[Editorial] Nightstream Film Festival 2021

Through a collaborative effort from some of the most hard-working genre festival programmers, NIGHTSTREAM presents a thrilling, virtually accessible film festival featuring some of the best short and feature films in the genre world today.

Produced by the Overlook Film Festival, North Bend Film Festival, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, and the Boston Underground Film Festival, NIGHTSTREAM offered amazing bonus content including interviews with Malignant writer Akela Cooper and Don Mancini (Chucky), short videos from dozens of filmmakers, screenwriters, fiction writers, and film critics discussing their favorite horror films, including Ghouls Magazine’s very own Zöe Rose Smith who eloquently explains her undying love for Tom Six and his brilliant and disturbing Human Centipede 2. Shout out to Stephen Graham Jones (My Heart is a Chainsaw) for presenting the most interesting, poetic, and hypnotic perspective on Scream – needless to say, the man should be narrating his own audiobooks. 

NIGHTSTREAM featured some familiar titles to those who have tracked other genre festivals this season, including such popular features as We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror and well-known short Koreatown Ghost Story which was boosted by a fun turn from Margaret Cho. But there were also a few standout features and shorts that have received less watercooler buzz and definitely deserve a moment in the light. 

One of my personal favorites of the festival comes from Jean-Christophe Meurisse with the pitch-black comedy Bloody Oranges. There is a uniquely French acerbic tone that lends itself to the nihilistic feel of the ensemble storytelling, with colliding narratives that are equal parts hilarious, heartbreaking, and demented. The film takes a surprising turn in the third act with a painfully real abduction and a most perfect revenge scene, and only in a French film does a rape scene intersplice with a rock dance and feel completely natural. The storylines come together perfectly to pull back a specific cultural curtain that many in political power would wish to remain closed. 

Poser, directed by Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, is a beautiful portrait of young creatives, punks and anarchists, outcasts, and those outcast from even the outcasts. Lennon (Sylvie Mix) is a girl seeking her place within a world she desperately wishes to belong to, not unlike most people searching for their tribe. When she encounters rising social media and pop star Bobbi Kitten, a friendship that begins as mutual interest quickly descends into dangerous obsession. Poser taps into that elusive feeling of coolness, the feeling that’s fleeting at best but can be captured on a single fateful night out with the group one has only gazed at from afar. The film features some seriously infectious original music and, no matter how dark things get for Lennon and Bobbi, Poser is a love letter to independent music and the creative souls who yearn only to find themselves through their passion. 

As someone who only ever knew GWAR through the 1995 masterpiece Empire Records (“Hey Mark. You love GWAR. Why don’t you join the band!”) I did not expect to be so entertained, or so moved, by director Scott Barber’s This is GWAR. The documentary, which won the top honour with the Audience Award for feature film, is an explosive look at the talented and complicated musicians behind the masks and makeup of GWAR. 

In the short film blocks, there were loads of standouts, as it seems short-form film has become more impressive as limitations are lifted and attention spans are tightened. It’s difficult to narrow down favorites, but a few stood out amongst the crowd as truly innovative and exciting. 

Tied for first place in the Audience Award for short film, Chris McInroy’s Guts is a testament to the value of humor and gore in short horror. Following a man whose guts are outside of his body as he navigates an especially difficult day at work, Guts is side-splittingly funny and extremely gross. The perfect combination. McInroy said of his win, “A bonus of a streaming festival is when you watch something like Guts you’re probably pretty close to a bathroom if you need to hurl.”

Another highlight was Ilja Rautsi’s Night of the Living Dicks, a cross between Night of the Living Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and They Live for the nonbinary crowd. If that doesn’t pique your interest, nothing will. The film is disgusting and beautiful, a real piece (or is it penis?) of cinema. 

Australian filmmaker Carl Firth tackles an Aboriginal folk horror tale with The Moogai. In 15-minutes, Firth builds tension and subverts expectations as a couple brings home their newborn baby and must immediately defend themselves against the ominous creature who lurks in the darkest corners. A wonderful lead performance from Shari Sebbens elevates The Moogai to the creepiest levels of folk horror. 

Other standouts include Michael Anthony Kratochvil’s atmospheric Sweet Mary, Where Did You Go, horror with a sci-fi bend. Dan Repp and Lindsay Young’s Martyrs-esque film Cutter is an examination of guilt and self-harm. A hopeful examination of racism and ancestral trauma in Inheritance from Annalise Lockhart. And finally Sleep Talker, also from Carl Firth, stands as the short most likely to be made into a kick-ass feature, as it contains one of the most terrifying and uncanny entities witnessed in some time. 

Overall, NIGHTSTREAM was a rip-roaring good time, went off without a hitch, and exposed the genre world to ever more fascinating, exciting, and promising talent that should without a doubt be given all the money and resources to create whatever the hell they want. 

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