The Ultimate Guide To Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2022

Monday, October 17

The House by the Cemetery

(1981 | Dir. Lucio Fulci) Screen #6 4:00 PM

The final installment of Fulci’s “Gates of Hell” triptych, this waking New-England-set nightmare has everything you’d want from the filmmaker: visually revolting zombies, agonizingly long sequences of pain and suffering, uncomfortable child peril, and, of course, largely incoherent storytelling. Also featuring scenes set in New York City, The House by the Cemetery is a venerable cinematic checklist of Fulci’s most fascinating predilections. (Matt Barone)

Criminal Lovers

(France | 1999 | 96 Min | François Ozon) Screen #7 4:50 PM

Two teenage lovers think they’ve committed the perfect murder by offing a classmate and dumping his body in the woods. Unfortunately, an old hermit living in those woods has other thoughts on the matter and locks the couple up in his basement, jumpstarting a series of horrific events. Award-laden French filmmaker François Ozon’s grisly riff on Hansel and Gretel is a legit stunner marked by volatile sexual politics, threats of cannibalism, and a permeating air of sadism. (Matt Barone)

Content Warning: This film contains graphic sexual content and violence.

NightMare

(Norway | 2022 | 99 Min. | Dir. Kjersti Helen Rasmussen) Screen #6 6:00 PM

Eager to start their new life together, Mona and Robby have everything set: a new apartment, Robby’s new job, and Mona’s pregnancy. While things feel wonderful for Robby, though, Mona can’t shake the feeling that the strange occurrences around their apartment building are connected to her feeling that something inhuman wants the baby that’s inside her. An alum at BHFF with her excellent short films, Kjersti Helen Rasmussen’s first feature plays like Norway’s answer to Rosemary’s Baby but somehow even darker, right up to its punishing final shot. (Matt Barone)

Baise-moi

(France | 2001 | 77 Min | Dir. Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi) Screen #7 7:00 PM

Fed up with being pushed to the side and literally assaulted by society, particularly by men, two women decide to fight back by killing as many said men as possible. With its unflinching sexual violence and gruesome homicides, Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s in-your-face Baise-moi (translation: “F*ck me”) has rightfully earned a reputation as one of the more controversial examples of the “New French Extremity.” For those who can stomach it, though, the film is a rebel yell of the most savage order. (Matt Barone)

Content Warning: This film contains graphic sexual content and violence.

Satan’s Slaves 2: Communion

(Indonesia | 2022 | 119 Min. | Dir. Joko Anwar) Screen #6 8:15 PM

In this direct sequel to his terrifying instant classic Satan’s Slaves (2017), director Joko Anwar re-introduces us to the same family now living in a doomed high-rise apartment building. After a night of terrible floods traps them inside, the dead return to terrorize them once again. Anwar continues to build out exciting mythology with this gory and demented follow-up that is appointment viewing for all fans of the current wave of Indonesian horror. (Joseph Hernandez)

Ghostwritten

(USA | 2022 | 89 Min. | Dir. Thomas Matthews) Screen #7 8:45 PM

Post-screening Q&A with director Thomas Matthews

Clinging to the reputation of his one-hit novel, writer Guy Laury (Jay Duplass) accepts a winter residency on a reclusive island whose residents seem friendly at first. The discovery of a lost manuscript and its possible ties to a longstanding local murder case, however, throw into question the intentions of everyone around him. Tapping into story beats and themes prevalent in Stephen King’s fiction and films like Sinister, first-timer Thomas Matthews refashions his many influences into a perversely funny and subversive journey down a very dark rabbit hole. (Matt Barone)

Christmas Bloody Christmas

(USA | 2022 | 81 Min. | Dir. Joe Begos) Screen #1 9:30 PM

Post-screening Q&A with director Joe Begos

All that record store owner Tori wants to do this Christmas is drink and hook up—simple enough, right? Apparently not, thanks to a decorative, human-sized robotic Santa Claus that’s come to life for a nonstop rampage of murder and destruction. Picking up where he left off with his 2019 double bill of Bliss and VFW, modern exploitation maven Joe Begos returns with a relentless and stylish Yuletide adrenaline rush that’s part slasher and part ode to ’80s techno sci-fi/horror like The Terminator. (Matt Barone)