Australia’s original and longest-running dark genre film festival celebrates its lucky 13th edition this year, and has teamed up with the streaming platform, xerb.tv, to bring you a terror-ific virtual program full of late-night tricks and treats, all in time for Halloween!
There’s a swag of premieres: the blackly comic slasher, My Cherry Pie, from Melbourne mischief-makers Addison Heath & Jasmine Jakupi; the Filipino supernatural spookery of Sunod from festival alumni, Carlo Ledesma (The Tunnel); The Chilean real-time tour-de-force, La Casa, from Jorge Olguín; Shot in the Dark, the brutal, noir-shrouded debut of Keene McRae from the US; the darkly sensual, diabolical manifestations of Memory, from Austrian Tina-Maria Feyrer; the pandemic paranoid nightmare of Red River Road, courtesy of the American Schuyler family; the intense Lovecraftian dread of Masking Threshold from Austrian, Johannes Grenzfurthner; the razor-sharp satire of Struwwelerror from Germany’s Lenny Heller; The Unsettling’s deep suburban haunting from Harry Owens, an African in America; Londoner Adam Ethan Crow and his self-appointed family of filmmakers’ vicious demon shocker Lair; the genuinely chilling found footage diary, Day of Disappearance, from Hawaiian filmmaker Ian Grant; Julie Kaufman and Paul Hunt’s rousing and hilarious look at US grassroots horrorphiles in the documentary, The Brilliant Terror; and last, but certainly not least, Alex Galvin’s seriously twisty Kiwi adaptation of Henry James’ classic Gothic tale The Turn of the Screw.
There’s also an exclusive live-streamed talk from Aussie legend Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood), on the hard fun of DIY horror! This includes a Q&A that will be essential for any budding guerrilla genre filmmakers out there, Kiah’s got great war stories!
Of course, the program would not be complete without the sensational short film programs. This year we have TWO International Shorts Showcases and an epic-length Australian Shorts Showcase. Some of the best short films we’ve seen in years.
With the festival being an online, virtual event, the program will be available across Australia nationwide, and viewing options are not tied to the session’s duration. That’s right, the virtual event provides the leisure of the entire festival to watch the films. Sickly sweet!
