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Tag Archives: Gateway Film Center
Fright Club: Towns that Won’t Let Go
Being trapped in a town–whether by supernatural forces or physical ones–is a nightmare scenario that horror movies use to their advantage. Maybe it’s bloodthirsty kids in a cornfield who keep you. Maybe it’s some kind of unnatural barrier, and every time you leave, you wind up where you started. Either way, spooky times! Here are our five favorite towns that won’t let you leave!
5. Hilsboro: The Brotherhood of Satan (1971)
One of those mid-afternoon TV watches one day home sick from school, this movie scared the shit out of me. Was it the kidnapping and possession of children? The Satanic cult? No–it was the idea that K.T. and Nicky could never leave the town. No matter what direction they drove or how they attempted it, they would never get out of the town.
That idea stuck with me for ages, but in restrospect, the movie has a lot of weird goodness going for it. It seems to have inspired Being John Malcovich to a degree, as well as Cemetery Man. It’s a B-movie, no question, but it is a lot of fun.
4. Camp Arcadia: The Endless (2017)
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead continue themes developed in the remarkable Resolution (which could also be on the list). And though it’s really a camp they need to leave, the dread the filmmakers develop is identical to that of the town that won’t let go.
As brothers return to the cult they’d escaped years earlier for a friendly visit, you spend every minute hoping, goading, yelling, begging them to fucking just leave! Get out! What are you still doing there?!
The tension is palpable and the fraternal familiarity between Justin and Moorhead is painfully, tenderly authentic. This works to ground the science fiction elements as they develop, creating an unnerving and memorable feature.
3. Hobbs End: In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
John Carpenter combines King with Lovecraft to create an unforgettable journey into madness. Sam Neill is an insurance investigator out to prove that vanished author Sutter Cane is a phony. He just needs to get to Hobb’s End and prove it.
There’s a scene with a bicyclist on a country road that boasts of Carpenter’s genre magic, as madness and mayhem collude to keep Neill where he is, at least until he can serve a greater purpose.
2. Buffalora: Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore – [of death, of love], 1994)
Inarguably director Michele Soavi’s best work is confined mainly to the cemetery in Buffalora. Released the same year as In the Mouth of Madness, Cemetery Man explores a handful of the same themes. It just does it with more sex.
The film balances humor with horror, sneakily leading to meaner and more chaotic plot turns until there’s no going back.
Rupert Everett is perfection as Dellamorte, the cemetery keeper who has noticed that the dead come back about seven days after they’re interred. Things go from bad to worse to worse still, and finally he loads up his best friend Gnaghi and plans to put Buffalora behind him. Good luck.
1. The Yabba: Wake in Fright (1971)
First time in the Yabba?
Sweaty, drunken, debauched–Ted Kotcheff’s Aussie thriller wrings tension from every scene as John Grant, put-upon school teacher, explores his manliness with the very manliest in town.
A pressure cooker, the film is an absolute education in escalating tension, but it also boasts what may be the greatest performance of Donald Pleasance’s career.
The film is not for the faint of heart, and potential viewers beware: the kangaroo hunt is real.
Fright Club: Housewives in Horror
When a human being just doesn’t have enough meaningful ways to invest their time, they can go a little nuts. Here’s to the horror of life as the underappreciated, boxed-in, cast off and/or misused housewife. May they all draw blood.
5. Jakob’s Wife (2021)
Director/co-writer Travis Stevens (Girl on the Third Floor) wraps this bloodlusty tale of the pastor’s wife (Barbara Crampton) and the vampire in a fun, retro vibe of ’80s low-budget, practical, blood-spurting gore.
To see a female character of this age experiencing a spiritual, philosophical and sexual awakening is alone refreshing, and Crampton (looking fantastic, by the way) makes the character’s cautious embrace of her new ageless wonder an empowering – and even touching – journey.
With Crampton so completely in her element, Jakob’s Wife is an irresistibly fun take on the bite of eternity. Here, it’s not about taking souls, it’s about empowering them. And once this lady is a vamp, we’re the lucky ones.
4. The Stepford Wives (1975)
Ira Levin’s novel left a scar and filmmaker Bryan Forbes and star Katherine Ross pick that scab to deliver a satirical thriller that is still surprisingly unsettling. What both the novel and the film understand is a genuine fear that the person you love, whose faults you accept and who you plan to age and die with, has no interest in what’s inside you at all. You – the actual you – mean nothing at all.
