Bloody dancefloors, shaky found footage, and covens of witches will slash the screen of films at this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, now in its 10th year and spanning 10 days at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg.
BHFF opens with director Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead, where drag queens battle against a zombie onslaught during a warehouse late-night party. The cast features Katy O’Brian, Jack Haven, and Margaret Cho as zombie-fighting partygoers.
The festival’s closing night film, however, sees a pregnant woman fight for survival from a threatening anonymous caller—a spirit that threatens to kill her child if she does not abide by his rules to embark on a murderous rampage. Aleksandar Radivojevic’s Karmadona has been called “total batshit cinema.”
Other films at the festival emphasize the horrifying aspects of motherhood. Mother’s Baby observes a couple desperate for children undertake an experimental fertilization process, to paranoid results, while Nesting sees a mother grow paranoid after the birth of her child, putting herself and her child in harm’s way. Meanwhile, Don’t Leave The Kids Alone shows the children’s side of horror-movie family life when a supernatural force overtake an evening of siblings’ squabbles when two brothers are in their new house without their mother.
Though indie films dominate the BHFF lineup, the festival also partnered with Neon for an advanced screening of Chris Stuckmann’s debut film, Shelby Oaks, on October 14. A sinister true-crimesque horror feature, Shelby Oaks centers on Mia Brennan’s search for her sister Riley, who went missing 12 years ago. (You can read our Fantastic Fest review of the film here, and our interview with the film’s editor, Patrick Lawrence, here.)
The festival also offered a preview screening of Black Phone 2 on the same evening in conjunction with Universal Pictures and Blumhouse. A follow-up to 2021’s The Black Phone, both directed by Scott Derrickson, the second film sees a return from Mason Thames as Finney, whose escape from the clutches of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) isn’t so secure as it seems.
BHFF will run from October 16 to 25 and will include other horror-related events, such as a blood drive and an artisan’s market.
Update Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers
Feature Image Courtesy of Independent Film Company