New York’s top horror festival—bringing you the genre’s best from around the globe—is back for another wicked week of hair-raising premieres and rediscoveries, guest appearances and giveaways. The 11th edition launches off with the delightful yet blood-soaked holiday-set high-school musical Anna and the Apocalypse, followed by a Zombie Christmas Party, before turning darker with another yuletide end-of-days offering, Await Further Instructions. This year’s lineup also includes a trio of creepy Latin American offerings featuring possessions, dark fairy tales, and haunted hospitals; a selection of new indie horror at its most promising, Hurt, Boogeyman Pop, Blood Paradise, and The Witch in the Window; the retrospective sidebar “Tainted Waters,” featuring a quartet of 35mm titles whose horrors take place above or below the surface, or sometimes come creeping onto the land; and a brand new live edition of Glass Eye Pix’s acclaimed radio-play series Tales from Beyond the Pale, brought to you by the dynamic duo of Glenn McQuaid and Larry Fessenden. Plus, last year’s fast-working closing-night director Colin Minihan returns with What Keeps You Alive, and we conclude with Jonas Åkerlund’s harrowing black-metal tragedy Lords of Chaos. Programmed by Laura Kern and Rufus de Rham. Sponsored by IFC Midnight.