It’s the idea of trophy wife taken to a diabolical extreme (as even the outright trophy wife isn’t long to last, what with the inevitability of aging and all). The term Stepford Wife worked its way into the lexicon, and there’s a clear pot boiler, B-movie feel to this film, but it still leaves a mark.
3. Dumplings (2004)
Fruit Chan’s Dumplings satirizes the global obsession with youth and beauty in taboo-shattering ways.
Gorgeous if off-putting Aunt Mei (Bai Ling) balances her time between performing black market medical functions and selling youth-rejuvenating dumplings. She’s found a customer for the dumplings in Mrs. Li (Miriam Yeung ChinWah), the discarded wife of a wealthy man.
With darkest humor and sharp insight, Chan situates the horror in a specifically Chinese history but skewers a youth-obsessed culture that circles the globe.
The secret ingredient is Bai Ling, whose performance is a sly work of genius. There are layers to this character that are only slowly revealed, but Ling clearly knows them inside and out, hinting at them all the while and flatly surprised at everything Mrs. Li (and you and everyone else) hasn’t guessed.
Gross and intimate, uncomfortable and wise, mean, well-acted and really nicely photographed, Dumplings will likely not be for everyone. But it’s certainly a change of pace from your day-to-day horror diet.
2. Swallow (2019)
Putting a relevant twist on the classic “horrific mother” trope, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis uses the rare eating disorder pica to anchor his exploration of gender dynamics and, in particular, control.
Where Mirabella-Davis’s talent for building tension and framing scenes drive the narrative, it’s Bennett’s performance that elevates the film. Serving as executive producer as well as star, Haley Bennett transforms over the course of the film.
When things finally burst, director and star shake off the traditional storytelling, the Yellow Wallpaper or Awakening or even Safe. The filmmaker’s vision and imagery come full circle with a bold conclusion worthy of Bennett’s performance.
1. Watcher (2022)
If you’re a fan at all of genre films, chances are good Watcher will look plenty familiar. But in her feature debut, writer/director Chloe Okuno wields that familiarity with a cunning that leaves you feeling unnerved in urgent and important ways.
Maika Monroe is sensational as Julia, an actress who has left New York behind to follow husband Francis (Karl Glusman) and begin a new life in Bucharest.
Monroe emits an effectively fragile resolve. The absence of subtitles helps us relate to Julia immediately, and Monroe never squanders that sympathy, grounding the film at even the most questionably formulaic moments.
Mounting indignities create a subtle yet unmistakable nod to a culture that expects women to ignore their better judgment for the sake of being polite. Okuno envelopes Julia in male gazes that carry threats of varying degrees, all building to a bloody and damn satisfying crescendo.
Fright Club: Best Contagion Horror Movies
The Seventh Seal, Blindness, Carriers, Rabid, Mayhem, Masque of the Red Death, Infection, Flesh + Blood, The Crazies – all amazing movies exploring our communal fear of contagion. They pick that scab, so to speak, but are there others that do it better?
Our two rules: no zombies, no living beasties (The Thing, Shivers, etc.) Just some kind of virus. Here goes!
5. Pontypool (2008)
Canadian director Bruce McDonald’s shock jock horror film is best appreciated as a metaphor on journalistic responsibility and the damage that words can do. Radio air personality and general pot-stirrer Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) finds himself kicked out of yet another large market and licking his wounds in the small time – Pontypool, Ontario, to be exact. But he’s about to find himself at the epicenter of a national emergency.
McDonald uses sound design and the cramped, claustrophobic space of the radio studio to wondrous effect as Mazzy and his producers broadcast through some kind of mad epidemic, with Mazzy goosing on the mayhem in the name of good radio. As he listens to callers describe the action, and then be eaten up within it, the veteran McHattie compels attention while McDonald tweaks tensions.
Shut up or die is the tagline for the film. Fitting, as it turns out that what’s poisoning the throng, turning them into a mindless, violent mob, are the very words spewing at them. It’s a clever premise effectively executed, and while McDonald owes debts all around to previous efforts, his vision is unique enough to stand out and relevant enough to leave an impression.
4. Antiviral (2012)
If you could catch Kim Kardashian’s cold, would you?
This is the intriguing concept behind writer/director Brandon Cronenberg’s seething commentary on celebrity obsession, Antiviral.
Young Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works for a clinic dealing in a very specific kind of treatment. They harvest viruses from willing celebrities, encrypt them (so they can’t spread – no money if you can’t control the spread), and sell the illnesses to obsessed fans who derive some kind of bodily communion with their adored by way of a shared herpes virus. Gross.
