Eating Miss Campbell had its world première at FrightFest 2022 Eating Miss Campbell begins with a mixture of signals. First there is the Troma Team Release ident, setting a certain tone of trashy tastelessness (Lloyd Kaufman will later cameo with a two-word joke that practically defines ‘too soon’). Then Joe Renzetti’s jaunty upbeat score kicks…
Sissy had its world première at SXSW 2022 At the beginning of Sissy, from co-writing/co-directing team Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes (For Now, 2017), we see online influencer Cecilia (Aisha Dee) preaching the bland bromides of wellness. Yet the hyperventilation exercise that Cecilia has been demonstrating seems not a little unhinged, and as the recording…
Sound Of Violence first published by Movies On Weekends Slashers and other kinds of psychodrama typically feature a sequence which, in a phrase borrowed from Sigmund Freud, gets called the ‘primal scene‘ – often opening the film, or shown in flashback, and capturing the formative psychosexual moment of childhood trauma that leads a confused young…
Extracurricular first published by SciFiNow Extracurricular opens with Ray (Jean Paul Najm) and his newly pregnant girlfriend Gina (Madeleine Claude), arriving for a weekend break at that seminal locus of genre cinema, a cabin in the woods. At this point, there are all manner of horror directions in which the film could go. Ray casually…
Patchwork first published by EyeforFilm One day – Friday the 13th, if you listen carefully – three complete strangers all spend an evening in the same bar, without actually running into each other. Not long after, lonely corporate Jennifer (Tory Stolper), airheaded ‘bar star’ Ellie (Tracey Fairaway) and quiet Madeleine (Maria Blasucci) wake up on a slab…
Monstrous Feminine: gender and genre at FrightFest 2017 first published by Sight & Sound Horror often earns itself a bad name for the way that it treats its female characters: reducing them to objectified T&A for the male gaze, or to helpless damsels in distress requiring male assistance, or to screaming pin cushions for male killers….
Tragedy Girls first published by SciFiNow Parked on Sweetheart Bridge, on a misty night in the quiet midwestern town of Rosedale, teens Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and Craig (Austin Abrams) are making out in the back of a parked red convertible at night. This opening scene from Tyler (Patchwork) MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls is so archetypal that it…