Fear 2000

@fear2000.bsky.social

A conference series once dedicated to contemporary horror cinema, 2016-2023 | #fear2000 🤖

Announcement! We're excited to say that next year we'll be teaming up with colleagues at the University of Nottingham to bring you a conference celebrating the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series, 40 years on from the original film's release. Details to follow soon. For now, sweet dreams...!

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Spent a couple of days at Grimmfest in Manchester. Highlights for me were THE SACRIFICE GAME and THE COFFEE TABLE. Two very different films: one a fun, slick mash-up of home invasion and Satanic cult tropes, the other one of the most arse-clenchingly horrible pieces of anxiety cinema I’ve ever seen.

Poster for THE SACRIFICE GAME (2023). The title is in the centre in yellow font. The image is of the front steps of an old school house. In the doorway is a teacher and two young children. Above, four violent criminals and a full moon. The tagline reads “This Christmas, raise a little hell.”Poster for THE COFFEE TABLE (2023). The title is in the middle and to the left in black font. The entire poster is made to look like broken glass, behind which we can see the fractured image of a man covered in blood and looking utterly traumatised. The tagline reads “A cruel Caye Casas film”.

Kicked off festival season last night at Paracinema with HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE. A brilliant haunted broadcast that begins as a knowing tribute to GHOSTWATCH, lulling you into a false sense of familiarity before morphing into something all its own. Funny, clever, very creepy and lingers in the mind.

Poster for HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE. The title is at the bottom of the poster on a black background. The central image is of Gerry Burns, an aging television presenter who is looking over his shoulder with a frightened expression. The tagline at the top reads “Halloween night, 1998… A live broadcast from a haunted house in Belfast. So disturbing it hasn’t been seen in 25 years.”

I'm giving a talk at UC next week as part of the Global Visions: Reo, Ahurea Research Seminar Series if you're in the area (or zoom). It's similar to the one I gave at @fear2000.bsky.social recently but now I have a bunch of interesting stuff NZ On Air / Te Māngai Pāho funding and outcomes (thx OIA)

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