Author: Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins

Grimmfest, one of the UK’s leading cult and genre film festivals, is in its 11th year. The festival will take place at the Odeon Great Northern cinema in Manchester, UK, from 3 – 6 October 2019. In total the festival will host 21 feature films and 19 short films, which includes 6 European premieres, 17 UK premieres, 2 English premieres and 15 Northern UK premieres. European Premieres include Audrey Cummings’ laconically brutal SHE NEVER DIED (the keenly awaited follow up to 2015 horror hit HE NEVER DIED), claustrophobic Argentinian thriller 4X4 and Australian WWII set creature feature, BLOOD VESSEL. UK…

THE CONJURING **** USA 2013 Dir: James Wan. 113 mins Released within weeks of the equally lucrative INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 2, this box office smash employs a definitive “Based On The True Story” title card and a suitably gaudy 70’s yellow font for the title itself, acknowledging its debt to that decade’s supernatural horror films. THE CONJURING takes as much from THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, THE EXORCIST and THE CHANGELING as it does from the true story, while sharing a creepy doll fetish with Wan’s commercial failure DEAD SILENCE, and, like INSIDIOUS, borrowing much from POLTERGEIST. In 1971, Lili Taylor and Ron…

Following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2018, Dustin Mills Productions is proud to present the first teaser trailer for SLAUGHTERHOUSE SLUMBER PARTY. This teaser trailer is being released in advance of the movie’s fall/winter festival and convention run, with a premiere to be announced soon. This censored teaser is mostly safe for work, but in this case it’s still kind of not safe for work! A full trailer will be released closer to the film’s premiere, but for now check out the teaser below. Written and directed by Dustin Mills, the film features some familiar faces that fans of indie…

THE SIREN *** USA 2019 Dir: Perry Blackshear 80 mins Tom (Evan Dumouchel), takes some time away from his Christian duties by renting a house next to a lake. The owners warn him in a note to take care by the water as there have been a few drownings. He meets Al (MacLeod Andrews) who lives nearby and is grieving over his husband who was one who had drowned in the lake. Full of anger Al is convinced that his husband’s death was no accident and he speaks of finding the monster that did it. Not long after this Tom…

OCCURRENCE AT MILLS CREEK *** USA 2019 Dir: Don Swanson. 18 mins Currently being expanded into a feature length movie of the same name, writer-director Don Swanson’s well shot, effectively scored short film, like HEREDITARY, finds as much horror in the banal truths of everyday grief as it does with the supernatural. Clara (Ava Psoras) is haunted by her dead mother (Betsy Lynn George) and her recently deceased younger sister (Alexa Mechling). On the day of the latter’s funeral, her absentee Dad (Joe Fishel) returns along with what might be the bonafide ghosts of her next of kin – alongside…