Grimmfest announces May Madness, a startling selection of double bills for the late May Bank Holiday Weekend.
May is here, a month with not one, but two Bank Holidays. The Maypoles are going up, the wells are being dressed. Summer is ycumen in.
Or it would be, were the UK not still largely under lockdown.
Yet let’s not forget that “Mayday” is also the international codeword for trouble. It’s a warning of threat, of danger and distress. What could be more appropriate to the season, then, particularly in such uncertain and stressful times, than some cinematic forays into fear and uncertainty, some authentic movie madness, delivered right into the relative safety of your home?
Three double bills, guaranteed to challenge perception, practice deception, and banish dejection.
We’ve a surreal and slyly satiric stab at the gig economy and the underhand exploitative methodology of New Age Capitalism in the UK Premiere of Noah Hutton’s quirky low-fi sci-fi gem, LAPSIS. And an award-winning architect finds himself caught up in the mind games of an eccentric young woman with a pathological love of storytelling, in Kike Maíllo’s slippery, disorientating psychological thriller, A PERFECT ENEMY, also a UK premiere.
Grimmfest favourite Cody Calahan returns, with the English Premiere of the all too appropriately named bloody black comedy, VICIOUS FUN – about as sharp a change in direction from Grimmfest 2020 Audience Award Winner, THE OAK ROOM, as could possibly be imagined. We’re so excited to add that we are hosting the WORLD PREMIERE of THE NEST – a slow-burning, understated, backwoods spin on INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS, with a squirm-inducing new twist, which works both as an icky eco-horror for entomophobes, and as a metaphoric exploration of addiction and its legacy, the various social pressures on working mothers, and the way in which childhood neediness can turn sour and malevolent. Deftly directed by James Suttles, the film stars Dee Wallace, Sarah Navratil and Kevin Patrick Murphy, and marks the feature film screenwriting debut of Jennifer Trudring, who previously penned the shorts THE EBBING and HERE THERE BE TYGERS, both of which were big hits with Grimmfest’s audience.
There’s sibling rivalry, Daddy issues galore, and pan-dimensional beings tampering with reality, in the North West premiere of Jason Axinn’s gaudy, gory, action-packed animated comic-book TO YOUR LAST DEATH. Pan-dimensional gamers on the rampage, too, in the UK Premiere of Scott Conditt and Jeremy Tremp’s pitch-perfect retro-80s tongue-in-cheek teen horror actioner, MAX RELOAD AND THE NETHER BLASTERS, in which video games prove to be even more of a gateway to hell than Harlan Ellison once feared.
Simeon Halligan, festival director said: This is likely to be our last fully online gig as UK cinemas begin to open this summer. We wanted to welcome brighter times into our lives and say goodbye to darkness through a mix of fun, crazy, scary and downright weird movies for you all to enjoy on the cusp of summer.’
Grimmfest presents MAY MADNESS ‘Online’ tickets and passes are available now, from www.grimmfest.com
MAY MADNESS – FAMOUS FACES AND NOTABLE FACTS
TO THE LAST DEATH, a ferociously funny and bloodsoaked animated comic book, featuring the voices of William Shatner, cult film legend Ray Wise (TWIN PEAKS) and Morena Baccarin (DEADPOOL, GOTHAM, THE FLASH, etc).
MAX RELOAD & THE NETHER BLASTERS, a retro-80s styled gamer-geek wish-fulfilment fantasy, with an all-star cult cast, including Lin Shaye (INSIDIOUS, THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, etc), Greg Grunberg (ALIAS, HEROES, STAR WARS, etc), Martin Kove (KARATE KID, COBRA KAI, etc), Kevin Smith (Silent Bob himself), and the voice of Wil Wheaton (STAR TREK TNG, RENT-A-PAL, etc)
LAPSIS, a quirky lo-fi sci-fi satire of the gig economy, with echoes of Philip K. Dick and Charlie Kaufman which marks the fiction-feature debut of documentary filmmaker Noah Hutton, son of Debra Winger and Timothy Hutton.
A PERFECT ENEMY, a slippery, game-playing psychological thriller, featuring Polish screen icon Tomasz Kot, and cult French character actor Dominique Pinon (DIVA, DELICATESSEN), and adapted from a novel by acclaimed best selling Belgian author Amélie Nothomb
VICIOUS FUN, an outrageous splatter satire, and the latest from Grimmfest favourites, producer/director team Cody Calahan and Chad Archibald, whose previous film, THE OAK ROOM, won the Audience Award in 2020. Starring Evan Marsh (SHAZAM), Ari Millen (ORPHAN BLACK, I’LL TAKE YOUR DEAD, THE OAK ROOM), and David Koechner (ANCHORMAN).
THE NEST, a slow-burning entomophobic ecohorror spin on the Bodysnatchers theme, starring genre legend Dee Wallace and Sarah Navratil (STARGATE: ORIGINS), and directed by James Suttles. It marks the feature film screenwriting debut of Grimmfest alumnus Jennifer Trudrung, writer-producer-star of the short film HERE THERE BE TYGERS, a gender-switched adaptation of Stephen King’s first published short story of the same name, which screened at the festival in 2020, and writer-producer of THE EBBING, a chilling psychological thriller which screened in 2019. The director of THE EBBING, Kevin Patrick Murphy is the male lead in THE NEST, and actors Drez Ryan and Penny Munroe have supporting roles in both shorts and the feature. Grimmfest is keen to
support new and emerging voices in horror and it’s always nice to see a creative team developing and continuing to work together in this way.
GRIMMFEST: International festival of horror, cult and fantastic cinema and UK Exhibitor. Grimmfest bring the very best in new independent genre cinema and classic genre films to Manchester UK and beyond. With regular screenings throughout the year and the main festival in early October. Grimmfest is now in its 2nd decade and was recently voted one of the top 50 Bloody Best Genre Festivals in the World (for the second time) by Movie Maker magazine.
Grimmfest is working with Eventive, one of the key players in the virtual festival area, to offer DRM-protected, Geo-blocked movie premieres. They will also host exclusive livestream and recorded interviews, special events and press rooms, bringing in the filmmakers and stars to present and Q&A the films, while also helping to create a complete festival experience for the fans.
F RATING: Grimmfest subscribes to the “F Rating” system, designed to highlight women on screen and behind the camera, and developed at Bath Film Festival in 2014. The F-Rating is awarded to films directed by and/or written by women. If the film also stars significant women in their own right, the film is Triple F-Rated.