This October the Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival showcases the best in new horror cinema from around the world, and again, the entire festival unspools at AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Tickets are sold exclusively by the AFI Silver Theatre at the box office and online at AFI.com/Silver or through www.spookyfest.com

The Spooky Movie All Fest Pass grants the bearer access to all screenings in the 2016 Spooky Movie Film Festival.  All Fest Passes can be purchased at AFI Silver online for just $80. After purchase, passes can be picked up at AFI Silver Theatre beginning Oct.5.

Spooky Movie 2016 – Full Schedule

Thursday, October 5 – Opening Night

7:15 p.m.
Trash Fire
Introduction and post screening Q&A with filmmaker Richard Bates, Jr.
“TRASH FIRE starts in a dark, desperate place and only gets darker and more desperate. It will leave you shaken, but the visceral experience of it is exhilarating. Four out of five skulls” – BloodyDisgusting Richard Bates Jr.(EXCISION, SUBURBAN GOTHIC, Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival favorites) returns with another brilliantly twisted and dark story of familial love. At a relationship crossroads, Isabelle (Angela Trimbur, THE FINAL GIRLS) insists she and her boyfriend, Owen (Adrian Grenier, ENTOURAGE), go on a road trip to meet his family—his unbearably burned sister Pearl (AnnaLynne McCord, EXCISION) and nasty grandmother Violet (Fionnula Flanagan, THE GUARD, THE OTHERS). As a tangled web of secrets, lies, and murder unfolds, Bates masterfully pulls off a genre-subverting gut-punching final act that will leave you astonished. DIR/SCR Richard Bates, Jr.; PROD David Lawson Jr., Lawrence Mattis, Matt Smith. U.S., 2016, color, 91 min. NOT RATED
Preceded by
Born Again – Worst. Satanists. Ever. DIR/SCR Jason Tostevin. U.S., 2016, color, 6 min. NOT RATED

Thursday, October 6

7:15 p.m.
Peelers
“Plenty of blood, guts, bodily fluids, humor, and nuditorious actions to go around… I’ve got to admit, I was entertained from start to finish” – Dread Central Former baseball player Blue Jean Douglas is closing down her small-town strip club and leaving for good. But on the clubs closing night, what starts out as a fun-filled last hurrah, quickly turns into a bloodbath when a crew of coal miners arrive, bringing a deadly and contagious contaminant to the party. With the victims piling up, Blue Jean must step up to the plate to protect her family, her friends, her strippers, and her bar before it’s too late. PEELERS is the follow-up to Schelenz’s cult favorite SKEW, which screened at the Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival in 2011. DIR/SCR/PROD Sevé Schelenz; SCR Lisa DeVita. Canada, 2016, color, 95 min. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
Hada – Hada comes to visit Daniel because his last baby tooth has fallen out. What Daniel doesn’t expect is that his worst enemy is the light. More fun with teeth! DIR/SCR Tony Morales. Spain, 2015, color, 9 min. In Spanish with English subtitles. NOT RATED

9:30 p.m.
East Coast Premiere
Sadako Vs. Kayako

“The film pays off with a horrifying, jaw-dropping climax that filled the crowded movie theatre with audible delight.” – Bloody Disgusting Japanese horror fans rejoice! Director Kôji Shiraishi (NOROI: THE CURSE; A SLIT-MOUTHED WOMAN – which had its US premiere at the 2007 SpookyMovie Film Festival) finally pits two of cinema’s most iconic demons against one another in a spectacular mash-up of the beloved RINGU (THE RING) and JU-ON (THE GRUDGE) franchises. Natsumi (Aimi Satsukawa) is a young woman with just two days to live after watching a cursed videotape. Of course, THE RING’s Sadako is now out to get her. Meanwhile, high school student Suzuka (Tina Tamashiro) stumbles into the abandoned house possessed by THE GRUDGE’s Kayako, and she too realizes she doesn’t have much time. The only way to break the curse? Natsumi and Suzuka must engineer an epic showdown between the two ghastly ghosts. The fourteenth film in THE RING series, and the twelfth film in THE GRUDGE series, SADAKO VS. KAYAKO is a love letter to J-horror, and a chance for fans worldwide to witness the ultimate cinematic clash of the titans. Special thanks to Shudder for assisting with this premiere. “The J-horror to end all J-horrors.” – Variety DIR/SCR Kôji Shiraishi; SCR Takashi Shimizu, Kôji Suzuki. Japan, 2016, color, 98 min, DCP. In Japanese with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
Teeth – Winner of Jury awards at AFI FEST presented by Audi and SXSW, and featuring voice talent by Richard E. Grant, TEETH chronicles one man’s life through the loss of his most neglected possessions: his teeth. DIR/SCR/PROD Daniel Gray, Tom Brown. UK/Hungary/U.S., 2015, color, 6 min. NOT RATED

