
Scary Movies XII
Bringing you the genre’s best from around the globe, Scary Movies, which returns as a summer series for the third year, offers moviegoers the increasingly rare, cathartic treat of experiencing the exhilaration of suspense, thrills, and gore on the big screen as part of an audience.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
2019|
USA|
90 minutes
Grace (Samara Weaving) is getting married to a charming scion of the Le Domas family board game empire in this adrenaline-fueled meet-the-inlaws class-warfare funhouse ride from filmmaking trio Radio Silence, boasting standout supporting performances from Andie MacDowell, Adam Brody, and Henry Czerny.
Andrés Kaiser
2018|
Mexico|
101 minutes|
English, Spanish, and Mixe with English subtitles
The Blair Witch Project meets Truffaut’s The Wild Child in this visually arresting, deeply haunting found-footage faux-documentary from first-time director Andrés Kaiser, about a high-minded priest who brings an unsocialized “wild child” to live with him in an isolated mountain outpost.
Søren Juul Petersen
2018|
Denmark|
100 minutes|
English, Danish, and German with English subtitles
Søren Juul Petersen’s directorial debut, which follows two young women working a lonely night shift at a remote gas station, is a gruesome and grisly meditation on the potential for cruelty inherent in surveillance and spectatorship.
Ari Aster
2019|
USA|
171 minutes
American grad student Dani (Florence Pugh), grieving after a shocking loss, accompanies her boyfriend and his buddies on their vacation to a tight-knit commune in the sunny Swedish countryside, where an extravagant nine-day festival celebrating the summer solstice takes a dark turn.
“Agora-Horror"
Alistair Banks Griffin
2019|
USA|
99 minutes
Starring Naomi Watts in a spring-loaded performance as an acclaimed writer suffering from extreme agoraphobia, and set during the 1977 Summer of Sam in New York City, Alistair Banks Griffin’s sophomore feature is a sweaty, intensely atmospheric examination of fear itself as a mortal foe to be vanquished.
“Exorcisms Abroad”
Mike Ahern
2019|
Ireland / Belgium|
94 minutes
Rose (Maeve Higgins), a mild-mannered driving instructor with a gift for communing with restless spirits, reluctantly agrees to help a widowed father (Barry Ward) exorcise the ghost of his dead wife, but things get complicated when a has-been singer (Will Forte) targets the customer’s teen daughter for his own nefarious purposes.
Emilio Portes
2017|
Mexico|
114 minutes|
English and Spanish with English subtitles
Five years after his infant son is murdered in a horrific, senseless massacre, a Mexican police detective is drawn into the mystery of another mass killing that eerily parallels the first. What begins as a high-stakes procedural drama rapidly evolves into a vividly original outing in the subgenre of exorcism horror.
“Extreme Family Values”
Quarxx
2018|
France|
110 minutes|
French with English subtitles
This uncanny, unnerving fable—adapted from a short by Quarxx, here making his feature debut—centers on Simon, a brooding, guilt-ridden factory worker who cares for his disabled sister while preparing for the arrival of mysterious visitors who just might be the siblings’ salvation.
“Terrible Bears”
John Frankenheimer
1979|
USA|
102 minutes
Director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) imparts straight-faced camp and a “social conscience” to writer David Seltzer’s affectionate love letter to American bug movies of the midcentury. Starring Talia Shire, Robert Foxworth, and Armand Assante.
“Villainous Music”
Adrián García Bogliano
2018|
Mexico / Sweden|
101 minutes|
Swedish with English subtitles
Spanish horror veteran Adrián García Bogliano teamed up with iconic Swedish actress Christina Lindberg for this trippily mesmerizing tale, in which dark otherworldly forces are unleashed upon two sisters when they undergo hypnosis induced by an old vinyl record.
Andrew Desmond
2018|
France / UK / Russia / Latvia|
90 minutes
When a young musical prodigy inherits the mansion owned by her late father, a famous and reclusive composer (Rutger Hauer in a stone-faced cameo), she discovers among his belongings an unpublished musical score that turns out to contain sinister, supernatural secrets.
Join Film at Lincoln Center for the 12th edition of Scary Movies, New York City’s top horror festival. Bringing you the genre’s best from around the globe, Scary Movies, which returns as a summer series for the third year, offers moviegoers the increasingly rare, cathartic treat of experiencing the exhilaration of suspense, thrills, and gore on the big screen as part of an audience. This year’s week of hair-raising premieres and rediscoveries features a series of specially themed double bills and exciting opening and closing night premieres—all of which will have you watching the screen from behind your fingers.
Organized by Laura Kern and Madeline Whittle

























