Late Night

Heavy metal, tattoos, and blowing stuff up.

These are just a few of chain-smoking, stringy-haired anarchist Hesher’s favorite things. When he moves, uninvited, into the garage of twelve-year-old TJ and his father, it does not exactly seem like a match made to last. But TJ has just lost his mom in a tragic accident, and Dad can’t bring himself to do much of anything these days, let alone kick the strange squatter out of his house. So, Hesher stays, and unwittingly starts to bring some life, however chaotic and full of mayhem, into a family still reeling from the most difficult loss of their lives.

Midnight Son is the story of Jacob, a young man confined to a life of isolation due to a rare skin disorder that prevents him from being exposed to sunlight. His world opens up when he meets Mary, a local bartender, and falls in love. Tragically, Jacob's actions become increasingly bizarre as he struggles to cope with the effects of his worsening condition. Forced by the disease to drink human blood for sustenance, he must control his increasingly violent tendencies as local law enforcement narrow their focus on him as a suspect in a series of a string of grisly murders.

This ghastly scenario of poor preying on poor is, like the film’s gray-green palette, profoundly depressing and entirely pitiless. At the same time, the family — frequently viewed through filmy glass or blood-spattered plastic — is sui generis, its dietary preferences repeatedly referred to as a ritual whose origins remain unexplained. - NyTimes

Horror and hilarity occupy the screen side by side in this SXSW Audience Award winner.

Opening Night Film

Norwegian mockumentary “The Troll Hunter” offers high-caliber entertainment despite a low-budget production. The shaky camera suggests “The Blair Witch Project,” but writer-director Andre Ovredal’s impressive array of fantastical creatures, and the film itself, plays more like “Jurassic Park.”  - IndieWire.com

Award-winning director of Mullberry Street, Jim Mickle’s latest film, Stake Land,will test the mettle of any diehard vampire horror fan. 

The clash of steel against steel, in the grand scale of a Kurosawa epic, echoes across haunting, misty landscapes in multi-award-winning and prolific filmmaker Takeshi Miike's latest visual feast 13 Assassins.