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First Look: One-Shot, Real-Time Horror 'Home Sweet Home – Where Evil Lives' Coming To FrightFest

First Look: One-Shot, Real-Time Horror ‘Home Sweet Home – Where Evil Lives’ Coming To FrightFest

The World Premiere of the horror film Home Sweet Home – Where Evil Lives was announced today and is set to screen at FrightFest this August. The first image, featuring Nilam Farooq also arrived today (via Variety) giving us our first glimpse at the film. The “one-shot” horror film is told in real-time and “follows heavily pregnant Maria (Nilam Farooq) as she returns alone to the remote country house of her father-in-law (Von Dohnányi). She has no idea what secrets are lurking within. As she investigates strange occurrences, including a sudden power outage while talking to her fiancé Viktor (David Kross), Maria descends to the basement and hears eerie noises and mysterious breathing, unaware of a ghostly presence behind her. Determined to uncover the truth, she discovers a hidden room revealing a terrible family secret. Panic sets in as Maria tries to flee back to town, only to find her car key missing. She enters an eerie and dramatic night,

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Jul 15, 2023
Monsters, Murderers, and Mayhem Come Calling at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2023

Monsters, Murderers, and Mayhem Come Calling at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2023

London’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest announces its 24th edition with a new headline sponsor and 70 drool-worthy horror and genre films from around the world. From world premieres of cutting-edge independent fare to anniversary screenings of classics and longtime favorites, the fest truly has something for hear-fare fans of every stripe, with creepy creatures, violent slashers, supernatural spookiness, and loads more. Following is the official press announcement. FrightFest, the UK’s biggest, best and most beloved community-driven horror & fantasy film festival, returns in a blaze of gory glory to the Cineworld Leicester Square, London, for its 24th edition, this year with pioneering technology & entertainment company Pigeon Shrine as its headline sponsor. The company is the brainchild of Tom Paton, working alongside industry finance veterans Jamie McLeod-Ross and Charley McDougall. Running from Thursday August 24–Monday 28 August, Pigeon Shrine FrightFest is a joyful big screen celebration of genre cinema, offering a carnival of carnage, a smorgasbord of shock and a tableau

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 14, 2023
Spoiler-Free Review: COYOTE (Romford Film Festival)  

Spoiler-Free Review: COYOTE (Romford Film Festival)  

U.K. science fiction thriller Coyote (2023) combines current social issues with lo-fi science fiction elements. The result is a film that boasts solid performances and thought-provoking themes. Partners Ekaterina (Therica Wilson-Read) and Anya (Borislava Stratieva) pay heavily to have one of them instantly transported using cutting-edge tech from Rasskazovo, where a violent crackdown on LGBTQ people is taking place, to a safe house in London for female immigrants. Orla Miller (Ailish Symons), the woman in charge of the safe house, is hospitable at first before she eventually informs Ekaterina that, as an immigrant, she stands to make money more quickly and in greater amounts if she provides sexual services to highly-placed men, which Ekaterina learns that the other women staying there are doing. Coyote is a lower-budget indie effort that wisely relies on minimal special effects, and the teleportation scenes are well done courtesy of Visual Effects Supervisor Howard Gardner. As with many good speculative fiction films, the focus is

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 13, 2023
Spoiler-Free Reviews: VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS and TO FIRE YOU COME AT LAST (Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival)

Spoiler-Free Reviews: VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS and TO FIRE YOU COME AT LAST (Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) Director Jaromil Jires’ surreal horror fantasy Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia, 1970) is a wild trip that combines a teenage girl’s (Jaroslava Schallerová as Valerie) sexual awakening beginning on the first day of her first menstrual cycle with a vampire tale — but that is only a bare bones description. There is so much to this film and to spoil a single, fantastical frame of it is to do a disservice to first-time viewers. Those interested in the sociopolitical climate of the time should find plenty to read into with the film, while viewers whose interests lean more toward enjoying the splendidly strange — and often sensual — events unfolding as sheer entertainment will find a great deal at which to marvel. To Fire You Come at Last (2023) Writer/director Sean Hogan’s 43-minute horror short To Fire You Come at Last is a satisfyingly wicked slice of British folk horror. In

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 10, 2023
Popcorn Frights Film Festival Serves Up Summer Shivers with Its First Wave

