Tuesday 18 July 2000

International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival 2019




Here's my usual index of all the films, features and shorts, that are being screened at IHSFFF in 2019, with directors, years and IMDb pages (where they exist).

Those of you who have been following my coverage of the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival over the years, especially those who have read my book, The International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival: The Transition Years will know that I see it as unfolding in sets of three years. We've gone through the Early Years, as it figured out what it was; the Indie Years, when it went on the road; the Transition Years, when it was subsumed by the Phoenix Film Festival to be its genre track; and the Pre-Teen Years, when it realised it still had an identity but wasn't quite sure what it was.

2019 is the final year in a new set of three, which seems to me like the Reaffirmation Years, during which festival director Monte Yazzie has given it a fresh emphasis within the Phoenix Film Festival, expanding its scope and improving the quality as it's gone. He's made few changes this year, the obvious one being that he's shifted two slots away from Showcase Features to Competition Features.

That change means that there are four features in competition in each of the horror and science fiction tracks this year but showcase features drop to fourteen, two of which are still to be named. On the short film side, there are once again two sets of shorts for each of horror and sci-fi. That means that we're still at 26 slots, the same as last year and the previous high of 2007.

Taking advantage of the longer running time of the festival, there are plenty of repeat showings. Each competition feature will screen three times and each competition short twice. Most showcase features will also screen twice but four are only on the schedule once and one, Survival of the Film Freaks has three screenings. I'm not sure why.

This all looks good, as do the selections. The majority of films seem to be English language, mostly from the US but with plenty of UK films and a few from Canada and Australia. The exception is on the sci-fi side, where the four competition features include one from China and another from Malaysia and the short sets include films from Qatar, Sweden, Georgia and the Ukraine.

The crew behind the festival remain the same as last year, starting with Jason Carney and the folk at the Phoenix Film Foundation. Danny Marianino and Brandon Kinchen are in charge of horror competition titles and science fiction writer Mike Stackpole handles the sci-fi competition side. Monte Yazzie is the Festival Director.

Rating System
1 - Abysmal | 2 - Bad | 3 - Poor | 4 - OK | 5 - Good | 6 - Excellent | 7 - Classic

Horror Features
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Isabelle 2018 Robert Heydon IMDb
The Chicken Party 2018 Carlos R. Valencia IMDb
My Soul to Keep 2018 Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad IMDb
To Tokyo 2018 Caspar Seale Jones IMDb

Sci-Fi Features
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Excursion 2018 Martin Grof IMDb
Last Sunrise 2019 Wen Ren IMDb
Volition 2019 Tony Dean Smith IMDb
The Spiral 2018 Peter Wong IMDb

Showcase Features
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Assassinaut Drew Bolduc IMDb
Automata 2019 Lawrie Brewster IMDb
The Bastard's Fig Tree 2017 Anaïs Murugarren IMDb
Body at Brighton Rock 2019 Roxanne Benjamin IMDb
Darlin' 2019 Pollyanna McIntosh IMDb
The Hole in the Ground 2019 Lee Cronin IMDb
I’ll Take Your Dead 2018 Chad Archibald IMDb
In Fabric 2018 Peter Strickland IMDb
I Trapped the Devil 2019 Josh Lobo IMDb
Nightmare Cinema 2018 Alejandro Brugués, Ryuhei Kitamura, David Slade, Joe Dante & Mick Garris IMDb
One Cut of the Dead 2017 Shinichiro Ueda IMDb
Redcon-1 2018 Chee Keong Cheung IMDb
Survival of the Film Freaks 2018 Bill Fulkerson & Kyle Kuchta IMDb
They’re Inside 2019 John-Paul Panelli IMDb

Horror Shorts A
Plastic Hip 4 Bradford Uyeda n/a
Third Wheel 2017 Daniel DelPurgatorio IMDb
Keloid 2017 Brendan Pollecutt IMDb
Rotsy 2018 D. A. Keenan IMDb
Songbird 2018 Helen Baldwin IMDb
The Leshiy 2019 Ben Anderson & Sawyer Purman IMDb
The Foodies 2014 Julien de Volte & Arnaud Tabarly IMDb

Horror Shorts B
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Peep 2018 Zachary Dehm IMDb
Zombied 2018 Matthew Van Vorst IMDb
Frozen in Terror 2018 Chad Patrick Shannon IMDb
The Whistler 2019 Jennifer Nicole Stang IMDb
Exhibit Man 2018 Trevor Mirosh IMDb
A Doll Distorted 2018 Niall Shukla IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts A
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Transmission 2018 Rebecca Gardiner IMDb
Bombora 2019 Augie Meleo IMDb
Beautiful Bunkers 2018 Boone Cavender IMDb
Lavender Henry Boffin n/a
Hot Knife Cold Butter 2017 Zaine Salameh IMDb
Tik Tok 2018 R. J. Blake IMDb
Regulation 2019 Ryan Patch IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts B
Title Year H D Director(s) IMDb
Secret Chord 2019 Karl Thyselius IMDb
In Her Image 2018 Nikoloz Kevkhishvili IMDb
The Way the Future Was 2019 Raphael Kryszek IMDb
Eternity 2018 Anna Sobolevska IMDb
Widdershins 2018 5 Simon P. Biggs IMDb

No comments: