Brendan Jesus
Wednesday, October 19
Meglomaniac
(Belgium | 2022 | 100 Min. | Dir. Karim Ouelhaj) Screen #6 4:00 PM
An uncompromising vision exploring the grimiest recesses of humanity, Megalomaniac presents a tale of darkness in its many f*cked-up forms. With undeniably stunning composition, violence, and performances, Director Karim Ouelhaj shows off his next-level craftsmanship with this toolbox of horrors inspired by the true life and never caught Belgian serial killer, The Butcher of Mons. (Joseph Hernandez)
Content Warning: This film contains graphic sexual content and violence.
Our own Sean Parker covered Megalomaniac at Fantasia 2022 saying, “[S]ome of the surrealism is utterly haunting, many of the duality aspects are exceptionally clever, and Megalomaniac’s psychological and sociological elements are outstanding and worthy of conversation for a long time to come. On that aspect alone, I think Megalomaniac is worth seeing.”
Fat Girl
(France | 2001 | 86 Min | Catherine Breillat) Screen 7 4:45 PM
Directed by French provocateur Catherine Breillat, Fat Girl follows a sibling rivalry between two adolescent sisters on a trying family vacation. 12-year-old Anais is forced to watch as her 15-year-old sister Elena falls prey to the relentless seduction of an older Italian student. A harsh yet genuine depiction of sisterhood fraught with jealousy, unconditional love and youthful desire all leading up to a heartbreaking, brutal end. (Joseph Hernandez)
Content Warning: This film contains graphic sexual content and violence.
The Harbinger
(USA | 2022 | 86 Min. | Dir. Andy Mitton) Screen #6 6:15 PM
Post-screening Q&A with director Andy Mitton
While quarantining outside the city with her brother and father at the height of COVID, Monique defies their stay-at-home wishes to visit an old friend in Queens who’s suffering from nightmares of a plague-mask-clad demon. Before long, the demon latches onto Monique, sending her already-present fears and anxieties about COVID into hyperdrive. Writer-director Andy Mitton (The Witch in the Window) delivers a haunting and clever look at our traumatic, collective pandemic experience through a supernatural, Elm-Street-tinged lens. (Matt Barone)
All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms
(USA | 2022 | 72 Min. | Dir. Alex Phillips) Screen #7 6:50 PM
Post-screening Q&A with director Alex Phillips
If you are looking through the festival slate for a movie that is the most out-there, eye-popping, what-hole-did-this-crawl-out-from, all-jacked-up-and-full-of-worms type of movie, then you won’t want to miss Alex Phillips’ electric debut, All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms. Take a trip with Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello) and Benny (Trevor Dawkins) through their downward spiral of drugs, sex, and primordial ooze. (Justin Timms)
Our very own Sean Parker covered All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms for Fantasia 2022, and I covered it for Popcorn Frights where I had this to say, “[this film] is one of the weirdest, zaniest, mind-f*cking genre films I have ever seen. This film is punk rock.”
Old Flame
(USA | 2022 | 91 Min. | Dir. Christopher Denham) Screen #6 8:30 PM
Post-screening Q&A with director Christopher Denham
A horrible secret from the past can no longer be contained when two ex-lovers meet up at a college reunion. Tension mounts and slowly builds over a series of conversations told in a theatrical three-act structure before boiling over into violence. Accomplished actor Christopher Denham (Shutter Island, Argo), directing for the first time since 2014’s Preservation, puts truth, memory, and perspective dangerously into question in a compelling and challenging two-character thriller. (Joseph Hernandez)
Evil Eye
(Mexico | 2022 | 100 Min | Dir. Isaac Ezban) Screen #7 8:50 PM
With all hope seemingly lost and needing time to themselves to find the best medical care, a critically sick young girl’s parents leave her and her older sister at grandma’s house, where bedtime stories about demonic shapeshifter turn out to be more than fiction. Mexican filmmaker Isaac Ezban’s first foray into all-out horror delivers all the goods, fueled by nightmarish imagery, impressively staged set-pieces, and strong performances from its young leads. (Matt Barone)
Mother, May I?
