled with not only loads of suspense and cringe-inducing moments (in the best sense of that term), but that

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Joseph Perry

Oct 23, 2019

Joseph Perry

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