Popcorn Frights Film Festival Serves Up Summer Shivers with Its First Wave

Florida’s Popcorn Frights heats up every summer with its sizzling selection of horror, science fiction, and other movies that genre-film fans are sure to love — from classic and premiere slashers to cutting-edge speculative cinema — and the festival has just announced the first wave of its 2023 edition, running August 10–20, with in-person and virtual options. Following is the official press release. Popcorn Frights is leaping off the screen in full stereoscopic 3-D glory for its ninth edition, unleashing a wicked lineup of 25 films that delve into the darkest corners of international genre cinema, including seven world premieres, and with many more macabre delights and film premieres yet to be revealed! Summoning darkness on opening night is the world premiere of DELIVER US, a sinister and dread-soaked tale that unveils an ancient prophecy where a nun defies the laws of nature and gives birth to both the messiah and the antichrist. Audiences will need to brace themselves for

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 30, 2023
Spoiler-Free Reviews: STAG and AMERICAN MELTDOWN (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Spoiler-Free Reviews: STAG and AMERICAN MELTDOWN (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Stag (2022) Writer/director Alexandra Spieth’s horror comedy Stag balances those two styles together nicely while adding some serious drama to the mix. The result is an amusing feature that aims for the feelings as well as the fear and fun factors. Jenny (Mary Glen Fredrick) learns through social media that her former best friend Mandy (Elizabeth Ramos) — “I go by Amanda now”— is getting married. The estranged friends make an awkward reconnection over the phone during which Mandy invites Jenny to her bachelorette party trip, which is being held at a remote property on which a young woman was rumored to have been sacrificed. Jenny gives new meaning to the term socially awkward as she finds herself among the other guests, maid of honor Willa (Liana Hunt) and her younger sister Casey (Stephanie Hogan) — whose family owns the property— Leslie (Safiya Harris), and Constance (Katie Wieland). Strangely acting one-eyed groundskeeper Devon (Daniel Boyd) is on hand to make

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 28, 2023
Spoiler-Free Reviews: TEARSUCKER and MIND BODY SPIRIT (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Spoiler-Free Reviews: TEARSUCKER and MIND BODY SPIRIT (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Tearsucker Seasoned fear-fare aficionados may be well versed in the set-up of director Stephen Vanderpool’s Tearsucker — a young woman falls for a seemingly charming stranger who turns out to be hiding a deadly side and goes on a trip with him despite her best friend’s uncertainties about the situation — but I can guarantee that the villain in this dark, macabre work has a disturbing perversion that you haven’t seen before. The film’s official logline, so that readers can rest assured I am spoiling nothing that isn’t already out for public consumption, is “Emotionally vulnerable women are preyed on by a charming psychopath who wants to suck their tears.” Tom (Sam Brittan) is the psycho in question, and he has his sights set on Lilly (Alison Walter), who has recently left an abusive relationship and is sharing her experience on social media, with tears aplenty flowing. Brittan’s screenplay is an intriguing, unsettling character study of both predator and prey.

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 26, 2023
Graham Humphreys’ Poster Art for FrightFest 2023 Revealed: Mad Doctor Mayhem!

Graham Humphreys’ Poster Art for FrightFest 2023 Revealed: Mad Doctor Mayhem!

FrightFest, the UK’s largest celebration of genre cinema, always serves up a drool-worthy slate of fear fare, and while wait for this year’s lineup of movies, the fest has unleashed its poster reveal for its 2023 edition! Have a gander and check out the official press announcement below! FrightFest is proud to unveil Graham Humphreys’ stand-out poster design for 2023, which marks the 15th appearance for his iconic Monster. Graham revealed today: “This year’s FrightFest poster share it’s theme with the annual FrightFest book, exploring the subject of Mad Doctors. Once again, my artwork needed to be built in multiple parts that could be dismantled and rearranged across different formats, allowing individual elements to work on their own. Re-Animator’s Herbert West, is clearly referenced by the FrightFest ghoul. He is surrounded by a series of classic ‘mad doctors’ in film. Unsurprisingly, they are all men! This year’s annual Bank Holiday event, the UK’s largest celebration of genre cinema, takes place

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 22, 2023
The Sinister Six: A Half-Dozen Horrors We Can’t Wait to See at Fantasia 

