Overlook Film Festival
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Overlook Film Festival 2023: Vampires and Ventriloquist Demons (Renfield, Only Lovers Left Alive, Talk To Me)
After a four-hour flight delay (owed to a malfunctioning back-up system accessory, subsequent plane evacuation and a lengthy re-fueling process), I arrived in New Orleans exhausted but still, miraculously, eager to spend much more time sitting in a shifting rotation of seats. Even if I wanted to, I wasn’t entitled to complain much. I’d been invited to cover the annual genre-themed Overlook Film Festival, now in its seventh year, and was genuinely thrilled by the opportunity. As a relatively green (not to mention newly full-time) magazine staffer, longtime horror obsessive and someone who’d yet to visit New Orleans, Overlook presented […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 12, 2023 -
“Self-Aware Doesn’t Work for Us”: Joe Dante on The Movie Orgy, Matinee at 30 and William Castle’s The Tingler
All of Joe Dante‘s films revolve around distinctly American paranoias—consumerism, threats to the nuclear family, suburban NIMBY sensibilities—but none feel more entrenched in a tangible era of American anxiety than Matinee. Now 30 years old, the film takes place during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, centering B-movie shlock jockey Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, riffing big time on William Castle), who lands in a panicked Key West, Florida for a promotional screening of his radioactive new horror film Mant (half-man, half-ant, all monster!) Both enraptured and horrified by the real-world implications Woolsey’s film hints at (nuclear disfigurement, neighborhoods-turned-warzones, the […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 10, 2023 -
Overlook Film Festival Announces 2023 Award Winners
The Overlook Film Festival announces today the films that won both Jury and Audience Awards during the 2023 edition. The seventh iteration of the horror-fueled festival took place from March 30 through April 2 in New Orleans, featuring over 50 films from 12 countries. This was an especially vital year for the festival, boasting 45 sold out screenings, 110 filmmaker guests appearing in-person and approximately 5,000 audience members in attendance. Two feature films were granted Audience Awards this year: first place went to Australian filmmakers Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes ’70s TV talkshow spoof Late Night with the Devil. The […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 6, 2023 -
The Overlook Film Festival Announces 2023 Lineup
Today, The Overlook Film Festival unveils the slate for its 2023 edition, to take place in New Orleans from March 30-April 2. The horror-focused festival will open with Universal’s Dracula reboot Renfield and close with Evil Dead Rise, the latest entry in the Evil Dead franchise. Additional programming includes interactive events, live performances, immersive programming and parties. Several retrospective titles have also been announced, entailing a 30th anniversary screening of Joe Dante‘s Matinee, a 10th anniversary screening of Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive, Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film The Lodger accompanied by a live score and William Castle’s The Tingler “featuring surprise […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 28, 2023 -
U.S. Genre Film Festivals Collaborate on Nightstream, a Collective Virtual Event
Five U.S. film festivals — Boston Underground Film Festival, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, North Bend Festival, Overlook Film Festival and Popcorn Frights Film Festival — are responding to the coronavirus pandemic’s challenges to the festival and exhibition landscape by creating a new virtual festival, Nightstream, that will run October 8 – 11. Programmers from all five festivals will curate the event, which will contain, according to a press release, “a mix of international horror, fantasy, sci-fi, vanguard, and underground films that capture the distinct curatorial spirit of each festival.” In addition, “Proceeds from the event will be shared with all participating filmmakers […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 13, 2020 -
Hereditary, Horror and the Power of Choice
It was the closing night of the Overlook Film Festival and everyone was gathered at a mansion on the outskirts of town. I was coming out of the bathroom, spooked, because A24 had planted some Hereditary sound effects next to the toilet. Jesus. The film, which comes out today, had closed the festival earlier that night and had left everyone on edge — deliciously so. I grabbed a glass of wine, discussing the experience with a stranger who was leaning against a wall outside next to some friends. Why do we put ourselves through all this? There was a number […]
by Meredith Alloway on Jun 8, 2018
