TRAUMA OR, MONSTERS ALL Director: Larry Fessenden. Cast: Larry Fessenden, Alex Breaux, Alex Hurt, Laetitia Hollard. USA 2026. 118 mins.
UK PREMIERE – A Trieste Science+Fiction Presentation – Horror icon Larry Fessenden returns with his eighth indie genre film and it’s a monster mash destined to be a graveyard smash. Serving as a sequel to three other films he has written and directed: 1995’s vampire tale HABIT, his 2019 Frankenstein Monster riff DEPRAVED and the 2023 werewolf repurposing BLACKOUT. Placing his trio of ghouls under one humanist and uncanny roof, a writer investigating the dark past of the town of Talbot Falls for a newspaper article stirs up fears about the lurking monsters. Fessenden’s final chapter of his quadrilogy works as a standalone event and a series finale.
‘Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,’ ‘Wendigo’ Restorations, and 14 More Films Set for Lincoln Center’s Scary Movies Lineup
New 4K Restoration “Wendigo“ Larry Fessenden, 2001, U.S., 91m Monday, August 17 at 6:30pm – Q&A with Larry Fessenden
By Ryan Lattanzio
Larry Fessenden—founder of the downtown production outfit Glass Eye Pix, and the city’s reigning maestro of uncompromising, fiercely independent genre fare—returns to Scary Movies for a 25th anniversary celebration of the landmark 2001 chiller that might be his most influential work to date. Erik Per Sullivan stars as Miles, the watchful 10-year-old son of photographer George (Jack Webster) and therapist Kim (Patricia Clarkson), whose life is irrevocably altered in the course of a snowbound upstate vacation. Driving through icy woods to a borrowed cabin, the close-knit family of Manhattanites are rattled when their car hits and injures a deer, attracting the ire of three local hunters who’d been tracking it for sport and profit. As his parents struggle to establish a fragile peace with their disgruntled neighbors, young Miles takes an interest in the story of the Wendigo, a voracious shapeshifter from Native American mythology. This sequence of events sets the stage for a formative encounter with vengeful nature and the elemental—yet indelibly human—mechanics of violence, unfolding across a wintry Catskills landscape that Fessenden’s 16mm camerawork infuses with an otherworldly glow. An IFC Films release.
4K restoration from the original 16mm camera negative by Vinegar Syndrome.
CITY WIDE FEVER by Josh Heaps is now streaming on Midnight Pulp.
Executive Produced by Guy Maddin, Robert Forbes, Richard Stoeffel, Jim Stoeffel, Brooks May,
Amanda Romo, Franklin Laviola (BLACKOUT, FOXHOLE), Nicholas Laviola
Featuring: Diletta Guglielmi, Angelica Kim, Nancy Kimball, Hugo Alexander-Rose, Rutanya Alda, Onur Tukel, Ian Fidance, Carolyn Farina, Larry Fessenden, Douglas Buck, Stan Oh, Michael M. Bilandic, Maggie.
Sam, a young film student, discovers a hard drive detailing the life and career of forgotten
Giallo Italian horror director Saturnino Barresi. As she begins to investigate his mysterious disappearance,
Sam finds herself pulled into a violent conspiracy eerily similar to those of the films she adores.
The Films We’re Looking Forward To At This Year’s FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL!
Canada’s Fantasia International Film Festival isn’t just one of the best genre festivals; it’s also one of the longer-running events, celebrating 30 years this year. Before the festival kicks off next week on July 16th and concludes on August 2nd, Macabre Daily is once again fortunate to be able to cover this event virtually (although it is a goal to be there in person someday!). In honor and anticipation of this multi-week genre film event, Doaa Magdy, Lowell Greenblatt, Sean O’Connor, and Matt Orozco share the films they can’t wait to see!
“Trauma, Or Monsters All”
Why We’re Excited: Look, I don’t know what a Larry Fessenden monster team-up film looks like. I never thought I’d ever see a Larry Fessenden monster team-up film. But if you’re telling me that Larry Fessenden, the distinguished indie horror mogul and certified director least likely to have a shared cinematic universe, made a movie combining his versions of the vampire, werewolf and Frankenstein stories into one film, I want to know what that looks like right away.
The list includes Jenn Wexler’s THE LAST TEMPTATION OF BECKY and The Adams Family’s THE GLORIOUS DEAD.
As a father—hell, as a human being—there are fewer things that I find more frightening than a school shooting.
Every day, I kiss my kids goodbye and send them off to school… and there is this moment, this dark thought, where a voice deep within the darkest corners of my subconscious asks: Is this the day? Will something bad happen to my kids at school?
That we now live in a country where these kinds of questions are common…
Terrifying.
The idea for Just A Hoax came about shortly after Alex Jones’ protracted trial around his false claims that the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting were not real. He is the grim inspiration for this tale, for better or worse. I’ve personally been fascinated with the shock-jock-as-antihero for a while now, ever since watching Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio. I was just a kid during the Morton Downey Jr. heyday, but his bark was still there.
Then came Howard Stern. Then Rush Limbaugh. Then Jones.
Then all hell breaks loose.
I had a chance to explore a bit of this character personality for a scripted podcast series titled Quiet Part Loud, for Monkeypaw and Spotify, cowritten alongside Mac Rogers. That was a riff on the Tucker Carlsons and Bill O’Riellys of the time, but the personality persists. There have been so many voices that draw on an audience’s malleable belief system. To pull them in. To lose oneself. All you need is a magnetic personality behind the microphone to feel the undertow of radio waves.
I wrote the first draft of Just A Hoax in 2022. Here it is, finally seeing the light of day—or hearing it, I guess—in 2026. The scary thing about a story like this is, no matter how much time passes, there is always an articulate cult-like leader ready to exploit the belief systems of an audience. The succumbing of listeners is always prevalent, losing themselves to the words of a megalomaniac. The devotion, the destruction, it’s all there.The more things change, the more they stay the same.
—Clay McLeod Chapman
Marc Senter, Lauren Molina, Matt Rocker, Barbara Crampton, Clay McLeod Chapman, Fessenden, Elliot Frances Flynn
JUST A HOAX written by Clay McLeod Chapman Shock Jock Ted Crenshaw is visited by some unwelcome guests.
director and edit: Larry Fessenden cast: Bill Moseley, Barbara Crampton, Lauren Molina, Marc Senter, Elliot Frances Flynn, Levi Rocker, Phoebe Rocker and Matt Rocker. Produced by Larry Fessenden and Glenn McQuaid along with Rigo Garay and Jordan Gass-Pooré. satellite Recording at Monkeyland Audio in Los Angeles. recording, design and mixing by Matt Rocker at Underground Audio, NYC.
Crenshaw Theme music by Matt Rocker. Tales Theme by Jeff Grace poster art: Brian Level
Glass Eye Pix is the fierce independent NYC-based production outfit headed by award-winning art-horror auteur Larry Fessenden with the mission of supporting individual voices in the arts. Read more...