But the ambitious Syd pirates these viruses by injecting himself first, before the encryption. Eventually, his own nastiness-riddled blood is more valuable than he is, and he has to find a way out of quite a pickle. Maybe vitamin C?
3. It Comes at Night (2017)
Deep in the woods, Paul (Joel Edgerton, solid as always), Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) have established a cautious existence in the face of a worldwide plague. They have boarded their windows, secured their doors, and enacted a very strict set of rules for survival.
At the top of that list: do not go out at night.
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults explores the confines of the house with a fluid camera and lush cinematography, slyly creating an effective sense of separation between the occupants and the dangers outside. But what are those dangers, and how much of the soul might one offer up to placate fear itself? In asking those unsettling questions, It Comes at Night becomes a truly chilling exploration of human frailty.
2. It Follows (2014)
It Follows is another coming-of-age tale, one that mines a primal terror. Moments after a sexual encounter with a new boyfriend, Jay (Maika Monroe) discovers that she is cursed. He has passed on some kind of entity – a demonic menace that will follow her until it either kills her or she passes it on to someone else the same way she got it.
Yes, it’s the STD or horror movies, but don’t let that dissuade you. Mitchell understands the anxiety of adolescence and he has not simply crafted yet another cautionary tale about premarital sex.
Mitchell has captured that fleeting yet dragging moment between childhood and adulthood and given the lurking dread of that time of life a powerful image. There is something that lies just beyond the innocence of youth. You feel it in every frame and begin to look out for it, walking toward you at a consistent pace, long before the characters have begun to check the periphery themselves.
Mitchell’s provocatively murky subtext is rich with symbolism but never overwhelmed by it. His capacity to draw an audience into this environment, this horror, is impeccable, and the result is a lingering sense of unease that will have you checking the perimeter for a while to come.
1. 28 Days Later (2002)
Activists break into a research lab and free the wrong effing monkeys.
28 days later, bike messenger Jim wakes up naked on an operating table.
What follows is the eerie image of an abandoned, desolate London as Jim wanders hither and yon hollering for anybody. In the church, we get our first glimpse of what Jim is now up against, and dude, run!
Prior to 28 Days Later, the zombie genre seemed finally dead and gone. But director Danny Boyle single-handedly resurrected the genre with two new(ish) ideas: 1) they aren’t dead, 2) therefore, they can move really quickly.
Both Brendan Gleeson and Cillian Murphy are impeccable actors, and Naomie Harris is a truly convincing badass. Their performances, and the cinematic moments of real joy, make their ordeal that much more powerful. But you know you’re in trouble from the genius opening sequence: vulnerability, tension, bewilderment, rage, and blood – it launches a frantic and terrifying not-zombie film.
Skinamarink Screening with Director Kyle Edward Ball at Gateway
In partnership with the Greater Columbus Film Commission, Gateway FIlm Center has announced that acclaimed new filmmaker, Kyle Edward Ball, will visit the Center on Saturday, March 18, to premiere a 35mm version of his film, Skinamarink (2023).
“We are excited to welcome Kyle to Columbus, to the Film Center, and to share the 35mm print of his incredible independent film, Skinamarink” said Gateway Film Foundation CEO, Christopher Hamel.
In Skinamarink (2023), two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party situation. They play well worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while it becomes clear that something is watching over them.
The film stars Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul and Jaime Hill and is executive produced by Edmon Rotea, Ava Karvonen, Bonnie Lewis, Alan Lewis, Josh Doke, and Jonathan Barkan.
Ball, a first-time filmmaker, made Skinamarink (2023), which premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, for about $15,000. Since the film’s debut, it has become an instant cult classic, often compared to micro-budget horror hits such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007). However, Skinamarink is not found-footage or improvised, but is fully scripted and features images, sounds, and camera angles which were created to add depth and discomfort.
Shudder and IFC FIlms released Skinamarink (2023) in the United States on Friday, January 13, 2023. Gateway Film Center was selected as one of the first venues to feature the film and the Center has continuously screened Skinamarink (2023) since the release in January. To date, Skinamarink (2023) has grossed over two million dollars in the United States, making it one of the most successful and profitable independent films of all-time.
“Members of our community continue to hear about this film and want to experience it the way it was intended, with an audience and on a big screen. The Film Center is proud that we continue to present the film and I know Kyle’s visit, and this 35mm screening, will be a great event for Columbus”, said Hamel.