(USA | 2022 | 99 Min. | Dir. Laurence Vannicelli) Screen #1 9:30 PM
Post-screening Q&A with director Laurence Vannicelli
Emmett (Kyle Gallner, Jennifer’s Body, Dinner in America) enters into a nightmarish game of therapy with his wife Anya (Holland Roden, Teen Wolf, Channel Zero) who has inexplicably taken on the persona of his estranged and recently-deceased mother. Bizarre and creepy in equal doses, this psychological thriller from director Laurence Vannicelli (co-writer/EP of 2019’s Porno) will keep you guessing if this is truly possession or just a twisted battle of wills? (Joseph Hernandez)
The New York Ripper
(1982 | Dir. Lucio Fulci) Screen #6 4:00 PM
Fulci’s most controversial stalk-and-slash giallo film is also home to one of the strangest story beats in the Italian horror subgenre’s colorful history. A detective and a college professor hunt down an eight-fingered serial killer who’s offing young Big Apple women in exceedingly perverse ways, but that’s not what makes The New York Ripper such a bizarre effort. That honor goes to the fact that the killer speaks in a hilarious Donald Duck voice, quacks and all. (Matt Barone)
Flowing
(Italy | 2022 | 93 Min | Dir. Paolo Strippoli) Screen #7 4:30 PM
Reeling from the devastating death of their matriarch in a tragic car accident, the Morel family is shattered. Rather than bind together in shared grief, father and son deflect blame and lash out at each other in anger. The little sister, also sadly wounded in the accident, can only watch as the rest of her loved ones destroy what’s left of their family from the inside out. All the while a mysterious gas is seeping from out of the sewers that causes you to hallucinate your most painful, repressed thoughts. A dark and stormy Rome sets the stage for despair on a direct path to bloody carnage. (Joseph Hernandez)
Living With Chucky
(USA | 2022 | 102 Mins. | Dir. Kyra Gardner) Screen #6 6:05 PM
The most famous pint-sized serial killer and My Buddy doll from hell, Chucky, has turned out to be the most enduring slasher icon of the ’80s. Piling up eight features, multiple reinventions, and now a hit television show, the Chucky franchise has bewitched multiple generations of horror film lovers and enriched the queer horror canon like no other before it. Director Kyra Elise Gardner takes you on an incredibly personal behind-the-scenes journey from the very beginnings of Child’s Play through its continued evolution with interviews from the likes of Don Mancini, Brad & Fiona Dourif, and Jennifer Tilly—the people who have lived with Chucky the longest. (Joseph Hernandez)
Irreversible: Straight Cut
(France | 2002 | 97 Min. | Dir. Gaspar Noé) Screen #1 7:30 PM
20th Anniversary Screening
If you’ve experienced Gaspar Noé’s incredible Irreversible, you know that it’s an assaultive and brilliant look at the psychological damages caused by sexual violence and blood-lusting revenge, one presented as a backward narrative that unconventionally reveals its characters’ motivations. Their actions, as well as the nihilism of the film itself, take on a whole new dynamic here, with Noé presenting the narrative in its proper chronological order, giving an already singularly powerful masterpiece the ability to cause a newfound dose of visceral devastation. (Matt Barone)
Content Warning: This film contains graphic sexual content and violence.
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with a live score from The Flushing Remonstrance
Screen #7 7:45 PM
The first American adaptation of French author Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, this Universal-Pictures-backed version of The Phantom of the Opera remains, thanks to Lon Chaney’s breathtaking physical transformation and amazing performance as the title character, a timeless gold standard within silent film horror. BHFF is thrilled to bring it to the big screen complete with an original live score from The Flushing Remonstrance (the duo of Catherine Cramer and Robert Kennedy), who are returning to the festival following their 2019 live score performance for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. (Matt Barone)
Don’t Torture a Duckling
(1972 | Dir. Lucio Fulci) Screen #6 6:30 PM
50th Anniversary Screening
One of Fulci’s earliest forays into corpse-riddled giallo cinema, this brutal serial killer mystery, surrounding a homicidal maniac who targets children through potentially supernatural means, features an unruly and hugely entertaining stew of bloodshed, voodoo, [Romani-style] occultism, and decapitated Donald Duck toys. It’s also considered to be Fulci’s first wall-to-wall gorefest. (Matt Barone)
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