Alix Turner
One of my favourite UK film events, Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham, returns this October with a feast of horror, sci-fi, and cult titles from around the world. After a quick sell-out of weekend passes in August, a limited number of additional passes for the weekend are now on sale. Here’s what they’ll be screening.
Thursday 14 October
- Alien on Stage (Lucy Harvey and Danielle Kummer, UK) is about just that: a production of Alien put on stage…by a group of bus drivers.
- The Deep House (Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, France) is an underwater haunted house story.
Friday 15 October
- The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson, UK) is an atmospheric Alexander Puschkin adaptation from 1949.
- The Show (Mitch Jenkins, UK) is from the mind of the Northampton comics legend Alan Moore.
- Night Drive (Brad Baruh and Meghan Leon, USA) is an out-of-this-world thriller.
- Midnight (Kwon Oh-seung, South Korea ) is a dazzling serial killer film.
Saturday 16 October
- The Spine of Night (Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King, USA) is an all-animated dark fantasy horror.
- Knocking (Frida Kempff, Sweden) is a perfect demonstration of determination in the face of gaslighting.
- Mayhem Short Film Showcase is presenting a selection of scary, weird, and wonderful shorts from around the world and closer to home.
- Yu-che-i-tal-ja AKA Spiritwalker (Jae-Keun Yoon, South Korea) is a genre-bending, high-octane sci-fi thriller.
- Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma, USA) mixes the plots of The Phantom of the Opera and Faust and adds a great score and cool songs.
Sunday 17 October
- Tao chu li fa yuan AKA Get the Hell Out (I.-Fan Wang, Taiwan), in which a virus transforms politicians into bloodthirsty mutant zombies.
- Hellbender (John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser, USA), one of my favourite films from Fantasia, is about a teenager discovering her witchy heritage.
- Ghost Mansion AKA The Night Shift (Ba-Reun Jo, South Korea) is a fun, old-school anthology horror set in an apartment complex.
- Lamb (Valdimar Jóhannsson, Iceland/Sweden/Poland), in which a childless couple discovers a mysterious newborn on their remote farm.
- Droste no hate de bokura AKA Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes (Junat Yamaguchi, Japan), in which Kato returns home from work to find a message from his future self on his computer screen…
Mayhem Film Festival is a cutting-edge event bringing you the very best in genre cinema and television from premieres, new releases, and previews to cult classics, breakthrough shorts, midnight movies, masterclasses, live experiments, and more.
Looking for more on Mayhem Festival 2021? We’ve got you:
“Mayhem Film Festival 2021: Premiere Films and Premiere Quality”