Tickets for these screenings are on sale now at gatewayfilmcenter.org. The 35mm presentation of Skinamarink (2023) on Saturday, March 18 will screen at 7:00pm exclusively for myGFC Members alongside a workshop co-presented with Film Columbus. The 9:30pm screening will be introduced by the filmmaker and is now on sale. Normal ticket prices apply. MaddWolf’s Hope Madden and George Wolf will moderate the q&a session following the 7:00pm performance.
Gateway Film Center is wholly owned by the Gateway Film Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, Campus Partners, The Columbus Foundation, and thousands of individual donors. To learn more, visit the website at gatewayfilmcenter.org.
Fright Club 233: Social Progress Through Horror
Join us for a great panel discussion, recorded live at this year’s Nightmares Film Festival!
Fright Club: Frightful Felines
Generally speaking, when a horror filmmaker inserts a dog into their film, it’s because they know you don’t want anything bad to happen to that sweet pooch. They raise the stakes.
That or they expect the dog to tear a throat out and terrify an audience.
But that’s not really why they put cats into their films. Cats plot and menace. You can’t figure them out. They seem innocent, but then they dart between your feet just as you reach the top of the stairs. Plus you know they’ll eat your carcass, and they probably won’t even wait that long.
Here is our salute to cats in horror movies.
5. Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2015)
Adrian is a Romanian filmmaker who likes girls and cats. He does not like dogs or boys. His favorite thing? Anne Hathaway as Cat Woman.
He was so inspired by her performance that he knew he had to make a film with her. To convince her, he’s lured three actresses to shoot a film with him. That film is really just to convince Anne, his beloved, that she should star in the real movie.
She’s not going to want to.
This movie works on the sheer, weird charisma of writer/director/star Adrian Tofei. He is pathetic and charming and terrifying as he documents his direction as a kind of “behind the scenes” for Anne, so she can understand how truly perfect she is for his film and he is for her artistic future. The result is unsettling, unique and wildly entertaining.
4. Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985)
Stephen King wrote the screenplay for this anthology. Two of the shorts come from King’s published work, the third he scripted directly for the screen. A cat named General travels among the three tales.
General gets the most screentime in an episode with Drew Barrymore, who wants the cat to protect her from a little troll living in her bedroom walls. But the best of the tales follows Dick Morrison (James Woods) follows a 100% effective way to quit smoking.
It’s an effective set of tales and one of the better screen adaptations of King’s work.
3. The Black Cat (1934)
Rocky Horror owes a tremendous debt to Edgar G. Ulmer’s bizarre horror show. The film – clearly precode – boasts torture, tales of cannibalism, and more than the hint of necromancy.
Plus Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff?! What is not to love? It looks great, as does Karloff, whose lisp is put to the most glorious use.
Loosely based on Poe’s The Black Cat – so loose in fact that it bears not a single moment’s resemblance to the short – the film introduces Lugosi’s Dr. Vitus Werdegast. He’s come to seek vengeance on Karloff’s mysterious Hjalmar Poelzig, if only Werdegast can overcome his all-consuming terror of cats!
The cat thing has almost nothing whatever to do with the actual plot of this movie, but who cares? What a weird, weird movie. So good!
2. Cat People (1942)
Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 original explores that oh-so-common horror trope: women’s sexual hysteria. Beautiful Irena is afraid that if she has sex she will become a monster. And we know she’s evil because the tiny kitten her new beau brings her hisses at her.
It’s an often silly film and very dated, but there’s something unnerving in the shifts of power, the perversion the film finds in power. You see it in the way big cats are menaced by small cats.
1. The Voices (2014)
Director Marjane Satrapi’s follow-up to her brilliant animated Persepolis is a sweet, moving, very black comedy about why medicine is not always the best medicine.
Ryan Reynolds is Jerry. As Jerry sees it, his house is a cool pad above a nifty bowling alley, his job is the best, his co-workers really like him, and his positive disposition makes it easy for him to get along. Jerry’s kindly dog Bosco (also Ryan Reynolds) agrees.
But Mr. Whiskers (evil cat, also Reynolds) thinks Jerry is a cold-blooded killer. And though Mr. Whiskers is OK with that, Jerry doesn’t want to believe it. So he should definitely not take his pills.
Horror 101 Full Lineup Is Here!
