Nightmares Film Festival 2019 – Daily Report Part Deux

Friday brought forth the first full day of the Nightmares Film Festival this year and it was a doozy! The madness kicked off at bright and early with a screening of the absolutely stellar Daniel Isn’t Real by writer/director Adam Egypt Mortimer. I was already a fan of his previous feature, Some Kind of Hate, but the trippy psychological terror of Daniel Isn’t Real topped it in almost every way. The leads are excellent, particularly Patrick Schwarzenegger, who almost feels like he is channeling ’80s-era James Spader at times.

Next on deck was a showing of Girl on the Third Floor, the feature film directorial debut of veteran genre producer Travis Stevens (We Are Still Here). Starring Phil “CM Punk” BrooksGirl is a psycho-sexual haunted house thriller that has a bit of a Clive Barker vibe going on. This one also hits VOD this weekend, so I am looking forward to seeing how people react to it in the coming weeks, especially given some of the imagery on display and the turns the tale takes throughout.

Ghost Killers vs. Bloody Mary burst onto screens in the third slot of the day and I do mean burst. The gruesome, bonkers horror comedy has fluids of all kinds flowing left and right, with at least two standout goopy bits (one involving an undead fetus and another a fresh human turd). 

As the late afternoon rolled around, the schedule split across two screens, offering up a choice between a feature or a block of short films every two hours. On the short film front, of those I was able to see, my favorites of the day were “Lock and Key“, “Check“, and Rakefet Abergel’s “Boo“.

Back on the feature front, 1BR offered up some cult-y goodness and the Felissa Rose-starrer A Nun’s Curse dished out some bad habit carnage. There was also a repertory screening in the form of Jorg Buttgereit‘s infamous cult classic Nekromantik.

In my opinion, however, Nightmares’ biggest standouts for the latter half of the day were Reckoning and V.F.W.. The former is the work of filmmaking duo Lane & Ruckus Skye and is a fantastic backwoods crime thriller set deep within isolated communities in the Appalachian mountains. The latter, of course, is the latest gonzo film from both Fangoria and director Joe Begos (The Mind’s EyeBliss). Both are killer examples of types of films that we rarely get these days and they are equally great, albeit in different ways.

Saturday’s programming brings forth oodles of shorts, as well as an animated film, a new anthology, an anticipated sequel, the latest release from Hammer Films, and more! I cannot wait to dive into all of the above, as well as continuing conversations with fellow genre-lovers, which is just as fun as seeing new flicks!

Have you seen any of the films mentioned above? Are you looking forward to them? Have you been to Nightmares Film Festival before? Are you here now? By all means, let us know all of these things and more in the comments below or on FacebookTwitter, or Instagram! You can also hit me up directly on Twitter @DanielWBaldwin

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