in

GRIMMFEST 2020: Shorts, Confirmed Guests, and A Final Feature Added

Grimmfest 2020, The Online Edition, announces the short film programmes for this year’s festival, along with details of more confirmed guests, and a last-minute addition to the feature film line-up.

The Grimmfest team is delighted to be present our final feature film selection. The International Premiere of Bruce Wemple’s genre-bending creature-feature MONSTROUS. An offbeat, expectation-challenging take on the Bigfoot legend, with a sharp and subtle script by lead actress Anna Shields, it’s as much a tentative, suspicion-blighted romance, as it is a marauding monster movie.

The film replaces Brando Lee’s THE MEDIUM, which is now not available due to technical issues.

Grimmfest is also now able to announce some of the guests for this year’s exclusive panel on Iconic Women in Horror. Thus far confirmed are: Adrienne Barbeau, Pollyanna McIntosh, Caroline Williams, and Brea Grant.

The feminine theme continues into Grimmfest’s Short Film Programmes, with the first of this year’s programmes devoted to women filmmakers. An online intruder unleashes unexpected emotions in the UK premiere of Jessica Fostekew’s chilling SHARED DOCUMENT. An alienated young woman is haunted by a spectral presence in the International premiere of Megan Mead’s unsettling EVERY CORNER. A homeless woman discovers that you should never go home in the UK premiere of Yinghui Fu’s haunting HONOUR THY MOTHER. A shy young woman is offered a mysterious cosmetic treatment with a terrible cost in the UK premiere of darkly comic BEAUTY JUICE, from former Troma Scream Queen Natasha Halevi. There’s a chilling vision of personal negation in the UK premiere of Mónica Mateo’s YOU WILL NEVER BE BACK and a hot Summer day brings back more than nostalgic memories in the Northern UK premiere of Nat Luurtsema’s OUZO AND BLACKCURRANT. The risks of AirBnB become all to uncomfortably apparent in Lisa J Dooley’s darkly comic THE LONELY HOST and a neglected teenager makes a dangerous friendship, in Kristina Manzhula’s eerie I LOVE EVE.

The Second Shorts Programme offers glimpses of the forbidden and the frightful with some nasty twists in the tale. Childhood terrors with a Dr Seuss twist in the World Premiere of Nikki Born’s creepy WITCHES IN THE WINDOW. Animated gothic-expressionist romance, in Farnoosh Abedi’s haunting MALAKOUT. Supernatural revenge in the World premiere of Mark Pluck’s eerie PLATFORM. A relaxing bath turns deadly in the UK premiere of Morten Haslerud’s chilling ANTIQUE. A terrifying prescient vision of a virus-blighted future, in the UKpremiere of Bruno du Bois’s ZEALANDIA. There’s a monster on the road, in the World premiere of Jack Shillingford’s laconic lycanthrope shocker DEAD END. Dementia isn’t the only thing afflicting an elderly mother in the International premiere of Michael Squid’s nightmarish THE CHRYSALIS. Youth comes at a price, in the UK premiere of Virat Pal’s elegantly cruel FACELIFT, and there are far worse things than social embarrassment in store, in the UK premiere of Andrew Rutter’s truly outrageous PETER THE PENGUIN.

The Grimmfest programming team is also taking advantage of the newfound scheduling flexibility permitted by the online format to add a third programme of shorts, exclusively for Full festival Pass Holders. There’s a pointed examination of racism and good manners in the European premiere of Richard B. Pierre’s AN UNINVITED GUEST, Vernon Wells takes on a giant grizzly bear in the UK premiere of Titus Paar’s FEAR OF THE WOODS. Mary Shelley meets the suburban sitcom, as David Troughton and Roberta Taylor star in the Northern UK premiere of Paul Williams’ darkly comic FRANK & MARY. There’s romance on the open road in the Northern UK premiere of Aidan Brezonick and Addison Heimann’s unsettling JEFF DRIVES YOU. Anxiety takes on all-too-physical form in the UK premiere of Spencer Ryerson’s queasy body horror, COIL. And finally, a golem-like masked killer proves quite resilient in Alex Montilla’s outrageous OVERKILL.

Grimmfest 2020 full festival passes and individual film tickets are available now, from www.grimmfest.com.

Michael DeFellipo

(Senior Editor)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.