Friday, October 7

7:15 p.m.
Neither Heaven Nor Earth
“It’s effective, spooky and moves beyond the clichés of combat into troubling political and metaphysical territory.” – A.O. Scott, New York Times Afghanistan 2014. As the withdrawal of French troops approaches, Captain Antares Bonassieu (Jérémie Renier, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, L’ENFANT, SAINT LAURENT) and his squad have been assigned a surveillance mission in a remote valley of Wakhan, on the border of Pakistan. Despite the troops’ determination, control of the secluded valley slowly falls out of their hands. One dark night, soldiers begin to mysteriously disappear. In his first feature, director Clément Cogitore transforms the dusty Afghan landscape into a setting for a breathtaking metaphysical thriller, recalling the eerie mystery of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and the paranoid horror of John Carpenter’s THE THING. A critical success at Cannes, NEITHER HEAVEN NOR HELL is a contemporary ghost story that conveys the madness of war with seething pressure and unrelenting terror. DIR Clément Cogitore; PROD Jean-Christophe Reymond. France/Belgium, 2015, color, 100 min. In French and Farsi with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
Edmond – In this delightful stop-motion short, which won the Short Film Jury Award at Sundance for Animation, an oddball felted character slips through floors into the past and the deepest parts of his psyche. DIR/SCR Nina Gantz; PROD Emilie Jouffroy. UK. 2015, color, 9 min. NOT RATED

9:30 p.m.
Phantasm: Ravager
The fifth, and seemingly final entry in Don Coscarelli’s revolutionary film series, PHANTASM: RAVAGER completes the forty-year saga of a courageous ice-cream vendor named Reggie (Reggie Bannister) and his lifelong pursuit of the sinister Tall Man (Angus Scrimm, in his final on-screen performance). In a quest across dark dimensions, Reggie is reunited with brothers Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and Jody (Bill Thornbury) for one last time. Coscarelli, a true independent maverick, who co-wrote the script, promised Entertainment Weekly earlier this year that PHANTASM: RAVAGER “ties up a lot of the storylines and answers some questions that fans have had.” DIR/SCR David Hartman; PROD/SCR Don Coscarelli. U.S., 2016, color, 87min. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
Killer – When Dusty masturbates for the first time, something bad happens. DIR/SCR Matt Kazman; PROD Ben Altarescu. U.S., 2015, color, 20 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, October 8

2:00 p.m.
Creepy
“The title says it all in the latest psychological thriller from Japanese horror maestro Kiyoshi Kurosawa.” – Variety. After a traumatic incident, criminal psychologist and former police detective Koichi Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) moves to a new neighborhood with his wife Yasuko (Yuko Takeuchi), to make a fresh start. Upon meeting their new neighbors, the Nishinos, Takakura senses something odd about them. Then, he is approached by the Nishinos’ daughter, whose shocking whispered confession shatters the serenity of his new life: “That man in my house is not my father… He’s a total stranger.” Kiyoshi Kurosawa (CURE) returns with brilliance to the genre that made him a cult name. DIR/SCR Kiyoshi Kurosawa; SCR Chihiro Ikeda, from the novel by Yutaka Maekawa; PROD Tadashi Osumi, Kota Kurota. Japan, 2016, color, 130 min. In Japanese with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
The Stylist – Claire is a lonely hairstylist with an unnerving desire to escape her disappointing reality. When her final client of the evening arrives requesting a perfect look, Claire has plans of her own. DIR/SCR Jill Gevargizian. U.S., 2016, color, 15 min. NOT RATED

5:45 p.m.
The Eyes of My Mother
“A Sundance Next standout, Nicolas Pesce’s impressive, highly original horror fable is the stuff of very beautiful nightmares.” – Variety In their secluded farmhouse, a former surgeon teaches her daughter, Francisca, to understand anatomy and be unfazed by death. One afternoon, a mysterious visitor shatters the idyll of Francisca’s family life, deeply traumatizing the young girl, but also awakening some unique curiosities. Though she clings to her increasingly reticent father, Francisca’s loneliness and scarred nature converge years later when her longing to connect with the world around her takes on a distinctly dark form. Shot in crisp black and white, the haunting, and at times disturbing, visual compositions of THE EYES OF MY MOTHER evoke its protagonist’s isolation and illuminate her deeply unbalanced worldview. Genre-inflected, but so strikingly unique as to defy categorization. DIR/SCR Nicolas Pesce; PROD Max Born, Jacob Wasserman, Schuyler Weiss. U.S., 2016, b&w, 77 min. In English and Portuguese with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
The Sunken Convent [Det Sjunkne Kloster] – Told without words and inspired by Hans Christian Andersen, this a grotesque and slightly surreal story of bad habits. DIR/SCR Michael Panduro. Netherlands, 2016, color, 15 min. In Dutch with English subtitles. NOT RATED

7:45 p.m.
My Father Die
“The swamp-thing progeny of BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD and THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (with a little CAPE FEAR thrown in), MY FATHER DIE offers blood-and-thunder Southern-gothic excess both tempered and heightened by vivid directorial texturing.” –Variety In this confident feature debut from Sean Brosnan (son of Pierce Brosnan, who produces), Joe Anderson (ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, HANNIBAL) stars as Asher, a boy left deaf and dumb at the age of 12 after an attack by his father, Ivan (Gary Stretch) leaves his brother dead. Ten years later, Asher is still training to avenge his brother’s murder, and his father is rotting behind bars. But when Ivan is unexpectedly released, Asher’s plans for revenge kick in. What starts as a simple revenge tale quickly turns into a horrific exploitation odyssey that channels Jeremy Saulnier’s BLUE RUIN by way of Ted Kotcheff’s Australian classic WAKE IN FRIGHT. “An experience you won’t forget in a hurry, MY FATHER DIE is a beautiful-looking slice of brutality and wanton destruction.” – Dread Central DIR/SCR Sean Brosnan; PROD Daniel J. Hahn, Sean Brosnan, Sanja Banic, Orian Williams, Alma Bogdan-Turner, Pierce Brosnan. U.S., 2016, color, 94 min. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
Dawn of the Deaf- When a sonic pulse infects the hearing population, a small group of deaf people must band together to survive.
DIR/SCR Rob Savage; SCR Jed Shepherd. UK, 2016, color, 11 min. In British Sign Language with English subtitles. NOT RATED

10:00 p.m.
Bad Blood: The Movie
Winner: Audience Award and Best Feature, Chattanooga Film Festival After an amphibian attack leaves college student Victoria Miller infected with a mutational disease, she returns home only to have the antidote to her affliction confiscated by evil stepfather. Locked in her room without her medicine, she transforms into a hideous monster, while an obsessive private investigator uncovers the dark truth about her condition. A love letter to the Stuart Gordon/Frank Henenlotter mad science opuses of the ’80’s, BAD BLOOD: THE MOVIE is an amphibious twist on classic werewolf mythology. Equal parts X-FILES and TALES FROM THE CRYPT, this debut from filmmaker Tim Reis blends humor, horror and practical creature effects (handled by James Sizemore) to finally give us the “werefrog” film we have always wanted. DIR/SCR Tim Reis; PROD Tim Reis, James Sizemore, Michael Bremer, Mike Malloy. U.S., 2016, color, 81 min. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
Death Metal – A metalhead inherits a satanic guitar that will riff him to shreds. DIR/SCR Chris McInroy. U.S., 2016, color, 5 min. NOT RATED

Sunday, October 9

3:00 p.m.
Another Evil
“Supernatural pests prove less problematic than the plain old human kind.” – Variety After encountering a ghost in his family’s vacation home painter Dan, (Steve Zissis, BAGHEAD, CYRUS, TOGETHERNESS) secretly hires an “industrial-grade exorcist” named Os (Mark Proksch, THE OFFICE, PORTLANDIA) to chase off the unwelcome spirits. With his wife Mary (Jennifer Irwin, EASTBOUND & DOWN) in the dark about this unconventional solution, Dan soon realizes that ridding the home of evil won’t be as simple as it seems. In a haunted house tale for the 21st century, writer/director Carson D. Mell (EASTBOUND & DOWN, SILICON VALLEY) effortlessly glides between truly frightening beats and laugh-out-loud dialogue, keeping the audience guessing until the very end. DIR/SCR Carson D. Mell. PROD Sebastian Pardo, Riel Roch Decter. U.S., 2016, color, 91 min. NOT RATED
Preceded by:
Time to Eat – Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival alum Luke Asa Guidici (CERTIFIED) returns with a troubling tale about a mischievous boy’s trip to the basement. DIR/SCR Luke Asa Guidici. U.S., 2016, color, 4 min. NOT RATED

5:00 p.m.
North American Premiere
Beyond the Walls
When a young speech therapist (Veerle Baetens, THE ARDENNES) unexpectedly inherits her neighbor’s house, she begins to discover shifting hallways and rooms that fill her with terror. As she attempts to explore, she learns that her ever-changing house is also manipulating other occupants, interweaving space-time continuums that lead Lisa on a journey into the deepest recesses of her psyche. This new three-part mini-series, from the creators of THE WITNESS, transports the audience into a frightening and beautiful universe. Special thanks to Shudder for assisting with this premiere. DIR/SCR Hervé Hadmar; SCR Marc Herpoux, Sylvie Chanteux; PROD Christine de Bourbon Busset. France, 2016, color, 150 min. In French with English subtitles. NOT RATED