FULL LIST OF HORROR 101 AT GATEWAY FILM CENTER ANNOUNCED
National panel of experts selects titles for the new program
In 2017, Gateway Film Center launched its most ambitious program ever, Cult 101, which was a celebration of the best cult films of all-time. Selected by a national panel of experts, all 101 films were screened at the center in 2017, and presentations were often paired with conversations, expert analysis, and always with a healthy dose of audience affection. Many of the films were presented as restorations, sometimes in 4K, or on 70mm or 35mm film.
Now, one year later, the center will launch a companion program, Horror 101, paying tribute to the best of those films that scare, unsettle or disturb.
“As soon as Cult 101 ended, I started getting requests for more programs that were similar to it in scale and scope,” said Gateway Film Center President, Chris Hamel. “With the amazing impact these films have had on our culture, and the spirited debates horror films seem to create, Horror 101 was the obvious choice for a new program.”
National and local news outlets, filmmakers, studios, distributors, critics and programmers were selected to help the film center with its final picks. Contributors include representatives from Warner Brothers, Lionsgate, IFC Films, Paramount, MPI Media and Dark Sky Films, Magnolia Pictures, Nightmares Film Festival, Days of the Dead, Fangoria, Maddwolf, and more.
The program begins Valentine’s Day with Candyman (1992) at 7:30 p.m. The complete list of films is below, and their screening times will be revealed each quarter, treating Horror 101 as four seasons of top horror film.
The first screening schedule will be announced on January 15.
Normal Gateway Film Center ticket pricing will apply to all screenings. Most screenings are free to myGFC members. Visit www.gatewayfilmcenter.org for more information.
Here is the list of Horror 101 titles, listed alphabetically:
28 Days Later (2002)
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Alien (1979)
Altered States (1980)
The Amityville Horror (1979)
An American Werewolf In London (1981)
Antichrist (2009)
Audition (1999)
The Babadook (2016)
Battle Royale (2000)
Beetlejuice (1988)
The Birds (1963)
Black Christmas (1974)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Cabin In The Woods (2012)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Candyman (1992)
Carnival of Souls (1962)
Carrie (1976)
Cat People (1942)
The Changeling (1980)
Child’s Play (1988)
The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
Creepshow (1982)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Dead Alive (1992)
The Descent (2005)
Don’t Look Now (1973)
Donnie Darko (2001)
Dracula (1931)
Drag Me To Hell (2009)
Eraserhead (1977)
Evil Dead II (1987)
The Evil Dead (1981)
The Exorcist (1971)
The Fly (1986)
Frankenstein (1931)
Friday the 13th (1980)
Fright Night (1985)
Get Out (2017)
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1954)
Halloween (1978)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Hellraiser (1987)
Hereditary (2018)
High Tension (2003)
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Horror of Dracula (1958)
The House of the Devil (2009)
House On Haunted Hill (1959)
I Saw The Devil (2010)
Inside (2007)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Jaws (1975)
King Kong (1933)
The Last House On The Left (1972)
Let The Right One In (2008)
The Lost Boys (1987)
Martin (1977)
Martyrs (2008)
Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Misery (1990)
The Mummy (1932)
Near Dark (1987)
Night of the Creeps (1986)
Night of the Hunter (1955)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Nosferatu (1922)
The Omen (1976)
The Orphanage (2007)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Paranormal Activity (2007)
The People Under The Stairs (1991)
Pet Semetary (1989)
Phantasm (1979)
Poltergeist (1982)
Psycho (1960)
Re-Animator (1985)
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
The Ring (2002)
Ringu (1998)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Saw (2004)
Scanners (1981)
Scream (1995)
Se7en (1995)
The Shining (1980)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Suspiria (1977)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Thing (1982)
Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
Videodrome (1983)
The Wicker Man (1973)
The Witch (2015)
The Wolf Man (1941)
Zombie (1979)
Nightmares Film Festival: 2018 Lineup Announced
NIGHTMARES FILM FESTIVAL UNVEILS COMPLETE 2018 PROGRAM
For horror fans, Christmas has come three months early — in the form of the Nightmares Film Festival 2018 program, presenting 24 features and 164 shorts over the four-day event running Oct. 18-21 at Gateway Film Center in Columbus.
True to its “#BetterHorror” motto, the program is jammed top to bottom with a mix of premier genre films from around the globe. Across the 188 films, there are dozens of world and North American premieres, a short accompanied by live in-theater music, projects from genre favorites, a Stephen King block and even a new documentary section.
