CategoryEvents
Horror events, screenings and experiences — premieres, festivals and one-night-only shows.
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Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Canada’s Blood in the Snow Film Festival, which runs in Toronto from November 18–23, 2021, features a jaw-dropping array of homegrown horror and horror-comedy features and shorts. Following are reviews of three of the short films that screen at the festival. Giant Bear Giant Bear (Canada, 2019) is a beautifully animated vision of an Inuit legend that is absolutely stunning. Codirectors Neil Christopher and Daniel Gies have crafted an absolutely gorgeous work. As beautiful as the snowy landscape is, the underwater world in the short is breathtaking. A lone hunter tries spearfishing with his dog, only to come face to face with a monstrously large bear. Much more than just an animated creature feature, Giant Bear is a riveting experience. Wolf in Dude’s Clothing Writer/director Solmund MacPherson’s Wolf in Dude’s Clothing (Canada, 2021) sees a wolf assume a human lifestyle after finding a suit of human skin in the wild. The wolf-man (Erik Athavale) — a fun play on the
Continue reading →
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Filmmakers, take note: Austria’s prestigious SLASH Filmfestival is currently accepting submissions for its 13th edition next year. Following is the official press release. SLASH Filmfestival, Austria’s foremost festival for Fantastic Film and the country’s third largest film festival overall, is now accepting submissions for its 13th edition, which will run from September 22 through October 2, 2022. Filmmakers from across the world are invited to send in their work via FilmFreeway. Founded in 2010, SLASH Filmfestival has quickly grown in size and scope, now attracting close to 15.000 visitors over its 11-day run. The festival hosts a Fantastic Shorts competition with a cash prize of 1000 EUR decided by popular vote and also organizes the Méliès d’argent competition for European short films. Additionally, SLASH organizes a feature film competition with a cash prize of 3000 EUR, the winner of which is identified by a professional jury. SLASH celebrates genre films in various shapes and sizes. Both short films (30 min.
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Peppergrass Eula Baek (Chantelle Han) and Morris Weiss (Charles Boyland) are in a relationship — and quite obviously not a happy one, judging from their constant sniping and bickering — and are driven to desperation during the COVID lockdown for her titular restaurant and his bar. They hatch a plan to scam veteran Captain Reuben Lom (Michael Copeman) — who lives in a very rural area and who was friends with Eula’s father — into giving them some valuable truffles that they can resell to try to make ends meet. Morris gets greedy and aggressive, and suddenly the three people are fighting for their lives. Peppergrass (Canada, 2021) toys with the “home invasion goes south” style of fear fare before diving headlong into survival horror, but rather than fully committing to the more grueling side of the latter, focuses instead on being more of a dread-filled mood piece with lots of wandering around in the woods. Codirectors Steven Garbas and
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes Similar to how films like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears and Berberian Sound Studio have evoked giallo, director Kevin Kopacka’s Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (Germany, 2021) draws its inspiration from European arthouse films, of the horror genre and otherwise. It’s best to go into this outing cold, so I will only give a brief, spoiler-free set-up regarding its plot: Margot (Luisa Taraz) and her husband Deiter (Frederik von Lüttichau) have inherited a remote castle — with Bava influences in more than just lighting — and as the tension between the couple rises, gothic-horror madness sets in. Try learning nothing more than that for maximum surprise from the film. Kopacka, who cowrote the screenplay with Lili Villányi, has crafted a mind-bender of a movie that fairly drips eerie atmosphere, with scenes that range from the tried-and-true method of having off-screen occurrences for viewers to fill in with their imagination, to a graphic gore
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Director Carlo Ledesma takes viewers on a wild ride of the supernatural in Sunod (AKA Followed; Philippines, 2019), which captured the awards for Best International Feature Film, Best Performance in an International Feature Film (Carmina Villarroel), and Best International Feature Film Director (Ledesma) at the recent A Night of Horror International Film Festival in Australia. Although the film sometimes deals in familiar fear-fare trappings, the overall result is a gripping chiller well worth a watch. Villarroel portrays Olivia, a single mother to teen daughter Anelle (Krystal Brimner) who is hospitalized with a heart condition. Olivia asserts herself, out of financial desperation, into a new night job at a call center. Her place of employment happens to be the same building that served as a hospital in the 1970s, and savvy horror movie viewers know that nothing good ever comes of being in a former hospital. Below the call center are abandoned floors. When Olivia finds herself on one of those
