October is a busy month for genre film fans, and for folks on the East Coast it’s happily no exception as the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival prepares to launch this year’s event. Running from the 13th October to the 20th, it promises both a run of classic cinema and brand new titles. (Warped Perspective is covering a few of them, so please do watch this space.) For those of you who will be in attendance, or for those of you on the look-out for titles which are hopefully coming your way at a later point, check out the following five…
Nocebo
Eva Green, via her work on the wonderful Penny Dreadful series, is already known to many viewers as a magnetic and talented actor who seems rather comfortable around darker themes. So far, so good. Put her in a film directed by Lorcan Finnegan, whose film Vivarium has become a long-term source of anxiety and fascination for this reviewer, and the festival opener Nocebo looks to be a folk horror which throws up some important talking points too. Blending themes such as illness, hypochondria, folklore, class and power, it’s no doubt a title to seek out.
Mother Superior
A film whose story spans the decades between the 1940s and 1970s, Mother Superior is the story of a young nurse, Sigrun, whose origins are a mystery to her; she never knew her parents. When she takes a job caring for an ageing Baroness in a sprawling and dilapidated manor house, she becomes aware that the older lady may be able to cast some light on her story – but it is not without its price. Warped Perspective will be running a special review of this title during the festival.
The Weird Kidz
There are labours of love in film, and then there are hand-drawn animated features which take eight years to complete; The Weird Kidz fits into that last category, by the way. It’s a coming-of-age story, which in some respects overlaps with those other popular franchises and standalone projects made by people who also want to creatively explore the trials and tribulations of growing up in the 80s and 90s. But aside from its long and heartfelt development time, The Weird Kidz also stands ready to tell a heartfelt and creative horror-comedy tale all of its own.
Repulse
I have a feeling that Repulse is going to pack a punch. Boasting family dysfunction, minimal dialogue, unsettled chronology and a whole raft of weighty horror tropes, this debut film by filmmaker Emil Křižka explores what happens when two unconnected, but troubled families have their worlds collide in ways which are inescapable. All it takes is a chance event…
Warped Perspective will be running a feature on Repulse very soon.
V/H/S 99
Oh my, has the world of horror nostalgia got as far as 1999 and Y2K? You know what this means, folks. Soon the 2000s will be old enough to mythologise, and then it’s really time to look forward to the glue factory. Anyway, the V/H/S anthology movies have been popular and divisive enough to leave an indelible mark on horror cinema and its fandom; this latest instalment will likely do the same thing. Boasting a roster of directors from Johannes Roberts to Tyler MacIntyre (Tragedy Girls) to the team behind Deadstream, there is a real range of approaches and styles which should keep things interesting. It’ll be out on Shudder soon, and a review should also be forthcoming for this one.
Other highlights: the festival will be running a tribute to Lucio Fulci with screenings of some of his classic horror titles: A Cat in the Brain, Manhattan Baby, Zombie, The Beyond, City of the Living Dead and The New York Ripper are all screening, alongside a 50 year anniversary showing of Don’t Torture a Duckling. There are some excellent short film packages too – Creeping Terror will be receiving coverage here – and a few titles which we were lucky enough to see via the Fantasia International Film Festival: check out the grim and haunting Megalomaniac and also The Harbinger, a film born very much of a certain world-altering pandemic…