“We’re on a never-ending, worldwide quest to discover the films that are reshaping the boundaries of horror — bold voices, new visions of terror, films that haunt you,” said co-founder and programmer Jason Tostevin. “That’s how we build every Nightmares, and this may be our best lineup yet.”
The features lineup is stacked with the world premieres of some of horror’s most anticipated new movies, including white-knuckle thriller The Final Interview from Fred Vogel (Toetag Pictures, August Underground); twisted kidnap nightmare The Bad Man from Scott Schirmer (Found, Harvest Lake); ‘80s-style horror anthology Skeletons in the Closet from Tony Wash (The Rake); and paranoia-fueled apocalypse tale Haven’s End from Chris Etheridge (Attack of the Morningside Monster).
North American feature debuts include The Head from the director of ThanksKilling, about a medieval monster hunter; Christmas horror-comedy The Night Sitter; action-horror creature feature Book of Monsters; and mistaken-identity comedy-thriller Kill Ben Lyk.
Horror legend Bill Lustig will open the festival with a brand new 4K restoration of his classic, Maniac. New cult director Jason Trost (The FP) will attend with The FP 2: Beats of Rage.
Nightmares also continues its tradition of presenting one of the top genre shorts programs in the world. This year’s short films include horror, thriller, midnight and horror-comedy blocks playing throughout the festival.
The festival also introduces its Recurring Nightmares section this year, a category that showcases the newest shorts by festival alums.
The fest’s legendary Midnight Mindfuck block also returns. The section, called “one of the most dangerous and challenging programs at any festival” (The Film Coterie), will present Trauma, a harrowing tale grounded in the darkest parts of Chilean history, and La Puta es Ciega (The Whore is Blind), a surreal and violent exploration of the streets of Mexico.
“Every aspect of Nightmares is filtered through the question, what would excite us as fans?,” said co-founder Chris Hamel. “We don’t think there’s a better experience for makers and lovers of horror than the four days of Nightmares Film Festival.”
The 13 finalists in both the Nightmares short and feature screenplay competitions were also announced. The ultimate winner in each competition will be announced at the awards ceremony on Oct. 20.
Nightmares begins Thursday, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. and runs until Sunday night, Oct. 21. Fans who are ready to make the pilgrimage to Columbus, Ohio will find a limited number of passes still available for the festival at gatewayfilmcenter.org/NFF.
Hope Madden and George Wolf are proud to be among the jury panel for Nightmares Film Festival, one of the top horror film celebrations in the world. It has been the number-one rated genre film festival on submission platform FilmFreeway for 30 consecutive months.
SHORT SCREENPLAY FINALISTS
Boo – Rakefet Abergel
Mourning Meal – Jamal Hodge
Hiking Buddies – Megan Morrison
Living Memory – Stephen Graves
#dead – Derek Stewart
The Burning Dress – Sam Kolesnik
For Good Behavior – Ron Riekki
Air – Dalya Guerin
Invidia – Vanessa Wright
Minotaur – Michael Escobedo
Pancake Skank – Savannah Rodgers
The Callback – Sophie Hood
The Farm – Cate McLennan
FEATURE SCREENPLAY FINALISTS
Patience of Vultures – Greg Sisco
People of Merrit – Adam Pottle
The Shame Game – Greg Sisco
Rise of the Gulon – Matt Wildash
Left Of The Devil – Stephen Anderson
Bartleby Grimm’s Paranormal Elimination Service – Dan Kiely
Kelipot – Seth Nesenholtz
The Coldest Horizon – Jeffrey Howe
Throwback – Rachel Woolley
Resurrection Girl and the Curse of the Wendigo – Nathan Ludwig
The Caul – Sophia Cacciola & Michael J. Epstein
The Devil’s Gun – James Christopher
Residual – Tyler Christensen
HORROR FEATURES
The Bad Man
Skeletons in the Closet
Livescream
The Night Sitter
Book of Monsters
Maniac 4k
Confessions of a Serial Killer
The Head
Never Hike Alone
The Field Guide to Evil
THRILLER FEATURES
The Final Interview
Kill Ben Lyk
Clementina
Be My Cat: A Film For Anne
The LaPlace’s Demon
Alive
Betsy
Haven’s End
Dark Iris
MIDNIGHT FEATURES
Beats of Rage
Camp Death III in 2D!
Trauma
La Puta es Ciega
More Blood!