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
You’ll rarely find a character that you can’t wait to see get his as much as you will with paranormal researcher/exploiter Steven Caramore (Corey Johnson) in the U.K. feature Lair. As if being responsible for his business partner Ben’s (Oded Fehr) slaughtering of his wife and child, Caramore then sets up shop in a London apartment building, outfitting one flat with allegedly cursed objects while rigging up cameras in a neighboring one to watch what happens to an unsuspecting family in the first flat. The vacationing family in question brings their own personal demons into the mix — lots of arguing, bickering, bruised egos, and teen rebellion — and really they should have demanded a refund on their vacation rental as soon as Caramore told them — on their second day of the stay — that he placed a cursed doll in their flat, a toy to which little Lily (Lara Mount) took an instant liking. But Lily and her
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Last Survivors, the latest entry in the thriller subgenre of “children beginning to question their parents’ philosophies after an apocalyptic event” (this year’s Gaia being one example) is a solid outing fueled by fine performances from its three leads. Troy (Stephen Moyer) is a stern man who has raised his adult son Jake (Drew Van Acker) from very young childhood in a remote mountain area, with the two of them living off the land and storing venison jerky for long winters. Troy has been training Jake to kill any intruders without hesitation to protect what is theirs, and Jake declares himself ready to do so. When Troy is injured during one such confrontation, he tells Jake where a supply of medicine is hidden. The young man goes to fetch it and spies a woman just outside of their property. He has second thoughts about shooting her, and instead breaks into her house, where he learns that her name is Henrietta
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Writer/director Mark O’Brien’s The Righteous is a gripping, slow-burn gothic horror that examines the dark hearts of people and the secrets they hide. Conflicts in religious faith and the consequences of sins are at the forefront, with top-notch performances and brilliant use of light and shadow driving the film. Former priest Frederic Mason (Henry Czerny) left the church to marry his wife Ethel (Mimi Kuzyk). As the film opens, the two have just lost their young, adopted daughter in an accident. Frederic prays and seeks the advice of a practicing priest. Soon thereafter, a stranger who claims he is named Aaron Smith (O’Brien) shows up on the Mason’s property, injured and pleading for help. Frederic uncharacteristically allows him to spend the night in their home, even lying to a local police officer who the couple knows well, saying that the man is someone he knows. Ethel is shocked by Frederic’s invitation but soon becomes fond of the young stranger, who
Continue reading →
EventsFilm Festivals
Toronto, Canada’s Blood in the Snow Film Festival (BITS) hosts a hybrid edition this year, with a virtual festival running this weekend (information at https://www.bloodinthesnow.ca/) from October 29-31 and a just-announced in-theater lineup for November 18-23 at the Royal Cinema. From hilarious horror comedies such as Vicious Fun to darker offerings such as Canadian folk horror The Family and styles of fear fare in between are world, national, and local premieres of feature-length and short fright fare films. Following is the official press announcement. Blood in the Snow Film Festival (BITS), a unique and imaginative showcase of contemporary Canadian horror films, is pleased to announce the lineup for the in-theatre portion of this year’s hybrid festival taking place November 18—23 at the Royal Cinema. “After being forced to take a break from in-person gatherings due to the COVID 19 pandemic and pivoting to a virtual format with the help of Super Channel in 2020, we are thrilled to be able
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesNewsTrailers
Black Mandala has just announced that it has acquired the Hungarian horror film Post Mortem, directed by Péter Bergendy, which has been chosen to represent Hungary at the Oscars 2022 in the category of Best International Feature Film. Post Mortem premiered at the Warsaw and Sitges film festivals last year and went on to screen at more than 20 genre festivals, picking up prizes in Trieste, Fantasporto, Sombra, and Parma. Last week, the film was screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festing, bringing home ten awards including Best Feature Film, Best Horror Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Fruzsina Hais), and Best Special Effects. Set at the end of the First World War, the film follows Tomás, a traveling photographer who wanders through Hungary and photographs the recently deceased. Following the premonitory call of a 10-year-old orphan girl, Anna arrives in a small town where an unusual number of supernatural phenomena occur. The spirits need to tell him something,
