by FilmInk Staff
For the first-time in the festival’s 14-year history, MONSTER FEST will hold all legs of this year’s edition, MONSTER FEST 2024, across Australia concurrently, with Melbourne running October 4 – 12 at Cinema Nova and Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide & Perth from October 4 – 6 at Event Cinemas (Burwood, Brisbane City, Marion & Innaloo).
With two weeks to go before the MONSTER FEST 2024 opens, Monster Fest have unveiled this year’s festival artwork, from artist/designer Johny Bekavac of Smoov Design Co.
Monster Fest have also revealed their final programming for MONSTER FEST 2024.
Following his 2021 breakthrough feature, COMING HOME IN THE DARK, filmmaker James Ashcroft returns with THE RULE OF JENNY PEN, a magnificently nasty tale of a former judge (Geoffrey Rush) recovering from a stroke and left to the tender mercies of an elderly psychopath (John Lithgow), who employs a hand puppet to rule over the residents of a nursing home.
Are you ready to Party? Well you better be, as parties don’t get any wilder than when you party with FRANKIE FREAKO, the latest feature from PSYCHO GOREMAN filmmaker Steven Kostanski, an off-the-wall, practical effects-driven, bad taste, horror-comedy extravaganza in the vein of GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE and THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE.
Filmmaker Brian Taylor (CRANK) delivers an adaptation of Mike Mignola’s beloved HELLBOY, that returns the franchise to its darker horror comic book origins with HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN, that sees Hellboy and a rookie BPRD agent stranded in 1950s rural Appalachia, only to discover a small community haunted by witches and led by the Crooked Man.
From E.L. Katz, the director responsible for gleefully nasty and darkly hilarious CHEAP THRILLS and screenwriter Simon Barrett (YOU’RE NEXT) comes AZRAEL, a dystopian survival horror that pits Australia’s own Samara Weaving against a horde of ruthless religious extremists.
Monster Fest alumni Sarah Appleton & Phillip Escott follow-up 2021’s THE FOUND FOOTAGE PHENOMENON with GENERATION TERROR, an expansive documentary on horror cinema of the late ’90s through mid-2000s with interviews from Adam Wingard, Rob Zombie, Xavier Gens, Neil Marshall, Srdjan Spasejevic, Alice Lowe, Christopher Smith among others.
Fresh from its World Premiere at the New Zealand International Film Festival, director Sasha Rainbow‘s GRAFTED, a Kiwi body-horror film about a Chinese student who finds a new way of achieving popularity one bloody body at a time.
Along with the aforementioned films, there is additional programming in Melbourne with select offerings in other cities.
FEAR BELOW
(MEL, SYD, BRIS & ADL EXCLUSIVE)
Monster Fest veteran filmmaker Matthew Holmes (THE COST, THE LEGEND OF BEN HALL) returns with an underwater horror-adventure that follows a rag-tag team of divers attempting to salvage a sunken car from a river inhabited by a highly aggressive bull shark.
SCURRY
(MEL & BRIS EXCLUSIVE)
After wowing audiences with the Aussie alien invasion epic OCCUPATION RAINFALL, director Luke Sparke returns to his horror roots with SCURRY, a claustrophobic nightmare set in an ever narrowing tunnel below a city under attack.
WAVES OF MADNESS
(MEL & SYD EXCLUSIVE)
Directed by Jason Trost (THE FP) and inspired by classic video games like RESIDENT EVIL and SILENT HILL with a touch of 1930s horror, THE WAVES OF MADNESS is a vivid Lovecraftian action/horror film shot completely from a side-scrolling perspective.
STATES OF MIND
(MEL, SYD & BRIS EXCLUSIVE)
In 2021, director Ché Baker wowed Monster Fest audiences with the amazing SFX in his award-winning short film VR GRANDPA, and now he’s back to do it again, this time with a mind-bending horror that follows a group psychics as they complete for some serious prize money at a weekend retreat until an exorcism goes horribly wrong and unleashes a terrible evil.
ULTIMATE CHABITE
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
Only the French could conceive of a film this outrageous, this dark, this… alarmingly possible? ULTIMATE CHABITE is an apocalyptic-themed black comedy that chronicles the downfall of society when men across the globe become obsessed with a tag-like game that transfers the state of ‘it’ by tapping your opponent on the balls and yelling CHABITE!
CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
An absolutely bonkers action-horror-musical-comedy epic from Estonia, that was shot guerilla-style in 2013 and spent a modest 10 years in post-production before making its way here. The mutant eurotrash lovechild of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Andy Milligan, this bizarre monstrosity may just be the weirdest, most wonderful movie that Monster Fest has ever unleashed upon an audience.
CHILDREN OF THE WICKER MAN
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
A deeply emotional and devastatingly personal exploration of the impact that the Citizen Kane of horror films had on the family of the film’s director, Robin Hardy, half a century after THE WICKER MAN was first released.
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEAD YEARS AGO
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
Delve into the life, music, & artistic output of Stu Spasm aka Stuart Gray, the notorious underground rocker who created the most psychotronic group to ever emerge from Australia – the legendary LUBRICATED GOAT.
FILM SAFARI GHANA: THE CHRONICLES OF NINJA
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
Join us for Australian gonzo filmmaker Andrew (THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG) Leavold’s most out-there film adventure thus far as he parachutes onto a film set in Wild West Africa and into a starring role in a slavery-themed action movie (appropriately called titled WHITE DEVIL) with director Ninja (B14, AFRICAN KUNG FU NAZIS), all the while prepping his next narrative feature, THE TALLER THEY COME, complete with a cast comprised of the littlest people Africa has to offer.
AN AMERICAN MASQUERADE
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
Monster Fest alumni Jasmine Jakupi and Addison Heath (MONDO YAKUZA, THE VIPER’S HEX) make their triumphant return to the Fest with their most ambitious feature yet, an action-packed road movie, set across the American west and fuelled by nasty sex, illicit drugs and extreme violence.
FREELANCE
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
Melbourne-based filmmaker John Balazs follows up his brutal 2021 revenge-thriller, RAGE, with FREELANCE, a disturbing and nightmarish tale with echoes of Joel Schumacher’s 8MM and Brian De Palma’s BLOW OUT.
TRASHARAMA
(MEL EXCLUSIVE)
Murder City’s favourite son, Dick Dale, returns to Melbourne with a TRASHARAMA program bursting at the seams with gross-out horror, bad taste comedies, sick n’ twisted animations, science fiction scat and other genres not even invented yet! Trash ain’t trash when it’s in TRASHARAMA.
In addition to TRASHARAMA, Melbourne will host four additional Shorts Programs (GUTBUSTERS, STUDENT SHORTS, HAUNTED HEARTS & GRIM VISIONS).
Monster Fest’s Melbourne festival also features three repertory screenings including an all-new restoration of filmmaker Alex Chandon’s 1997 mondo bizarro PERVIRELLA, a 15th Anniversary Screening of THE FINAL DESTINATION 3D to tie-in with GENERATION TERROR and in keeping with the unofficial ‘all things small and beautiful’ theme inspired by FRANKIE FREAKO and THE RULE OF JENNY PEN, a retrospective screening of 1986’s CRITTERS.
Finally, the Melbourne festival will have a Closing Night Party that promises to be the party to end all parties, in collaboration with Brunswick’s STAY GOLD, the party takes place from 11pm Saturday 12 October with Miles (THE NIGHT TERRORS) Brown on decks until ungodly hours.
This newly revealed programming joins the previously announced MONSTER FEST’S TERRIFIER TAKEOVER featuring the Australian Premiere of Damien Leone’s TERRIFIER 3 along with accompanying screenings of TERRIFIER & TERRIFIER 2 occurring at all festival locations on Saturday 5 October.
Monster Fest 2024 runs October 4 – 12 in Melbourne at Cinema Nova and Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide & Perth from October 4 – 6 at Event Cinemas (Burwood, Brisbane City, Marion & Innaloo).
MELBOURNE
Cinema Nova
Tickets
SYDNEY
Event Cinemas Burwood
Tickets
BRISBANE
Event Cinemas Brisbane City
Tickets
ADELAIDE
Event Cinemas Marion
Tickets
PERTH
Event Cinemas Innaloo
Tickets