RECURRING NIGHTMARES A
Killing Giggles
The Unbearing
Let’s Play
Amy’s in the Freezer
One Hundred Thousand
Anniversary
Apartment 402
Enough
E-Bowla
Vampiras Satanicas II: The Death Bunny
42 Counts
RECURRING NIGHTMARES B
Galmi
Syphvania Grove
Rites of Vengeance
The Scarlet Vultures
Music Lesson
Thousand-Legged Terror
BFF Girls
Gut Punched
Basoan
HORROR SHORTS A
Ayuda
Bathroom Troll
Don’t Drink the Water
The After Party
Masks
Here There Be Monsters
Don’t Look Into Their Eyes
Heartless
El Cuco is Hungry
HORROR SHORTS B
Little
Save
Childer
Conductor
All You Can Carry
Made You Look
The Desolation Prize
Doggy See Evil
Spectres
Goodbye Old Friend
There’s a Monster Behind You
Blondie
HORROR SHORTS C
Ding Dong
Oscar’s Bell
Red Mosquito
Goodnight Gracie
Baghead
Wyrmwood
Avulsion
House Guests
The Last Seance
Three
HORROR SHORTS D
The Bloody Ballad of Squirt
The Chains
One Dark Night
Fears
Midnight Delivery
I Beat It
Mama’s Boy
Alien Death Fuck
Hell of a Day
Vonnis
The Dark Ward
Mystery Box
THRILLER SHORTS A
4EVR
Nocturne
The Noise of the Light
Short Leash
Instinct
Where’s Violet
Tutu Grande
THRILLER SHORTS B
Lady Hunters
Smiley’s
Headless Swans
A Death Story Called Girl
Dead Cool
You’ll Only Have Each Other
THRILLER SHORTS C
The Box
Salvatore
Witch’s Milk
Post Mortem Mary
Spurn
Esther
They Eat Your Teeth
They Wait for Us
MIDNIGHT SHORTS A
CLAW
Mayday
The Hex Dungeon
I Am Not a Monster
Gentlewoman’s Guide to Dom.
Blood Highway
Sock Monster
The Monster Within
Viral Blood
No Monkey
MIDNIGHT SHORTS B
Imagine
Fetish
The Jerry Show
Proceeds of Crime
Television
Mother Fucker
Ding-Dong
Night Terrors
The Thang
Rift
Häxan
MIDNIGHT SHORTS C
Tears of Apollo
Nightmare
The Mare
Mother Rabbit
Lipstick
Human Resources
Blood and Moonlight
Suicide Note
Enjoy the View
Freelancer
STEPHEN KING DOLLAR BABIES
The Things We Left Behind
I Am the Doorway
OHIO SHORTS A
The Borrower
Below the Trees
The Sewing Circle
The Choice
What Comes Out
Beyond Repair
Occupied
Hell to Pay
Who’s There
OHIO SHORTS B
Down the Hatchet
The Green Lady
Not From Around Here
Den
The Cat
House of Hell
Dodo
Cry Baby Bridge
SHORTS PAIRED WITH FEATURES
Marta
The Party’s Over
A Thing of Dreams
Mother of a Sacred Lamb
Dual
What Metal Girls are Into
My First Time
Canine
Latched
Offerings
Jingle Hell
Arret Pipi
Entropia
Helminth
Cabin Killer
American Undead
The Thing about Beecher’s Gate
Phototaxis
Best of Me
HORROR COMEDY SHORTS
Amigos
Netflix and Chill
Attack of Potato Clock
Foxwood
Rattle
Bitten
Heavy Flow
Sell Your Body
The Infection
Blood Sisters
Shit … They’re All Vampires
Late
There’s One Inside the House
Fright Club: Fractured Fairy Tales
Nothing scared me as a child the way the story of Hansel and Gretel did. Do you know why? Because it’s fucking scary. But that’s the thing about fairy tales, isn’t it? There was always something—a big, bad wolf or a witch or a wicked stepmother—intended to frighten children. No wonder fairy tales make such rich fodder for horror movies.
Here are our picks for the best fractured fairy tale horror—either those films that reimagine an old fairy tale or those that are clearly inspired by them—recorded live at the Gateway Film Center.
5. Hansel & Gretel (2007)
This is a straightforward reimagining of a classic fairy tale. We’d compare it to Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997), Deadtime Stories (1986), The Red Shoes (2005) and Tale of Tales (2015).
Director Pil-sung Yim’s reimagining of Grimm’s classic “into the woods” horror upends expectations by putting adults in the vulnerable position and giving children the power.