Continue reading →
More from Events
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Canada’s Blood in the Snow Film Festival, which runs in Toronto from November 18–23, 2021, features a jaw-dropping array of homegrown horror and horror-comedy features and shorts. Following are reviews of three of the short films that screen at the festival. Giant Bear Giant Bear (Canada, 2019) is a beautifully animated vision of an Inuit legend that is absolutely stunning. Codirectors Neil Christopher and Daniel Gies have crafted an absolutely gorgeous work. As beautiful as the snowy landscape is, the underwater world in the short is breathtaking. A lone hunter tries spearfishing with his dog, only to come face to face with a monstrously large bear. Much more than just an animated creature feature, Giant Bear is a riveting experience. Wolf in Dude’s Clothing Writer/director Solmund MacPherson’s Wolf in Dude’s Clothing (Canada, 2021) sees a wolf assume a human lifestyle after finding a suit of human skin in the wild. The wolf-man (Erik Athavale) — a fun play on the
Continue reading →
EventsFilm FestivalsNews
Filmmakers, take note: Austria’s prestigious SLASH Filmfestival is currently accepting submissions for its 13th edition next year. Following is the official press release. SLASH Filmfestival, Austria’s foremost festival for Fantastic Film and the country’s third largest film festival overall, is now accepting submissions for its 13th edition, which will run from September 22 through October 2, 2022. Filmmakers from across the world are invited to send in their work via FilmFreeway. Founded in 2010, SLASH Filmfestival has quickly grown in size and scope, now attracting close to 15.000 visitors over its 11-day run. The festival hosts a Fantastic Shorts competition with a cash prize of 1000 EUR decided by popular vote and also organizes the Méliès d’argent competition for European short films. Additionally, SLASH organizes a feature film competition with a cash prize of 3000 EUR, the winner of which is identified by a professional jury. SLASH celebrates genre films in various shapes and sizes. Both short films (30 min.
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Peppergrass Eula Baek (Chantelle Han) and Morris Weiss (Charles Boyland) are in a relationship — and quite obviously not a happy one, judging from their constant sniping and bickering — and are driven to desperation during the COVID lockdown for her titular restaurant and his bar. They hatch a plan to scam veteran Captain Reuben Lom (Michael Copeman) — who lives in a very rural area and who was friends with Eula’s father — into giving them some valuable truffles that they can resell to try to make ends meet. Morris gets greedy and aggressive, and suddenly the three people are fighting for their lives. Peppergrass (Canada, 2021) toys with the “home invasion goes south” style of fear fare before diving headlong into survival horror, but rather than fully committing to the more grueling side of the latter, focuses instead on being more of a dread-filled mood piece with lots of wandering around in the woods. Codirectors Steven Garbas and
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes Similar to how films like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears and Berberian Sound Studio have evoked giallo, director Kevin Kopacka’s Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (Germany, 2021) draws its inspiration from European arthouse films, of the horror genre and otherwise. It’s best to go into this outing cold, so I will only give a brief, spoiler-free set-up regarding its plot: Margot (Luisa Taraz) and her husband Deiter (Frederik von Lüttichau) have inherited a remote castle — with Bava influences in more than just lighting — and as the tension between the couple rises, gothic-horror madness sets in. Try learning nothing more than that for maximum surprise from the film. Kopacka, who cowrote the screenplay with Lili Villányi, has crafted a mind-bender of a movie that fairly drips eerie atmosphere, with scenes that range from the tried-and-true method of having off-screen occurrences for viewers to fill in with their imagination, to a graphic gore
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Director Carlo Ledesma takes viewers on a wild ride of the supernatural in Sunod (AKA Followed; Philippines, 2019), which captured the awards for Best International Feature Film, Best Performance in an International Feature Film (Carmina Villarroel), and Best International Feature Film Director (Ledesma) at the recent A Night of Horror International Film Festival in Australia. Although the film sometimes deals in familiar fear-fare trappings, the overall result is a gripping chiller well worth a watch. Villarroel portrays Olivia, a single mother to teen daughter Anelle (Krystal Brimner) who is hospitalized with a heart condition. Olivia asserts herself, out of financial desperation, into a new night job at a call center. Her place of employment happens to be the same building that served as a hospital in the 1970s, and savvy horror movie viewers know that nothing good ever comes of being in a former hospital. Below the call center are abandoned floors. When Olivia finds herself on one of those