The Sinister Six: A Half-Dozen Horrors We Can’t Wait to See at Fantasia 

The Fantasia International Film Festival, North America’s largest genre-focused film fest, celebrates its 27th edition from July 20 through August 9, 2023 in Montreal, Canada at the Concordia Hall Cinema, with additional screens at the Cinémathèque Québécoise and Cinéma du Musée. I’ll be covering the festival for Horror Fuel, and here are six of the fear-fare features that I find highly intriguing, with more information available at https://fantasiafestival.com/en/. Following are official press descriptions, followed by my thoughts in italics. OPENING THE FESTIVAL, PASCAL PLANTE WILL BRING US INTO RED ROOMS Coming to christen Fantasia’s 27th edition days after its Karlovy-Vary competition debut, RED ROOMS (Les chambres rouges) is the haunting third feature from celebrated Quebec filmmaker Pascal Plante (FAKE TATTOOS, NADIA, BUTTERFLY). The high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, STANLEYVILLE) has just gone to trial, and Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, BOOST) is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 20, 2023
Trailer Premieres For Horror-Thriller 'Bibi' Ahead Of Dances With Films

Trailer Premieres For Horror-Thriller ‘Bibi’ Ahead Of Dances With Films

Christopher Beatty’s award-winning psychological horror-thriller, Bibi, is next screening at the Dances With Films Film Festival on June 29, 2023. Ahead of its screening, we have the first trailer. In the film, “Vivian Ashwood (Elizabeth Paige, Modern Love) is failing to cope after a tragic loss. Struggling to raise her daughter Bibi (Judith Ann DiMinni), she turns to prescription drugs and alcohol to soothe her anxieties and depression. Soon, the lines begin to blur between Vivian’s routine nightmare and her reality. A strange man begins stalking Vivian, causing her to unravel even further. Bibi, also devastated by the loss of her sister and upset at Vivian for not protecting them both, only makes Vivian more unsure of the truth. After continuous torment, Vivian searches for a way to protect herself and Bibi from the stalker by whatever means necessary.” Beatty says, “My inspiration for writing BIBI was to create a beautiful, colorful world that contrasts as we venture off into

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Jun 19, 2023

More from Film Festivals

First Look: One-Shot, Real-Time Horror 'Home Sweet Home – Where Evil Lives' Coming To FrightFest

First Look: One-Shot, Real-Time Horror ‘Home Sweet Home – Where Evil Lives’ Coming To FrightFest

The World Premiere of the horror film Home Sweet Home – Where Evil Lives was announced today and is set to screen at FrightFest this August. The first image, featuring Nilam Farooq also arrived today (via Variety) giving us our first glimpse at the film. The “one-shot” horror film is told in real-time and “follows heavily pregnant Maria (Nilam Farooq) as she returns alone to the remote country house of her father-in-law (Von Dohnányi). She has no idea what secrets are lurking within. As she investigates strange occurrences, including a sudden power outage while talking to her fiancé Viktor (David Kross), Maria descends to the basement and hears eerie noises and mysterious breathing, unaware of a ghostly presence behind her. Determined to uncover the truth, she discovers a hidden room revealing a terrible family secret. Panic sets in as Maria tries to flee back to town, only to find her car key missing. She enters an eerie and dramatic night,

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Jul 15, 2023
Monsters, Murderers, and Mayhem Come Calling at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2023

Monsters, Murderers, and Mayhem Come Calling at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2023

London’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest announces its 24th edition with a new headline sponsor and 70 drool-worthy horror and genre films from around the world. From world premieres of cutting-edge independent fare to anniversary screenings of classics and longtime favorites, the fest truly has something for hear-fare fans of every stripe, with creepy creatures, violent slashers, supernatural spookiness, and loads more. Following is the official press announcement. FrightFest, the UK’s biggest, best and most beloved community-driven horror & fantasy film festival, returns in a blaze of gory glory to the Cineworld Leicester Square, London, for its 24th edition, this year with pioneering technology & entertainment company Pigeon Shrine as its headline sponsor. The company is the brainchild of Tom Paton, working alongside industry finance veterans Jamie McLeod-Ross and Charley McDougall. Running from Thursday August 24–Monday 28 August, Pigeon Shrine FrightFest is a joyful big screen celebration of genre cinema, offering a carnival of carnage, a smorgasbord of shock and a tableau

