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Best of the Fest Hits Cannes: ‘Still Life,’ ‘Darkness by Day’ and More

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Variety is reporting on an international genre buffet.

Steeping this year’s Cannes in late-night carnage and eerie fantasy, Blood Window, Ventana Sur’s genre film market, will team with the world’s top six fantastic film fests for five Blood Window Midnight Galas of Latin American genre movies.

Four event partners collaborate to select one film each at the Blood Window Galas: Austin’s Fantastic Fest, Spain’s Sitges-Catalonia Festival, the Puchon Fantastic Fest, and the Frontieres Co-production Market, a joint venture of Montreal’s Fantasia Fest, Vision-in-Motion and Brussels Festival.

As at Blood Window, Mexico’s Morbido Fest will prize the best film at the Screenings with a mix of post-production services and Mexican distribution.

Instancing the growing diversification of Latin American genre production, the first Blood Window Midnight Galas line-up includes two sci-fi movies – The Incident and Fallen Cape – plus a rabies outbreak movie with Sapphic undertones: Darkness by Day (pictured).

Put forward by South Korea’s Puchon-PiFan Fest, Darkness by Day, a village-set mood genre auteur piece helmed by Argentine’s Martin Desalvo.

Helmed by Mexico’s Isaac Ezban, and chosen by Austin’s Fantastic Fest, where it won a Special Mention for Best Presentation at the Fantastic Market last September, The Incident combines two stories of people trapped in illogical endless spaces for 35 years: Two brothers and a detective locked on an infinite stairwell, and a family on an endless road to the beach.

Directed by Spain’s Santiago Alvarado, and put forward by Sitges, Fallen Cape turns on a wrongly disgraced superhero, forced to work in a store.

Unspooling May 16-20 at the Rue d’Antibes’ Star Cinema, the Blood Window showcase kicks off with Gabriel Grieco’s Still Life, from Argentina.

A serial killer slasher/procedural set in Argentina’s big ranch country where the suspects all belong to a group of vegan activists and the victims to the cattle industry, Still Life snagged four plaudits at Blood Window’s Bloody Work In Progress last December, including selection for Morbido’s 2014 edition.

The Cannes showcase closes with The House at the End of Time, from Venezuela’s Alejandro Hidalgo, a symptomatic mix of horror – a mother of two experiences ghoulish apparitions in an old house – with reflections on the psychology of family dynamics: 30 years later, now elderly, she returns to try to discover what really happened.

Horror movie fanatic who co-founded Bloody Disgusting in 2001. Producer on Southbound, V/H/S/2/3/94, SiREN, Under the Bed, and A Horrible Way to Die. Chicago-based. Horror, pizza and basketball connoisseur. Taco Bell daily. Franchise favs: Hellraiser, Child's Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Scream and Friday the 13th. Horror 365 days a year.

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‘Dead Mail’ Exclusive Images: SXSW Horror Movie Begins With a Blood-Stained Postal Box Delivery

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Dead Mail SXSW Dead Mail interview

One of the genre films we’re looking forward to checking out at SXSW this year is Dead Mail, written and directed by Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy and premiering on March 9.

Meagan Navarro will be reviewing Dead Mail for Bloody Disgusting as part of her SXSW coverage, and she writes in her preview for the upcoming fest: “Dead Mail leans heavily into the ’80s analog aesthetic, delivering a unique crime thriller unafraid to get offbeat with its dark narrative. Expect its characters to be as atypical as Dead Mail‘s sense of style.”

In the SXSW 2024 horror film…

“On a desolate, Midwestern county road, a bound man crawls towards a remote postal box, managing to slide a blood-stained plea-for-help message into the slot before a panicking figure closes in behind him. The note makes its way to the county post office and onto the desk of Jasper, a seasoned and skilled “dead letter” investigator, responsible for investigating lost mail and returning it to its sender. As he investigates further, Jasper meets Trent, a strange yet unassuming man who has taken up residence at the men’s home where Jasper lives.

“When Trent unexpectedly shows up at Jasper’s office, it becomes clear he has a vested interest in the note, and will stop at nothing to retrieve it…”

Sterling Macer, Jr., John Fleck, Susan Priver, Micki Jackson, Tomas Boykin, and Nick Heyman star in Dead Mail. Preview the film with an exclusive image gallery below.

Dead Mail SXSW horror movie

Dead Mail SXSW horror

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