By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The fifth edition of Florida’s Popcorn Frights Film Festival is coming this summer, and the first wave of announcements includes some petrifying premieres. Read on for the details.
Popcorn Frights 2019 takes place August 8-16 at Fort Lauderdale, FL’s historic Savor Cinema (503 SE 6th St. The lineup is highlighted by the world premiere of HAUNT (pictured), from A QUIET PLACE’s original screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. “We’re thrilled to premiere our new film HAUNT at Popcorn Frights Fest,” the duo say. “Their incredible team has cultivated a passionate following by throwing one of the best film festivals around and we can’t wait for the opportunity to scare their audience of hardcore horror fans out of their seats.”
The full first list of Popcorn Frights titles follows:
• BIT (U.S.) Director: Brad Michael Elmore. A transgender teenage girl on summer vacation in Los Angeles fights to survive after she falls in with four queer feminist vampires, who try to rid the city’s streets of predatory men. Cast: Nicole Maines, M.C. Gainey, Diana Hopper, James Paxton (East Coast Premiere)
• BLISS (U.S.) Director: Joe Begos. A brilliant painter facing the worst creative block of her life turns to anything she can to complete her masterpiece, spiraling into a hallucinatory hellscape of drugs, sex, and murder in the sleazy underbelly of Los Angeles. Cast: Dora Madison, Tru Collins, Rhys Wakefield, Graham Skipper (Southeast U.S. Premiere)
• DANIEL ISN’T REAL (U.S.) Director: Adam Egypt Mortimer. When a distraught college freshman faces an unimaginable family trauma, he turns to his sadistic imaginary friend from childhood for help, hoping to unleash some long-forgotten strength. What he finds instead will change his life forever. Cast: Patrick Schwarzenegger, Miles Robbins, Sasha Lane, Mary Stuart Masterson (East Coast Premiere)
• THE DARE (U.K., U.S., Bulgaria) Director: Giles Alderson. Four abducted strangers are forced to piece together clues created by their deranged captor who has brought them together to engage in a twisted battle to solve a puzzle to their past…or die a gruesome death. Cast: Richard Brake, Joivan Wade, Richard Short (World Premiere)
• DEPRAVED (U.S.) Director: Larry Fessenden. Fessenden’s reimagining of the Frankenstein myth (shot on the 200th anniversary of the novel’s publication) centers on a PTSD-riddled field surgeon deep in the heart of Brooklyn who decides to reconstruct an unsuspecting man out of spare body parts. Cast: David Call, Joshua Leonard, Alex Breaux (Southeast U.S. Premiere)
• HAUNT (U.S.) Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. On Halloween, a group of friends encounter an “extreme” haunted house that promises to feed on their darkest fears. But the night turns deadly as they come to the horrifying realization that some nightmares are real. Cast: Katie Stevens, Will Brittain, Lauryn Alisa McClain (World Premiere)
• IN FABRIC (UK) Director: Peter Strickland. Obliquely split between two distinct stories, this exquisitely warped tale follows the life of a cursed scarlet dress as it passes from person to person, fatally afflicting anyone who comes into contact with it at an eerie department store. Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Gwendoline Christie, Julian Barratt, Sidse Babett Knudsen (South Florida Premiere)
• KNIVES AND SKIN (U.S.) Director: Jennifer Reeder. A mystical teen noir that follows a young girl’s disappearance in the rural Midwest and its effect on teens and parents. Cast: Kate Arrington, Marika Engelhardt, Tim Hopper (Southeast U.S. Premiere)
• PARADISE HILLS (Spain) Director: Alice Waddington. A mysterious boarding school perfectly reforms wayward girls to fit their surroundings’ exact desires. Cast: Emma Roberts, Awkwafina, Milla Jovovich, Eiza González, Danielle Macdonald (East Coast Premiere)
• SATANIC PANIC (U.S.) Director: Chelsea Stardust. A pizza delivery girl at the end of her financial rope has to fight for her life—and her tips—when her last order of the night turns out to be high society Satanists in need of a virgin sacrifice. Cast: Rebecca Romijn, Jerry O’Connell, Ruby Modine (Southeast U.S. Premiere)
• THE SONATA (France, U.K., Latvia) Director: Andrew Desmond. A young violinist unravels her long-lost father’s past, triggering dark forces that reach beyond her imagination. Cast: Rutger Hauer, Freya Tingley, James Faulkner, James Kermack (North American Premiere)
• VILLAINS (U.S.) Directors: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. After a pair of amateur criminals break into a suburban home, they stumble upon a dark secret that two sadistic homeowners will do anything to keep from getting out. Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Maika Monroe, Jeffrey Donovan, Kyra Sedgwick (Florida Premiere)
All-Access Badges are now on sale for a limited time for $99 per person and $169 for couples, and single-screening tickets are available for $12. To purchase them and view the festival schedule, head over to Popcorn Frights’ official website.