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
You’ll rarely find a character that you can’t wait to see get his as much as you will with paranormal researcher/exploiter Steven Caramore (Corey Johnson) in the U.K. feature Lair. As if being responsible for his business partner Ben’s (Oded Fehr) slaughtering of his wife and child, Caramore then sets up shop in a London apartment building, outfitting one flat with allegedly cursed objects while rigging up cameras in a neighboring one to watch what happens to an unsuspecting family in the first flat. The vacationing family in question brings their own personal demons into the mix — lots of arguing, bickering, bruised egos, and teen rebellion — and really they should have demanded a refund on their vacation rental as soon as Caramore told them — on their second day of the stay — that he placed a cursed doll in their flat, a toy to which little Lily (Lara Mount) took an instant liking. But Lily and her
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Last Survivors, the latest entry in the thriller subgenre of “children beginning to question their parents’ philosophies after an apocalyptic event” (this year’s Gaia being one example) is a solid outing fueled by fine performances from its three leads. Troy (Stephen Moyer) is a stern man who has raised his adult son Jake (Drew Van Acker) from very young childhood in a remote mountain area, with the two of them living off the land and storing venison jerky for long winters. Troy has been training Jake to kill any intruders without hesitation to protect what is theirs, and Jake declares himself ready to do so. When Troy is injured during one such confrontation, he tells Jake where a supply of medicine is hidden. The young man goes to fetch it and spies a woman just outside of their property. He has second thoughts about shooting her, and instead breaks into her house, where he learns that her name is Henrietta
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Writer/director Mark O’Brien’s The Righteous is a gripping, slow-burn gothic horror that examines the dark hearts of people and the secrets they hide. Conflicts in religious faith and the consequences of sins are at the forefront, with top-notch performances and brilliant use of light and shadow driving the film. Former priest Frederic Mason (Henry Czerny) left the church to marry his wife Ethel (Mimi Kuzyk). As the film opens, the two have just lost their young, adopted daughter in an accident. Frederic prays and seeks the advice of a practicing priest. Soon thereafter, a stranger who claims he is named Aaron Smith (O’Brien) shows up on the Mason’s property, injured and pleading for help. Frederic uncharacteristically allows him to spend the night in their home, even lying to a local police officer who the couple knows well, saying that the man is someone he knows. Ethel is shocked by Frederic’s invitation but soon becomes fond of the young stranger, who
Continue reading →
EventsFilm Festivals
Toronto, Canada’s Blood in the Snow Film Festival (BITS) hosts a hybrid edition this year, with a virtual festival running this weekend (information at https://www.bloodinthesnow.ca/) from October 29-31 and a just-announced in-theater lineup for November 18-23 at the Royal Cinema. From hilarious horror comedies such as Vicious Fun to darker offerings such as Canadian folk horror The Family and styles of fear fare in between are world, national, and local premieres of feature-length and short fright fare films. Following is the official press announcement. Blood in the Snow Film Festival (BITS), a unique and imaginative showcase of contemporary Canadian horror films, is pleased to announce the lineup for the in-theatre portion of this year’s hybrid festival taking place November 18—23 at the Royal Cinema. “After being forced to take a break from in-person gatherings due to the COVID 19 pandemic and pivoting to a virtual format with the help of Super Channel in 2020, we are thrilled to be able
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesNewsTrailers
Black Mandala has just announced that it has acquired the Hungarian horror film Post Mortem, directed by Péter Bergendy, which has been chosen to represent Hungary at the Oscars 2022 in the category of Best International Feature Film. Post Mortem premiered at the Warsaw and Sitges film festivals last year and went on to screen at more than 20 genre festivals, picking up prizes in Trieste, Fantasporto, Sombra, and Parma. Last week, the film was screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festing, bringing home ten awards including Best Feature Film, Best Horror Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Fruzsina Hais), and Best Special Effects. Set at the end of the First World War, the film follows Tomás, a traveling photographer who wanders through Hungary and photographs the recently deceased. Following the premonitory call of a 10-year-old orphan girl, Anna arrives in a small town where an unusual number of supernatural phenomena occur. The spirits need to tell him something,
Continue reading →
