Join Ronnie Hobbs and Matt Szep as they discuss the process of adapting beloved horror franchises to the ever-changing landscape of today's video game market, all while staying true and faithful to the source material.

Join panelists Paul Tremblay (THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD), Scott Thomas (KILL CREEK), and Matt Leslie (SUMMER OF 84) as they discuss the craft of writing for horror. From its various formats and many sub-genres to how horror has evolved over the years, these creators will do a deep dive, discussing their personal projects, what inspires them and what made them want to write horror.

What better way to celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day than with a bunch of murderous travelers fleeing the law, determined to set up shop on a new terrain at any cost? The Critters, knowns as Crites, are a dangerous alien species who wreak havoc wherever they go.  When they escape from intergalactic jail they make their way to Earth to breed and infest our home.  It’s up to the residents of a small town in Kansas and two space bounty hunters to stop them, repeatedly. Luckily for us, the Critters franchise kept replicating with each entry more entertaining and bonkers than the last. 

Seven years after the events of 9/11, Americans were afraid. War was raging overseas and the tide of hatred and intolerance within America’s borders was rising. People craved a safety that no longer existed and maybe never did. Being home at the beginning of the new millennium has never been more terrifyingly realized than in Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers. Pseudo-ly based on true events, the film is about the impossibly gorgeous couple James (Scott Speedman) and Kirsten (Liv Tyler) who arrive at James’ family cottage after a wedding and are unrelentingly attacked by a group of masked individuals. Despite the film’s insistence at it being based on true events, Bertino took inspiration from the Tate/ Labianca murders, the Keddie Cabin Murders, and a spat of home invasions that took place in the neighborhood he grew up in. So while The Strangers is a work of fiction, the events are eerily plausible. 

After Orson Welles scared the bejesus out of millions of unsuspecting listeners with his radio play of War of the Worlds, Hollywood created its own version laying the foundation for the apocalyptic blockbusters to come. Director Byron Haskin’s retelling of H.G. Wells’ iconic book updates the threat from Victorian London to present day California. As the aliens invade destroying everything in their path it’s up to a few Americans to figure out how to fight for survival. For a world still reeling from the fallout of World War II, War of the Worlds is indebted to its groundbreaking special effects which made the film seem all too real for a world trying to forget a violent past. 

When Michael Haneke remade his own film Funny Games ten years after the original Austrian version, he was uncompromising. A near shot-for-shot remake changed only by the language spoken on screen (English) and a cast made up of recognizable Hollywood actors Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Michael Pitt, Funny Games 2007 was less reimagined for a new millennium and more of an amplification of Haneke’s warnings of our appetite for violence. Haneke is a provocateur with an axe to grind, an enfant terrible who remained petulant enough ten years after the original failed to provoke a response in North America beyond the art house circle to return to the story. Haneke was determined to make Funny Games accessible to a larger audience having heard that the film would not play well with subtitles in North America. His fable of a well-to-do family whose summer home is invaded by a pair of erudite young men is not only unrelentingly violent; it is an unflinching look at its audience if they are brave enough to return the gaze. 

Part of the Classic Universal Monster series, James Whale’s The Invisible Man based on H.G. Wells’ novel shook film audiences to their core with groundbreaking special effects. Featuring the American screen debut of Claude Rains as Dr. Jack Griffin who discovers the formula for invisibility he decides to test the formula on himself driving him mad. While Griffin is seemingly free from society’s restraints, he is unable to control his urges and he begins to lose his humanity at a terrifying pace. The Invisible Man is one of Wells’ more insular stories focusing on the intimate relationship between the individual and social constructs both condemning and reinforcing them. Under the direction of James Whale The Invisible Man remains a timely allegory for the cost of unmitigated power. 

Mickey and Jules are lovers on the run, headed southbound for a fresh start in the Sunshine State. When their car dies after a gas station robbery, they break into a nearby house looking for a new set of wheels. What they find instead is a dark secret, and a sweet-as-pie pair of homeowners who will do anything to keep it from getting out.

Sneaking in just before the, ahem, tail-end of the Pre-Code era in Hollywood, during which there was no ratings board to represent the moral majority and classify films, Island of Lost Souls presents a gruesome and shocking filmic realization of one of H.G. Wells most famous stories. When Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is shipwrecked on a strange island he is taken in by the sinister Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton). Parker soon realizes the strange creatures on the island are not born of nature but of Moreau’s own hand. Banned in twelve countries and cut by State censors in the US, Island of Lost Souls still caused a moral panic across the country cementing its place in the horror canon. 

When five teen employees at the local movie theater in a small Christian town discover a mysterious old film hidden in it's basement, they unleash an alluring succubus who gives them a sex education...written in blood.

'That’s la Morte: Italian Cult Cinema and the Years of Lead' is a new 80 minute documentary that considers how cult and horror film cycles came to reflect wider anxieties within 1970s Italy.

At the end of the last millennium three film students went into the woods and were never seen again. Or that’s what the marketing guru’s behind The Blair Witch Project would have you believe. Between the film’s premiere at the Sundance Festival which traumatized the unsuspecting crowd to the Curse of the Blair Witch TV special which aired in the lead up to the film, it was hard to believe the plight of Heather, Mike and Josh wasn’t real. Directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick created a premise simple enough to be believable while weaving in  enough backstory about the Blair Witch herself to make her seem like a real part of Colonial folklore. In the 20 years since its release The Blair Witch Project has re-envisioned the American Nightmare.

