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Joseph Perry

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Final Girls Berlin Film Festival Preview: Killers, Thrillers, and Chillers of All Stripes Are on Tap

The fifth edition of Final Girls Berlin Film Festival takes place February 6–9, 2020 at City Kino Wedding as the fest continues to raise the bar by showcasing horror movies written, directed, and/or produced by women and nonbinary filmmakers. Festival codirector Eli Lewy calls this year’s festival edition the “most expansive and international yet, presenting a wide array of films by visionary filmmakers that represent the diversity and originality that can be found in the current horror landscape.” The exciting program features eight curated short blocks and nine feature films, a horror-inspired self-defense workshop, an exhibition, a festival party with multimedia drag performances, and specialist talks on horror martyrs, made-for-TV horror, “female monsters,” and “bad mothers” in Mexican horror cinema. “Horror is a very elastic term,” said fellow co-director Sara Neidorf, “and we’re excited to discover films that make us question and expand our conceptions of what horror can be, both in ways that are distant from and uncannily near

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Joseph Perry

Jan 14, 2020

Film FestivalsForeignIndieMovies

Movie Reviews (Horror-on-Sea Film Festival): Horror Shorts — Bitten, Boo, and Retch

Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, which runs January 10th–19th at Park Inn by Raddison Palace, Southend-on-Sea, U.K., features an incredible program of horror and horror comedy features and shorts from around the world. Following are reviews of three of the short films that will screen at the festival. Bitten When a woman’s (Francine Torres) dog returns home with a bite after a mysterious struggle with an offscreen foe, she lovingly treats the injury before heading out on a first date. While she is away, Iggy the dog transforms into a man (Michael Curran) and the adventures he gets up to in this supernatural comedy are nothing compared to the hijinx that ensue when his owner returns home, to put it mildly. Curran gives a fearless, fully unclothed performance that hilariously captures canine traits and tendencies. Torres deals out a good deal of laughs, too, and the pair provide fine comical chemistry in Bitten, a superbly crafted, great-looking short from director Sarah K

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Joseph Perry

Jan 9, 2020

Film FestivalsReviews

Movie Reviews (Another Hole in the Head Film Fest): Horror Shorts — The Boy with the Sombrero, Hell Hath No Furie, Wendigo, Azrahel, and La Noria

The Boy with the Sombrero Written and directed by Constantien Konstin While walking with his mother (Dawn Briceño), a young boy (Cristiano Briceño) sees the titular character (Broadie Briceño) nearby, but his mother does not. After returning home and spending time with his father (David Briceño), the boy learns that he wasn’t merely seeing things. This slow burner pays off nicely with a sudden shocking climax. Kudos to Alicia Barry for her impressive makeup and special effects work. Hell Hath No Furie Written, directed, and animated by Kitty Faingold This fun, wicked short boasts a unique style of hand-drawn animation heavy on red and black. Its tale of three furies hanging out and getting on each other’s nerves is both comical and violent. The music and sound design by Max Mannone round out Faingold’s short well. You can watch Hell Hath No Furie now at https://vimeo.com/372211393. Wendigo This short from Large Ark Films shows how three friends learn the hard

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Joseph Perry

Dec 30, 2019

MoviesReviews

Movie Review: Come to Daddy (2019)

Learn as little as possible about Come to Daddy — that includes avoiding trailers, though the one presented below thankfully avoids the film’s biggest reveals — and prepare for a highly uncomfortably blast. Director Ant Timpson’s genre-bending feature is chock full of secrets, well-calculated twists, and bravura performances. Family drama, gruesome set pieces, pitch-black humor, and even some poignant bittersweetness collide in the story of man-child Norval’s (Elijah Wood, Maniac; Cooties) travels to a remote beach house to meet his father, who abandoned Norval and his mother 30 years earlier. Norval was initially nervous about the reunion, but nothing prepared him for the verbal abuse and physical threats he receives courtesy of his highly aggressive, judgmental father (Stephen McHattie, Pontypool; Dreamland ), who chides Norval about his substance abuse recovery despite his own fondness for the bottle. In a nail-bitingly tense scene, the father plays an excrutiating game of mental chess regarding how well Norval actually knows rock music legend

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Joseph Perry

Dec 30, 2019

Film FestivalsMovies

Movie Reviews (Another Hole in the Head Film Fest): Beneath the Black Veil and Giantess Attack versus Mecha Fembot (both 2019)

Director Jason M. Koch — no stranger to controversy with his ABCs of Death 2.5 (2016) segment “M is for Munging” and his grisly feature 7th Day (2013) — tackles Chritsian faith and lack thereof in his latest film, Beneath the Black Veil. The lives and marriage of Genna (Samantha Jean) and her husband Aaron (Michael Acosta) are shattered when their child is killed by a driver. When the driver is not punished by law for the accident, the couple plots to take their anger at God out by killing the driver and breaking all of the Ten Commandments. This proves difficult when Aaron cannot find the willpower to leave their house, and then finds himself growing grotesquely sicker. Meanwhile, Genna’s behavior becomes ever odder, alarming her coworkers and close friend. Koch, who wrote the screenplay based on a story by Stephen Biro (writer of the American Guinea Pig films), doesn’t shy away from blasphemy in this body horror/occult horror

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Joseph Perry

Dec 19, 2019

Film FestivalsMoviesReviews

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

Joseph Perry

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