A young man facing impending fatherhood gets into a car accident next to a deep, dark and mysterious woods. He loses himself and is rescued by a lone little girl with a lantern.
From here, Yim’s sumptuous visuals and eerily joyful tone create the unshakable sensation of a dream—one that looks good but feels awful.
As our protagonist unravels the surreal mystery that’s swallowed him, Yim offers a parable—as fairy tales often do—about the value of children. But don’t let that dissuade you from this seriously weird, visually indulgent gem.
4. Black Swan (2010)
Based on the ballet Swan Lake, which itself is inspired by German folktales The White Duck and The Stolen Veil, Black Swan takes a dark turn.
The potent female counterpoint to Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 gem The Wrestler, Black Swan dances on masochism and self-destruction in pursuit of a masculine ideal.
Natalie Portman won the Oscar for a haunting performance—haunting as much for the physical toll the film appeared to take on the sinewy, hallowed out body as for the mind-bending horror.
Every performance shrieks with the nagging echo of the damage done by this quest to fulfill the unreasonable demands of the male gaze: Barbara Hershey’s plastic and needy mother; Winona Ryder’s picture of self-destruction; Mila Kunis’s dangerous manipulator; Vincent Cassel’s other dangerous manipulator.
The mind-bending descent into madness and death may be the most honest look at ballet we’ve ever seen at the movies.
3. The Lure (2015)
Here’s a great Eastern European take on reimagined Eastern European fairy tales, like Norway’s Thale (2012) and Czech Republic’s Little Otik (2000).
Gold (Michalina Olszanska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) are not your typical movie mermaids, and director Agnieszka Smoczynska’s feature debut The Lure is not your typical – well, anything.
The musical fable offers a vivid mix of fairy tale, socio-political commentary, whimsy and throat tearing. But it’s not as ill-fitting a combination as you might think.
The Little Mermaid is actually a heartbreaking story. Not Disney’s crustacean song-stravaganza, but Hans Christian Andersen’s bleak meditation on the catastrophic consequences of sacrificing who you are for someone undeserving. It’s a cautionary tale for young girls, really, and Lure writer Robert Bolesto remains true to that theme.
The biggest differences between Bolesto’s story and Andersen’s: 80s synth pop, striptease and teeth. At its heart, The Lure is a story about Poland – its self-determination and identity in the Eighties. That’s where Andersen’s work is so poignantly fitting.
2. Der Samurai (2014)
This film is influenced heavily by fairy tales, especially the concept of the big, bad wolf, as are The Company of Wolves (1984), Big Bad Wolves (2013), and Freeway (1996).
Writer/director Till Kleinert’s atmospheric Der Samurai blends Grimm Brother ideas with Samurai legend to tell a story that borders on the familiar but manages always to surprise.
Jakob, a meek police officer in a remote German berg, has been charged with eliminating the wolf that’s frightening villagers. Moved by compassion or longing, Jakob can’t quite make himself accomplish his. But a chance encounter with a wild-eyed stranger wearing a dress and carrying a samurai sword clarifies that the wolf is probably not the villagers’ – or Jakob’s – biggest problem.
Pit Bukowski cuts a peculiar but creepy figure as the Samurai – kind of a cross between Iggy Pop and Ted Levine. As the cat and mouse game gains momentum, it appears the Samurai is here to upend all of Jakob’s inhibitions by eliminating anyone keeping him from embracing to his primal urges.
Kleinert’s sneaky camera builds tension in every scene, and the film’s magnificent sound design echoes with Jakob’s isolation as well as that of the village itself. And though much of the imagery is connected in a way to familiar fairy tales or horror movies, the understated approach gives it all a naturalism that is unsettling.
1. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece is Influenced visually and logically by fairy tales. It takes us to a fairy tale land but is not set on any existing fairy tale, not unlike Argento’s greatest work, Suspiria (1977), and Jee-woon Kim’s brilliant Tale of Two Sisters (2003).
But honestly, there is nothing on earth quite like Pan’s Labyrinth. A mythical cousin to del Toro’s beautiful 2002 ghost story The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth follows a terrified, displaced little girl who may be the reincarnation of Princess Moanna, daughter of the King of the Underworld. She must complete three tasks to rejoin her father in her magical realm.
A heartbreaking fantasy about the costs of war, the film boasts amazing performances. Few people play villains—in any language—as well as Sergi Lopez, and Doug Jones inspires terror and wonder in two different roles. But the real star here is del Toro’s imagination, which has never had such a beautiful outlet.
