Considered the "Sundance of Horror," Screamfest proudly highlights the innovative work of independent filmmakers from across the globe. This past year, the festival featured several standout films that have since secured distribution, including Monolith (WellGO USA), Faceless After Dark (Dark Sky Films), and Pandemonium (Arrow Video).
“We’re excited to offer horror fans a diverse selection of terrifying films from across the globe,” stated festival founder Rachel Belofsky.
A standout in this year’s lineup is Hulu’s Mr.Crocket starring Jerrika Hinton (Hunters, Grey’s Anatomy) and directed by Brandon Espy, a Screamfest alumni. This supernatural horror follows Summer Beverly (Jerrika Hinton) as she embarks on a chilling journey to rescue her son from a sinister children’s show host with otherworldly powers.
World premieres at the festival include the features Drained, Carved, and ALO - Antropophagus Legacy. From British filmmakers Sean Patrick Cronin and Peter Stylianous, Drained is set in the neon-soaked streets of London where the film follows Thomas (Ruaridh Aldington), a jobless post-graduate concept artist, who falls in love with Rhea (Madalina Bellariu Ion), a mysterious woman who turns out to be a vampire. As their twisted, co-dependent romance unfolds, Thomas's health deteriorates, and he spirals out of control. Hulu’s Carved, directed by award-winning filmmaker Justin Harding, is a fun romp that pits a group of survivors trapped in a Halloween village battle with a sentient, vengeful pumpkin. The surreal horror ALO - Antropophagus Legacy, by Dario Germani, follows Hanna who is accused of her husband's brutal murder and flees to Hungary to protect her unborn child. Hanna turns to her cousin Hugo in Budapest, only to be dragged into a violent spiral connected to a dark past and a bloodline that must be confronted.
North American premieres include Test Screening, directed by Clark Baker (producer of Nathan for You) and written by Clark Baker and Stephen Susco (The Grudge) which focuses on the life of four lifelong best friends who find their lives upended in the Summer of 1982 when a Hollywood film decides to hold a secret test screening in their small, declining Oregon town. Also making their North American debuts are the bloody Ukrainian film The Witch.Revenge, by Andriy Kolesnyk, about an ancient witch who enacts revenge on those who killed her lover; and the Argentinian film 1978, by Luciano and Nico Onetti, about a kidnapping gone terribly wrong when the victims turn out to be part of a macabre cult guided by an unknown supernatural force.
U.S premieres include Oscar-nominated director Pedro Kos’s (Lead Me Home) In Our Blood, the first-ever faux-doc thriller made by an award-winning documentary team. Starring Brittany O'Grady (The White Lotus), E. J. Bonilla (The Old Man, The Exorcist: Believer), and Alanna Ubach (Euphoria), In Our Blood evolves from an indie documentary about family ties into a gripping psychological mystery, culminating in a crescendo of pure gothic horror. Scared Shitless, directed by Vivieno Caldinelli and starring Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead), will also be making its U.S. debut. The film follows a plumber and germophobic son who must confront a deadly creature that has escaped into the plumbing system.
West Coast premieres at the festival include the gripping Nigerian horror film The Weekend, directed by Daniel Oriahi, which made a splash at Tribeca earlier this year. The film follows Nikiya (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) as she meets her in-laws for the first time and slowly uncovers the sinister secret her husband Luc (Bucci Franklin) had been keeping from her.
Additional West Coast premieres include The A-Frame, a mind-bending sci-fi thriller directed by Calvin Lee Reeder in which a scientist creates a machine that leads to accidentally discovering a new way to treat cancer; Else from Screamfest alumni Thibault Emin, about a mysterious virus that causes the infected to merge with the objects around them; Beacon directed by Roxy Shih, about a solo trip that turns into a harrowing ordeal as the journey takes a dark turn; Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy’s Dead Mail which had its world premiere at SXSW and intertwines the fate of a kidnapped keyboard technician to a dead letter investigator through an ominous letter; and Animale, a supernatural revenge thriller by Emma Benestan that closed Cannes Critic week earlier this year.
Making their Los Angeles Debuts are BA by Ben Wong, which tells the story of a struggling father who must make a deal with the devil while keeping his fate hidden from his daughter, and the unsettling The Complex Forms by Fabio D’Orta, which takes place in an ancient villa where desperate individuals sell their bodies to mysterious entities for money.
Highlights from this year’s shorts program include filmmaker Felipe Vargas’s visceral horror Hive starring Xochitl Gomez (Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness); the chilling Adjoining by Dakota Daul and Harrison Houde starring Brenna D’Amico (Descendants); Disfigura featuring Doug Jones (Hell Boy) from filmmakers Jake Bradbury and Toni Blando; Fresh Blood starring Clara Mcgregor (American Horror Story) and directed by Emma Westenberg; and The Underground from the director of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and Tank Girl, Rachel Talalay.
Formed in August 2001 by film producer Rachel Belofsky, Screamfest® Horror Film Festival is a female-run 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that gives filmmakers and screenwriters in the horror and science fiction genres a venue to have their work showcased in the film industry.
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