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 14, 2023
Spoiler-Free Review: COYOTE (Romford Film Festival)  

Spoiler-Free Review: COYOTE (Romford Film Festival)  

U.K. science fiction thriller Coyote (2023) combines current social issues with lo-fi science fiction elements. The result is a film that boasts solid performances and thought-provoking themes. Partners Ekaterina (Therica Wilson-Read) and Anya (Borislava Stratieva) pay heavily to have one of them instantly transported using cutting-edge tech from Rasskazovo, where a violent crackdown on LGBTQ people is taking place, to a safe house in London for female immigrants. Orla Miller (Ailish Symons), the woman in charge of the safe house, is hospitable at first before she eventually informs Ekaterina that, as an immigrant, she stands to make money more quickly and in greater amounts if she provides sexual services to highly-placed men, which Ekaterina learns that the other women staying there are doing. Coyote is a lower-budget indie effort that wisely relies on minimal special effects, and the teleportation scenes are well done courtesy of Visual Effects Supervisor Howard Gardner. As with many good speculative fiction films, the focus is

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 13, 2023
Spoiler-Free Reviews: VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS and TO FIRE YOU COME AT LAST (Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival)

Spoiler-Free Reviews: VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS and TO FIRE YOU COME AT LAST (Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) Director Jaromil Jires’ surreal horror fantasy Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia, 1970) is a wild trip that combines a teenage girl’s (Jaroslava Schallerová as Valerie) sexual awakening beginning on the first day of her first menstrual cycle with a vampire tale — but that is only a bare bones description. There is so much to this film and to spoil a single, fantastical frame of it is to do a disservice to first-time viewers. Those interested in the sociopolitical climate of the time should find plenty to read into with the film, while viewers whose interests lean more toward enjoying the splendidly strange — and often sensual — events unfolding as sheer entertainment will find a great deal at which to marvel. To Fire You Come at Last (2023) Writer/director Sean Hogan’s 43-minute horror short To Fire You Come at Last is a satisfyingly wicked slice of British folk horror. In

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jul 10, 2023
Popcorn Frights Film Festival Serves Up Summer Shivers with Its First Wave

Popcorn Frights Film Festival Serves Up Summer Shivers with Its First Wave

Florida’s Popcorn Frights heats up every summer with its sizzling selection of horror, science fiction, and other movies that genre-film fans are sure to love — from classic and premiere slashers to cutting-edge speculative cinema — and the festival has just announced the first wave of its 2023 edition, running August 10–20, with in-person and virtual options. Following is the official press release. Popcorn Frights is leaping off the screen in full stereoscopic 3-D glory for its ninth edition, unleashing a wicked lineup of 25 films that delve into the darkest corners of international genre cinema, including seven world premieres, and with many more macabre delights and film premieres yet to be revealed! Summoning darkness on opening night is the world premiere of DELIVER US, a sinister and dread-soaked tale that unveils an ancient prophecy where a nun defies the laws of nature and gives birth to both the messiah and the antichrist. Audiences will need to brace themselves for

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 30, 2023
Spoiler-Free Reviews: STAG and AMERICAN MELTDOWN (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Spoiler-Free Reviews: STAG and AMERICAN MELTDOWN (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Stag (2022) Writer/director Alexandra Spieth’s horror comedy Stag balances those two styles together nicely while adding some serious drama to the mix. The result is an amusing feature that aims for the feelings as well as the fear and fun factors. Jenny (Mary Glen Fredrick) learns through social media that her former best friend Mandy (Elizabeth Ramos) — “I go by Amanda now”— is getting married. The estranged friends make an awkward reconnection over the phone during which Mandy invites Jenny to her bachelorette party trip, which is being held at a remote property on which a young woman was rumored to have been sacrificed. Jenny gives new meaning to the term socially awkward as she finds herself among the other guests, maid of honor Willa (Liana Hunt) and her younger sister Casey (Stephanie Hogan) — whose family owns the property— Leslie (Safiya Harris), and Constance (Katie Wieland). Strangely acting one-eyed groundskeeper Devon (Daniel Boyd) is on hand to make

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 28, 2023
Spoiler-Free Reviews: TEARSUCKER and MIND BODY SPIRIT (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Spoiler-Free Reviews: TEARSUCKER and MIND BODY SPIRIT (Chattanooga Film Festival)

