Creepy crawly cinema

Slimebone City Horror Festival returns next month

Poster for Slimebone Horror Festival.
Image supplied by: Supplied
Poster for Slimebone Horror Festival.

With October looming, it’s primetime for scary movies, and Kingston’s Slimebone City Horror Film Festival is just around the corner.

“The festival is totally dedicated to horror, and this is only the second year we’ve done it through a grant from the city,” said Liz Strange, the festival’s communications director.

“It all started from a conversation where we were noticing over the years that the age of the audience coming to film festivals was going up,” Strange said.

“We were trying to brainstorm about ways to maybe get students and younger folks out to film festivals, so this is what we came up with.”

When most people think of horror movies, big names such as The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity trilogy might come to mind. But according to Strange, there are plenty of lesser known horror and thriller flicks just waiting to send shivers down the spines of 2000 festival goers.

“The focus is just to kind of broaden people’s ideas about what horror is, that it’s not just all slasher films and there’s lots of different sub-genres in horror. We want to bring people out to see stuff that they probably wouldn’t ever get a chance to see anywhere else and maybe never even hear about,” Strange said.

Although cinema is at the root of the event, movie screenings aren’t the only fun activity the festival has to offer.

“We’re having our opening night gala which is in honour of the four-year anniversary of Black Christmas, which is a great Canadian classic. So we’re having a Black Christmas themed opening gala party,” Strange said.

In its second year of operation, the festival — which takes place at “The Screaming Room” on the second floor at 120 Princess St.

— will run for four days and showcase 11 feature-length horror films and six shorts.

In addition, some of the featured film’s creators including Allyson Mitchell, Mark Pariselli and David Dollard will be in attendance to meet with audience members at the opening gala and the closing party taking place at The Toucan.

The festival will include some special features from a range of different languages and styles such as Dead Snow 2 and Killjoy’s Castle.

“I can’t choose a favourite, but I’m a big fan of Dead Snow which we’re having a sequel to at the festival this year so I’m probably most excited to go and see that one,” said Strange when asked which film she’s the most enthusiastic about.

Slimebone City Horror Film Festival runs from October 8 to 11.

Tags

Festival, horror, movie

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