Join Glenn McQuaid and Larry Fessenden as they present two tales of terror LIVE at Lincoln Center tomorrow, Thursday October  20th at 7PM!

Featuring the voice talent of James Le Gros, Noah Le Gros, Lauren Ashley Carter, Larry Fessenden, John Speredakos, Mathew Stephen Huffman. Music by Glenn McQuaid and Jack Fessenden. Foley by Chris Skotchdopole and Tessa Price.

Buy tickets HERE

Stake Land 2 will have it’s Canadian premiere TONIGHT, at Toronto After Dark! Connor Paolo, directors Dan Berk & Robert Olsen and producer Peter Phok will be in attendance! Screening is at 9:45pm, get your tix here.

Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, starring Kristen Stewart and Michelle Williams, is named Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival!

From the film jury:

“In a vibrant year for cinema it was the masterful mise en scène and quiet modesty of this film that determined our choice for Best Film. A humane and poignant story that calibrates with startling vulnerability and delicate understatement the isolation, frustrations and loneliness of lives unlived in a quiet corner of rural America”.

Read full article HERE.

“It was such an incredibly feeling to see Connor Paolo and Nick Damici on screen
together again, reprising their roles as Martin and Mister…
Stake Land 2 is the perfect sequel, the perfect continuation of the story –
there is no break in continuity. The vampires look, move and sound the same.
The wardrobe, props and special effects all look the same.
The camera work and picture quality is spot on to the original movie…
Stake Land 2 is the vampiric sequel we’ve all been dying for”
—Horror Society

Fessenden recommends Darabont’s THE MIST for Substream’s recurring column, 31 Days of Halloween!  Check out his full post here, which includes gifs, clips and pics.

The best Halloween film is probably Halloween, now a classic, but when I was little—I guess I was 16 in 1979—I thought Halloween was a strange betrayal of the kinds of movies I liked—the ones with grit, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Night Of The Living Dead, that really were about ordinary people (not just sassy teens) confronted with unspeakable horror. The movie I want to champion here, though, is 2007’s The Mist by Frank Darabont, based on a short story by Stephen King.

The Mist quite literally has everything I enjoy in a story: A single location, a continuous time frame, a moral dilemma between the humans, and… actual monsters! I love monster movies and they are rare nowadays (Yes, Cloverfield. Yes, Godzilla. Yes, Jurassic Park… sort of. Oh, shit! I just wanted to change my movie to Attack The Block. Have you seen that movie?! Best ever. But I’ll save that for next year).

The Mist begins with a simple dolly across the paintings of a genre movie poster illustrator. It lands on him at work, then the lights go out. Cut to a tree blowing in a ferocious wind. Dolly back to reveal the artist staring at the tree through the picture window with his wife and kid. Then down to the basement, to seek refuge. Back in the artist’s studio, a tree lunges through the plate glass, shattering it. Next morning, in the storm’s aftermath, a strange mist gathers across the lake. Father and son drive to town to get supplies and are trapped in the local supermarket while the mist closes in, concealing unimaginable terrors. The people trapped in the market struggle to survive an assault by creatures that may have entered this reality from another dimension. Scary stuff.

There is great economy in the shooting style, which utilizes graceful steadycam shots and an array of focal lengths. As the tension develops, the filmmaking resorts to more restless handheld shots, wrack focus, and searching zooms, giving the film an immediacy from start to finish. It all builds with a deliberate and painstaking naturalism in the dialogue and the logic of events.

The character actors are strong throughout; many of the players have appeared in Darabont’s previous films (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) or stuck around for future projects (The Walking Dead), suggesting an aesthetic of loyalty and community in Darabont’s approach that is rewarded with the genuine work he gets from his cast. Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harding, Toby Jones, and Andre Brauger are standouts, but every player brings an authentic performance—a tribute to Darabont’s directing approach. In his writing, he is able to stay visceral and driven, while clearly expounding on themes that matter to him: The dangers of religious fervor and demagoguery; social and political topics are seamlessly integrated into the script, because those issues are the fabric of our lives. How relevant for today’s Halloween/election season!

The film progresses in real time with a series of increasingly horrific set pieces and the tension ratchets up scene after scene, driven by the interplay between human aspirations and weaknesses, heroism and cowardice. The action constantly reminds us of fate’s indifference: Nice people suffer unbearable ends. The creature designs throughout are truly frightening because they are unfamiliar and inconsistent—from tentacles reaching out of the mist (not the best compositing, but scary just the same), to the incredibly freaky spider creatures with weird skull faces, to the oversized insect creatures, to the fantastic gargoyle monsters that fly through the supermarket. But there’s more: Huge, towering shapes that thud across the landscape, and crab-clawed giants that snatch you and tear you to bits. The monsters that dwell in the mist are terrifying.

The film is renowned for its bleak ending. I have tried to wrap my brain around those horror fans who disparage the ending, but to me it is an act of bold filmmaking, ending a movie with soul-crushing despair, regret and hopelessness. The story has it that Darabont was offered $200K to alter the ending, and he declined. The movie was not a success, but I say this is what good horror looks and feels like.

Happy Halloween.

STAKE LAND 2 premieres on Syfy channel TONIGHT at 9/8c!

Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, written by Nick Damici, produced by Peter Phok and Fessenden for GEP, Greg Newman of Dark Sky Films and co-produced by the Syfy Channel.  Damici returns as Mister and Connor Paolo as Martin.

“When his home of New Eden is destroyed by a revitalized Brotherhood and its new Vamp leader, Martin finds himself alone in the badlands of America with only the distant memory of his mentor and legendary vampire hunter, Mister, to guide him. Roaming the wilderness of a steadily decaying country, Martin goes in search of the one man who can help him get revenge. Once reunited, Mister and Martin prepare to battle a now-ravenous Brotherhood and its monstrous overlord. But it’ll take more than the two of them to take down this terrifying new threat, and with more than just their lives now at risk, the stakes are higher than ever before.”

The film saw its world premiere last night at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival with Berk, Olsen, Phok, and associate producer Chadd Harbold in attendance.

Jack Fessenden’s feature debut starring Asa Spurlock, Jack Fessenden, James Le Gros, John Speredakos, Larry Fessenden, and Kevin Corrigan, will hold its U.S. premiere at the festival that has supported Fessenden’s work for several years with screenings of his shorts RIDING SHOTGUN and THE ADULTS. Join us if you are in the Hudson Valley! Q&A with director and members of the cast to follow the screening. Tickets on sale here.

Step out and support indie cinema this weekend!
Kelley Reichardt’s latest film opens in select cinemas! Check local listings.

“When a quiet film is set outside of the big cities, it’s often called a “slice of life.” But that’s ultimately a condescending designation; to the millions of people residing on the prairies and in the small towns dotting the throughways, it is simply life, with a capital L. In the subtle and affecting Certain Women (based on stories by Maile Meloy), and following Meek’s Cutoff and Night Moves, Kelly Reichardt — with her usual attention to the humanity amid the mundane and the absurd — again gives due credit to those who are too busy just getting on to care about big-city trivialities. Certain Women is a kind, loving, and deeply moving portrait of bighearted small-town people.”
—The Village Voice