As the engines rev up for this year’s SXSW Film Festival, the Midnighters strand line-up has been revealed, consisting of 11 genre movies, 9 of which will be World Premieres.
Two films we are particularly excited about come from Dark Sky Films, who took last year’s SXSW film festival by storm with Dennis Widmyer & Kevin Kolsch’s Starry Eyes. This year the studio will be contributing with New Zealand’s heavy metal gorefest, Deathgasm and Ted Geoghegan’s vengeful spirit shocker, We Are Still Here.
First up is Deathgasm which comes from first-time feature director, Jason Lei Howden. The film follows metal-thrashing Brodie and Zakk who come across a mysterious piece of sheet music said to grant Ultimate Power to whoever plays it. Unfortunately, said music also summons an ancient evil entity known as Aeloth The Blind One. Surprisingly, the New Zealand director cites Deathgasm as being autobiographical in nature (except for the demons).
Then we have We Are Still Here, the directorial debut from writer/director, Ted Geoghegan who has been involved in the horror industry for over a decade as both a writer, producer and publicist. Set in the cold winter fields of New England, the film sees a grieving couple fall prey to a family of vengeful spirits residing in their new abode. We Are Still Here is produced by Travis Stevens, responsible for bringing us the likes of Cheap Thrills and the aforementioned Starry Eyes so we can surely expect something of the same caliber.
We’ll leave you to enjoy the official SXSW trailers for both movies:
For the full Midnighters line-up head over to the official SXSW site here: http://sxsw.com/film/screenings/2015-lineup#Midnighters
Words: Howard Gorman (@HowardGorman)