Tearsucker Seasoned fear-fare aficionados may be well versed in the set-up of director Stephen Vanderpool’s Tearsucker — a young woman falls for a seemingly charming stranger who turns out to be hiding a deadly side and goes on a trip with him despite her best friend’s uncertainties about the situation — but I can guarantee that the villain in this dark, macabre work has a disturbing perversion that you haven’t seen before. The film’s official logline, so that readers can rest assured I am spoiling nothing that isn’t already out for public consumption, is “Emotionally vulnerable women are preyed on by a charming psychopath who wants to suck their tears.” Tom (Sam Brittan) is the psycho in question, and he has his sights set on Lilly (Alison Walter), who has recently left an abusive relationship and is sharing her experience on social media, with tears aplenty flowing. Brittan’s screenplay is an intriguing, unsettling character study of both predator and prey.

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 26, 2023
Graham Humphreys’ Poster Art for FrightFest 2023 Revealed: Mad Doctor Mayhem!

Graham Humphreys’ Poster Art for FrightFest 2023 Revealed: Mad Doctor Mayhem!

FrightFest, the UK’s largest celebration of genre cinema, always serves up a drool-worthy slate of fear fare, and while wait for this year’s lineup of movies, the fest has unleashed its poster reveal for its 2023 edition! Have a gander and check out the official press announcement below! FrightFest is proud to unveil Graham Humphreys’ stand-out poster design for 2023, which marks the 15th appearance for his iconic Monster. Graham revealed today: “This year’s FrightFest poster share it’s theme with the annual FrightFest book, exploring the subject of Mad Doctors. Once again, my artwork needed to be built in multiple parts that could be dismantled and rearranged across different formats, allowing individual elements to work on their own. Re-Animator’s Herbert West, is clearly referenced by the FrightFest ghoul. He is surrounded by a series of classic ‘mad doctors’ in film. Unsurprisingly, they are all men! This year’s annual Bank Holiday event, the UK’s largest celebration of genre cinema, takes place

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 22, 2023
The Sinister Six: A Half-Dozen Horrors We Can’t Wait to See at Fantasia 

The Sinister Six: A Half-Dozen Horrors We Can’t Wait to See at Fantasia 

The Fantasia International Film Festival, North America’s largest genre-focused film fest, celebrates its 27th edition from July 20 through August 9, 2023 in Montreal, Canada at the Concordia Hall Cinema, with additional screens at the Cinémathèque Québécoise and Cinéma du Musée. I’ll be covering the festival for Horror Fuel, and here are six of the fear-fare features that I find highly intriguing, with more information available at https://fantasiafestival.com/en/. Following are official press descriptions, followed by my thoughts in italics. OPENING THE FESTIVAL, PASCAL PLANTE WILL BRING US INTO RED ROOMS Coming to christen Fantasia’s 27th edition days after its Karlovy-Vary competition debut, RED ROOMS (Les chambres rouges) is the haunting third feature from celebrated Quebec filmmaker Pascal Plante (FAKE TATTOOS, NADIA, BUTTERFLY). The high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, STANLEYVILLE) has just gone to trial, and Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, BOOST) is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Jun 20, 2023
Trailer Premieres For Horror-Thriller 'Bibi' Ahead Of Dances With Films

Trailer Premieres For Horror-Thriller ‘Bibi’ Ahead Of Dances With Films

Christopher Beatty’s award-winning psychological horror-thriller, Bibi, is next screening at the Dances With Films Film Festival on June 29, 2023. Ahead of its screening, we have the first trailer. In the film, “Vivian Ashwood (Elizabeth Paige, Modern Love) is failing to cope after a tragic loss. Struggling to raise her daughter Bibi (Judith Ann DiMinni), she turns to prescription drugs and alcohol to soothe her anxieties and depression. Soon, the lines begin to blur between Vivian’s routine nightmare and her reality. A strange man begins stalking Vivian, causing her to unravel even further. Bibi, also devastated by the loss of her sister and upset at Vivian for not protecting them both, only makes Vivian more unsure of the truth. After continuous torment, Vivian searches for a way to protect herself and Bibi from the stalker by whatever means necessary.” Beatty says, “My inspiration for writing BIBI was to create a beautiful, colorful world that contrasts as we venture off into

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Jun 19, 2023
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