Director Stuart Gordon returned to the world of H.P. Lovecraft with his follow up to Re-Animator, From Beyond a fully realized look at Lovecraft’s preponderance with Cosmic Horror, the kind of horror that exists around us but just out of reach of our perception. When Dr. Pretorius (Ted Sorel) manufactures the ability to extend the perception of the penal gland in the human brain it not only extends his consciousness but turns him in to something monstrous.  Combining the terror of Lovecraft’s time, most notably confinement to a sanitarium or psychiatric ward and the conditions within them, and all the ooey-gooey 80s effects celluloid could handle, From Beyond an inter-dimensional journey into horror you won’t soon forget. 

When the horror genre was occupied with the bodily destruction of Torture Porn in the 2000, director Oren Peli wanted to go back to basics to scare his audience. A young couple Katie and Micha are experiencing strange phenomena in their home so Micha sets up a video camera in their bedroom to figure out who or what the culprit is. As the unseen force becomes more powerful and continues to defy explanation Micha and Katie have fewer and fewer options as they grow increasingly worn down and the entity becomes more powerful. With an ingenious marketing campaign that focused on real audiences’ terror and a voting feature which allowed curious viewers to demand a screening at their local cinema, Paranormal Activity became a grassroots-driven phenomenon with a worldwide gross of almost $200 million. Katie and Micah’s plight is at once intimate and universal, reinventing the haunted house genre for the new millennium.

Director Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s serialized story Herbert West: Reanimator eschews Lovecraft’s seriousness while keeping his terror and mythology. Featuring Jeffery Combs in a cult-star marking turn as West, the fun, violence and gore doesn’t let up in Gordon’s version, nor does the body count. The film both resituates Lovecraft’s work in a modern context while also letting it do most of the work with humor extending from the strangeness of West’s unrelenting pursuit of reanimating the dead within the confines of academia taking education from the ivory tower and bringing to the sublimely absurd. 

The heart of Antrum is the titular cursed feature, which purports to have been shot in the late 1970s by unknown filmmakers. It spins the tale of two siblings who perform an occult ritual in the woods, seeking closure after the death of a beloved pet… but their seemingly symbolic act may have truly unleashed Hell on Earth.

A chronicle of the life, work and mind that created the Cthulhu mythos.

When a tourist dies on Halloween night in Salem, the crowd seeks justice by mounting a modern day witch hunt.

Legacy of the Marsten House: The Political, Cultural, and Theological Impact of Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot will explore how this iconic novel, as well as its 1979 television adaptation, is able to traverse and interconnect politics, theology and popular culture in a compelling and thought-provoking manner as a result of its rich history, mythology, cosmogonic implications, and the metaphorical potential to lead one into contemplating their role amidst the oppressive forces of our day.

Well before Samara came out of your TV and before the Lords of Salem were played over the airwaves, metal god Sammi Curr (Tony Fields) came back from the dead to wreak havoc in the lives of his fans when the teenage Eddie (Marc Price) plays Sammi’s posthumous release backwards conjuring Sammi’s spirit. A riff on the conservative 1980s fear that shock rockers could invoke Satan at a moment’s notice, Trick or Treat embraces its camp to examine fandom and the mainstreaming of Metal. With cameos by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne, Trick or Treat is a unique combination of the horror of Metal and the music industry with a slasher narrative, Parental Advisory sticker not included. 

Following up from his efforts on Frankenstein, director James Whale returned to the helm for its sequel Bride of Frankenstein a film that asks, what if the monster wants to be human? Donning the iconic Frankenstein Monster makeup once more Boris Karloff returns and this time he wants to be “normal”, to mate and be accepted, but of course, it all goes horribly wrong. Incorporating the constructs and confines of marriage, the early drag aesthetic of Elsa Lanchester’s Bride (dead, but makes it fashion), the widely read for filth queer villainy of Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) and the winking nods of the Hermit, Bride of Frankenstein rejects and problematizes so-called normalcy and asks its audience to open itself to a brave new world filled with gods and monsters. 

Some films are just destined to become fan favorites. After being denied a theatrical release, Trick ‘r Treat steadily gained its status as one of the all-time classic Halloween films through word of mouth after it was released on DVD. An anthology which follows five storylines over the same Hallow’s Eve, Michael Dougherty’s films boasted a wickedly dark tongue and cheek tone, a notable cast including Anna Paquin, Brian Cox and Dylan Baker as well as gruesome effects that point to the importance of behaving yourself on Halloween when the barrier between the living and the dead is its weakest and anything can happen. Especially if you’re don’t respect the rules of Sam(hain).

Blumhouse podcast Shock Waves will moderate live interviews and commentary during the festival. Stay tuned for program announcements.

James Whale’s Frankenstein not only helped define and popularize the horror film at its outset, it is also one of the most openly queer-coded films ever made. Working with Mary Shelley’s classic text of a doctor so desperate to prevent death he creates a monster; Whale imbued the fearsome tale with iconic images while also creating sympathy for Frankenstein’s monster. Whale was one of the few men in Hollywood (particularly in the 1920s and 1930s) who lived as an openly gay man and many of gone from speculating to outright saying that Whale’s sexuality had nothing to do with his filmmaking. While the art can always be separated from the artist it’s difficult to overlook the film’s sensitive portrayal of monster cast out from society without a queer lens. Frankenstein ultimately asks us to question who is truly a monster versus who we are told is a monster.