Some Kind of Hate (2015) [Film4 FrightFest 2015]

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Film4 FrightFest 2015

Lincoln Taggert is a loner metal head who is regularly bullied at school. After a particularly brutal event, Lincoln loses his cool and hurts one of his tormentors badly. Following this incident, Lincoln is sent to a meditation based reform school where he encounters a new group of bullies and eventually wishes they would all be dead. This awakens the vengeful spirit of Moira who attacks his tormentors one by one as she herself being highly disturbed by past bullying she was a victim of before her death.

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Cooties (2015)

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Directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion couldn’t have assembled a better troupe of character actors than the one in “Cooties.” If you’re going to cast some of the best, you’d best put them in a good movie, and “Cooties” is great. It’s part “Class of Nuke Em High,” part “28 Days Later,” and part “Night of the Living Dead.” The team of Murnion and Milott compose a sick and hilarious amalgam of horror comedy that actually manages to build a very difficult premise. How do you fight hordes of children? And even if small children were running rampant and eating people, would you be able to murder them out of self defense?

Clint is starting his first day teaching summer school at Fort Chicken elementary school and is preparing for a hard go of it with some rather bratty children populating his school. Things go from bad to worse when a young girl bites in to a tainted chicken nugget that infects her with a horrible virus that transforms her in to a flesh eating savage.

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Thanatos (2015) [Horrible Imaginings 2015]

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[Horrible Imaginings Film Festival San Diego 2015]

Thanatos is partially inspired by the personification of Death in ancient Greece. Hsin-Yen LU’s student film of the same name follows a young photographer who captures an image of Death as a young woman. He becomes captivated and enamored with her, his interest becoming obsession as he stages his own death multiple times to be able to see her again and again and to photograph her each time. He desperately wants to go with her but she cannot take him as it his time has not come yet.

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Mexico Barbaro (2014) [Horrible Imaginings 2015]

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[Horrible Imaginings Film Festival San Diego 2015]

Mexico Barbaro is an anthology film containing 8 short films by Mexican filmmakers all based on traditions and legends. It is however more like a collection of shorts as the movies are not interwoven and there is no wrap around story. Each of the shorts here can stand on their own and the only thread connecting them is the theme. As with any anthology, some of the shorts are much stronger than the others. Here the best three are the opener Tzompantli, the second one Jaral de Berrios, and the closing short Dia de los Muertos.

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Bloodsucking Bastards (2015) [Film4 FrightFest 2015]

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Film4 FrightFest 2015

Office work can be soul sucking, it can be deathly boring. Evan works in such an office where there is very low morale and sales are not going well. To help this situation, his boss Ted hires Max, Evan’s old nemesis. Shortly after this, odd things start happening and eventually Evan believes something is very, very wrong in the office. After the first dead body turns up, he tries to get help from the HR person, his ex-girlfriend who think he must have gone crazy. Eventually, a second incident gets Evan to reach out to his best friend Tim for help. They eventually round up their rag tag three musketeers with Frank, the office security guard who knows more than he lets on. Together, they take on Max and his vampire minions.

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Shocker (1989): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]

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It baffles me to this day that “Shocker” is still considered one of Wes Craven’s best films. It’s especially baffling considering Craven has not only pulled off much better genre films, but because “Shocker” is really just a remake of “Nightmare on Elm Street.” A vicious serial killer wreaks revenge on his pursuers through supernatural means which allow him to shift through his own dimensions, can contact our protagonist through dreams, and does battle with a lone teenager who enters his realm in the finale and confronts him. It’s the exact same film from beginning to end, except it has a much more prevalent self awareness than “Nightmare” did.

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