This week's episode of Horror News Radio has just dropped, and it features my reviews for two of my favorite horror films so far this year, both of which I caught at BiFan: Hellions (above photo), which is Canadian director Bruce McDonald's first horror film since Pontypool, and Local God, Uruguayan director Gustavo Hernandez's follow-up to La Casa Muda (The Silent House). Doc Rotten and the Grue Crew weigh in on Sinister 2, the premiere episode of Fear the Walking Dead, and horror news of the week. It's always a fun listen, so . . . enjoy!
The current episode of the Horror News Radio podcast includes my reviews from BiFan about the wicked Belgian shocker Cub (still photo below) and the creepy Austrian chiller Goodnight, Mommy, along with Doc Rotten and the Grue Crew's reviews of Harbinger Down, horror news of the week, and lots more. Enjoy!
On this week's episode of the Horror News Radio podcast, I look at a couple of entertaining creature features, with a mutating monster on board a fishing vessel in Harbinger Down and skinwalker werewolves in Old West Colorado (made by a UK film cast and crew!) in Blood Moon. Enjoy!
The current issue of Phantom of the Movies' VideoScope magazine --- Summer 2015, volume 24, number 5 --- features my article about this year's Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea. I review the horror films Unfriended, The Nightmare, The Man in the Orange Jacket, and Norway; the Korean psychosexual thriller Trap ; one of my favorite films of the year so far, Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room; and more genre offerings. Look for it at a shop near you or order it online at http://videoscopemag.com/.
The first of my HNR reports about this year's BiFan festival appears on the show's just-released 122nd episode. You can listen to it, along with Doc Rotten and the Grue Crew's reviews of Dark Was the Night and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, as well as the horror news of the week, at http://www.docrotten.com/2015/08/06/eps-122-dark-was-the-night-mission-impossible-rogue-nation-horror-news-radio/. In this installment, I review the mutant wasp horror comedy Stung and the arty French horror film Horsehead, about a young woman's lucid dreaming during fever states. Enjoy!
Again, I need to wait until Friday night's film award announcements before making my decisions about Sunday's game plan, but in case I have already seen all of the award winners earlier in the week, or in case I'm not interested in the winners that I haven't seen, I have a few options on deck.
I couldn't find a trailer for Japanese suspense thriller Prophecy so I have provided a link with plot information and a poster below. I saw director Nakamura Yoshihiro's impressive The Snow White Murder Case at BiFan last year and expect this to be a solid follow-up.
I semi-promised myself that I would do my best to avoid zombie films this year because there has been such a glut of them during the past several years, but I may make an exception for Israel's JeruZalem, which seems to have more to offer than the average shambling dead tropes.
Egyptian shocker Warda takes a shaky-cam, video-blogging, pseudodocumentary approach to its tale of possession involving a family in the countryside. (Note: it my take longer than usual for the trailer to load at the link below.)
I had mentioned in earlier posts that I plan to watch some films in the press screening room. Most of these will be films that I had to choose between during loaded time slots, but at least one doesn't fit anywhere into my screening schedule, so it is high on my list for a make-up viewing in the press room. New Zealand horror comedies hit it out of the park at last year's BiFan with two of my favorite films of 2014, What We Do in the Shadows and Housebound. This year, besides Turbo Kid (see my Saturday, July 18 schedule post), New Zealanders also offer I Survived a Zombie Holocaust, in which a crew shooting a low-budget zombie movie encounter real members of the living, walking dead on hand.
There are about 200 short-length and full-length films showing at BiFan that I haven't mentioned. If you haven't yet watched We Are Still Here (my favorite fright flick of the year so far) and Spring (my second favorite), both are available on VOD formats and sometimes they show on the big screen like they do here at BiFan, so keep an eye out for those two. If you feel like falling into a rabbit hole of information about new and classic genre films from around the world, have at BiFan's English website, http://www.bifan.kr/eng/.
Three-and-a-half more hours and I'm off to my first BiFan film of 2015! Keep checking back here for updates!
