HORRORTHON 2021 – Full Line up Announced

This year, IFI Horrorthon goes hybrid in a celebration of suspense. In the spirit of We Need to Do Something, the festival returns with a feast for the senses and an abundance of entertainment, in-cinema at the IFI in Eustace Street, and online on IFI@Home. New horror from the UK, US, Argentina, Taiwan, South Korea and Kazakhstan is on offer in this year’s hair-raising programme.

Speaking about this year’s festival, the first to go hybrid, Horrorthon spokesman Mick Fox said, ‘We are more than excited to bring the festival back to the cinema as well as online the very day all restrictions are to hopefully lift. We’ve got 26 exciting, and gore-filled treats in store for you over the bank holiday four days. So, get ready for the event of the year. We can all get together once again and make it seem like old times’.

This year’s hybrid line-up of 26 haunting films includes Irish film Bring Out the Fear, which explores a walk through the woods on the final day of one couple’s doomed relationship. Director Richard Waters’s debut feature is full of atmosphere and twisted folklore. Directed by Scott Cooper and produced by Guillermo del Toro, Antlers features superstition and supernatural elements in small-town Oregon as a school teacher and police officer brother harbour concerns about one of the students. The Deep House, from directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (Inside, 2007; Leatherface, 2017), brings another supernatural horror to the programme, featuring urban explorers investigating a submerged haunted house in France.

Portmanteau films screening include Isolation, featuring nine tales and one deadly outbreak, as isolated citizens attempt to survive an increasingly deadly outbreak, and the black and white Vampus Horror Tales in which an eerie gravedigger hosts four horror stories, each directed by a different first-time filmmaker.

This year’s festival offers behind-the-scenes insights into horror itself, with the documentary Alien on Stage, a film about a crew of bus drivers in Dorset, who create a theatrical adaptation of Alien(1979), and the new doc on folk horror, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, which follows the genre’s history and development, from 1970s British television films to the modern genre film, touching on over 100 titles and 50 interviewees.

Closing film The Sadness, screening in-cinema only, depicts a country weary of attempting to combat a pandemic for one year. When a frustrated nation lets its guard down, the virus mutates, and a mind-altering plague arises. Canadian director Rob Jabbaz’s Taipei-set drama is full of gore yet reverence, and a desperate quest for survival.

Individual cinema tickets for Horrorthon films cost €11.50 for IFI Members, and €13 for non-Members. A four-day festival pass is available for €140. Five-film passes are available for €50 and ten-film passes are available for €90. Individual tickets are on sale now in person at the IFI Box Office, by phone on 016793477, or online at www.ifi.ie/horrorthon. Four-day passes and multi-film passes must be purchased in-person or over the phone from the IFI Box Office.

Online screenings cost €7.50, with a full online festival bundle available, plus five-film and ten-film bundles, offering a personalised selection of Horrorthon titles – explore the full programme atwww.ifihome.ie/page/horrorthon2021.

FULL FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
Friday, October 22nd
Cyst – 13.00 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
Midnight – 14.35 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It – 16.50 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
When the Screaming Starts – 18.45 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
The Deep House – 20.45 (IFI)
Forgiveness – 22.40 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
The Long Dark Trail – 22.50 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
Red Snow – 23.00 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)

Saturday, October 23rd
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror – 12.00 (IFI and IFI@Home)
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes – 15.45 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes – 17.20 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
Ditched – 19.00 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
Antlers – 20.50 (IFI)
Isolation – 22.50 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
Love Hurts – 23.00 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
The Unburied – 23.10 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)

Sunday, October 24th
Post Mortem – 13.00 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
Alien on Stage – 15.15 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
The Retaliators – 17.05 (IFI)
Crabs! – 19.10 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
Broadcast Signal Intrusion – 20.50 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)

Monday, October 25th
Vampus Horror Tales – 13.00 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
Buzz Cut – 15.05 (IFI), 12.00 (IFI@Home)
Bring Out the Fear – 17.10 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
We Need to Do Something – 19.00 (IFI), 18.00 (IFI@Home)
The Sadness – 21.00 (IFI)