It's time to find your fear as the award-winning Soho Horror Film Festival returns with its mammoth 2024 hybrid edition, spread over two consecutive weekends and boasting two distinct film programmes. The festival returns to the Whirled Cinema, Brixton for its 6th in-person event, followed by a 4 day long online home-invasion of unique film screenings and special events. With over 80 films from 17 countries, the footage has truly been found... and it's bigger and scarier than ever before.
In honour of genre classic The Blair Witch Project celebrating its 25th anniversary, the festival will feature a strand showcase of contemporary found footage excellence. Opening the festival is the International Premiere of Tim Kasher's voyeuristic and provocative Who's Watching, a cripplingly creepy character study of infatuation that boasts an unforgettable performance from Zachary Ray Sherman. True crime heads will love Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire. Think Longlegs meets Lake Mungo meets Lovecraft documentary, and you have this feature from Stuart Ortiz (Grave Encounters). Fellow found footage auteur Koji Shiraishi (Noroi: The Curse) returns to formal filmmaking with the U.K. Premiere of his unbelievably twisting haunted shocker House of Sayuri.
The virtual festival also delivers on found-footage frights with the U.K. Premiere of Johannes Grenzfurthner's Reich controversial Solvent, cult-fleeing desert trek The Buildout, Egyptian tomb raiding The Ceremony is About to Begin, Canadian camping nightmare The Stickman's Hollow, and the European Premiere of Matt Warren's mind-melding meta cinema meltdown that is Delicate Arch.
More Burkittsville brilliance arrives at the in-person festival, which will feature a one-of-a-kind Blair Witch mini-museum alongside an immersive lore treasure hunt. The virtual festival will host a special live episode of the Development Hell podcast discussing the long unmade Blair Witch sequels. To top it all off, the festival is running a short film bumper competition themed to the legendary film; so don't hide in the corner and become the next Heather, Mike, or Josh.
Beyond that strand, both editions of the festival are stacked with more highlights than there are Amityville sequels. Playing in London are monolithic creatures and existential dread with the U.K. Premiere of The Complex Forms. Gruelling heroine hyperviolence can be found in Can Evrenol's anti-revenge opus Sayara, while Estonian musical massacre Chainsaws Were Singing offers joyous grindhouse fusion unlike anything you've seen before. Blood continues to flow liberally when a kidnapping goes awry in the Onetti brothers' 1978, children come of age at the end of the world with Isaac Ezban's sobering Parvulos, and the festival will be joined by Gore Things podcast for a special live presentation about cinematic penis trauma. Prepare for... Dickstruction.
Queer horror flourishes in typical festival tradition, as Michael Varrati makes his feature debut with the International Premiere of There's A Zombie Outside. It's National Lampoon's Murder in Toronto with the European Premiere of Mother Father Sister Brother Frank. Also screening is the Best Film Audience award winner at Popcorn Fright, as sombre sapphic maternal horror Birthrite makes its U.K. Premiere, and Daniel Monks delivers a breakout performance serving absolute terror and soul-breaking emotion in Timothy Marshall's In the Room Where He Waits. Closing the in-person festival is a whiplash double-bill of opposites: nail-biting tension in the English Premiere of Jack Clark & Jim Weir's feral bachelor party nightmare Birdeater, and absolute puppet partying with Steve Kostanski's Frankie Freako.
For those attending the virtual festival, the tricks and treats are just as plentiful. Receiving their European Premiere are the 90s set resurrection ritual two-hander Lizzie Lazarus from Aviv Rubinstien, time-loop tummy tickler Someone Dies!, and Benjamin Wong's supernatural emotional wrecking ball BA. Eldritch terrors come in the form of cosmic conspiracy theory in Nils Alatalos' Voidcaller, and bowel-breaking splatter in Scared Shitless.
Festival alumni and favourites Christopher Bickel, Alice Maio Mackay, and Graham Skipper return with their latest films. There will be cursed record cult madness in Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, podcast serial killer hunting of Carnage for Christmas, and Christmastime mortality meditation in The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine. Lastly, the virtual festival will host a strand celebrating the intersection of video games and horror with a live panel discussion on the subject, as well as the International Premieres of Fabio Forte's virtual reality Bava-esque dark fantasy The Witch Game, and a blend of Aussie action with low-fi Lovecraft in The Waves of Madness, Jason Trost's offering that is the world's first side-scrolling movie.
So, strap on your cameras and get ready to find your fear, as tickets, festival passes, and online passes are on sale now! The Soho Horror Film Festival will run from 22nd - 24th November at the Whirled Cinema in Brixton, London. The online Sohome Horror Film Festival will run from 28th November to the 1st December. Full details on all the films on show, festival accessibility, and ticket options can be found at www.sohohorrorfest.com
Follow the festival on Facebook, Twitter (fuck you, Elon), and Instagram @SohoHorrorFest
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