
Scary Movies 8
Now in its eighth year, New York’s top festival for quality horror from around the globe is back! This year’s fright fest will bring you a collection of hair-raising premieres and rediscovered classics. A Halloween evening blowout featuring a screening of What We Do in the Shadows followed by a vampire-themed costume party will kick off an exhilarating week of terrifying shockers and demented mayhem.
Lineup
Jemaine Clement
2014|
New Zealand|
86 minutes
Opening Night
Q&A with co-director Jemaine Clement, followed by a vampire costume party open to all ticket holders!
In this hilarious and ultra-quotable horror-comedy, four endearingly unhip vampire roommates squabble over household chores, go to clubs, struggle to keep up with the latest technology and fashion trends, and antagonize the local werewolves whenever their paths cross. Oh, and they suck people’s blood, too…
Gerald Kargl
1983|
Austria|
83 minutes|
German with English subtitles
Closing Night
Followed by a reception co-hosted with Viva Radio!
A deeply disturbing yet spellbinding story of a psychopath, played by Erwin Leder with brilliant creepiness, just released from prison who immediately falls back to his murderous ways when he happens upon a house in the woods. This rare screening of a film that’s well on its way to cult status is best appreciated by those with a cast-iron stomach.
Alexandre Bustillo
2014|
France|
90 minutes|
French with English subtitles
The final installment in dynamic French shock duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s trilogy of American-influenced horror flicks sees three 14-year-old boys get more than they bargained for after accidentally uncovering the hideout of an unhinged family at an abandoned movie backlot.
Dick Maas
1988|
The Netherlands|
109 minutes
Featuring top-notch murder scenes and extravagant action, this delicious blend of police procedural and slasher film long out of circulation in the U.S. finds a detective assigned to the case of tracking down a scuba-masked psycho lurking beneath Amsterdam’s canals.
Adam MacDonald
2014|
Canada|
91 minutes
In this tightly constructed, gory, and gut-wrenching survival story, a young couple’s romantic camping trip in a National Park goes from bad to much worse when on top of getting hopelessly lost they realize they are not alone—and whatever’s out there is hungry.
Jonas Govaerts
2014|
Belgium|
85 minutes
In Jonas Govaerts’s riveting, smart, and skillfully directed feature debut, a troop of preteen Cub Scouts and two capable twentysomething Scout Leaders (plus their cute female cook) head into the woods for a summer camping trip. Will any of them be coming back?
Jack Heller
2014|
USA|
94 minutes
Q&A with director Jack Heller and actors Kevin Durand and Sabina Gadecki!
The quiet lives of a sheriff (The Strain’s Kevin Durand—finally a leading man!) and his deputy (Lukas Haas) are put to the test when an ancient creature begins preying on the local livestock and the small logging town’s human residents in this wholly entertaining old-school monster movie.
John McNaughton
2013|
USA|
104 minutes
Q&A with director John McNaughton, writer Stephen Lancellotti, producer Steven A. Jones, and actor Michael Shannon!
Samantha Morton is the stuff of great screen villainy as the mother of deathly ill, bed-ridden boy, whose new neighbor persistently tries to befriend him and uncovers some seriously sinister goings-on in the process.
Adrián García Bogliano
2014|
USA|
95 minutes
Q&A with actor Nick Damici!
Soon after a hard-ass blind Vietnam vet (Nick Damici) moves to a retirement home, he experiences a strange animal attack—and it turns out these attacks are a monthly occurrence, synchronized to the full moon…
2014|
UK / USA|
98 minutes
This doc tells the outrageous story of the dysfunctional production of the 1996 horror-movie remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau originally to be directed by one visionary, decidedly weird, and in-over-his-head South African filmmaker, Richard Stanley, who talks about the film’s many failures—an epic cinematic travesty for the ages—with admirable composure.
Nick Robertson
2015|
Austalia|
90 minutes
A family of four must fight to survive a night of sheer terror, as they are relentlessly stalked by ravenous dogs on their remote Australian farm. Horror of the most jarring, edge-of-your-seat kind, with the added bonus of a cast of characters actually worth rooting for.
William A. Fraker
1973|
USA|
89 minutes
A severely troubled 16-year-old (Sondra Locke) lives with her overbearing mother in a sprawling desolate estate, whose all-female household is thrown seriously off kilter when the girl’s absentee father shows up. Things are not what they seem, and people soon start turning up dead in this genuinely unsettling Gothic psycho-thriller.
Justin Benson
2014|
USA|
109 minutes
Please note: this screening has been canceled due to an issue with the print.
Escaping his life in an idyllic Italian coastal village, Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) falls for the charming and elusive Louise (Nadiar Hiker)—but little does he know that she’s hiding a terrifying secret. What comes next defies standard genre categories and, in the name of love, brings Evan face to face with monstrous primordial forces rooted in a realm that’s nothing short of mythic.
Kevin Kölsch
2014|
USA|
98 minutes
Q&A with directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer!
A modern masterwork of body horror, the biting and gruesome Starry Eyes features a fearless lead performance by Alex Essoe as a striving young actress who goes to extreme lengths in the name of success.
Jonas Alexander Arnby
2014|
Denmark|
84 minutes|
Danish with English subtitles
Both a melancholy coming-of-age film, and a tragedy-tinged tale of young love, When Animals Dream, featuring a teenage girl who learns she is gradually transforming into a monster, recalls Let the Right One In with its raw and moody feel, and its structure, built on slow character development and then topped off with a merciless unleashing of carnage and revenge.
This year’s edition of Scary Movies kicks off with a bang—a Halloween evening blowout featuring a screening of What We Do in the Shadows and a vampire-themed costume party, and closes with a pair of rare ’80s gems: Amsterdamned and Angst. In between, we will be presenting the latest works from the French duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury and American duo Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, and John McNaughton; a trio of new first-rate creature features, Dark Was the Night, Late Phases, and When Animals Dream; the documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau; a few titles fresh from the Toronto Film Festival: Backcountry, Cub, and Spring; as well as retrospective screenings of The Pack and A Reflection of Fear.





















