By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The 24th installment of the popular fest has a heavy emphasis on the horrific.
The Boston Underground Film Festival has announced the complete lineup for this year’s event, which takes place March 20-24 at The Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. There will be malevolent religious figures, killer spiders, a backwoods killer, dystopian brutality and more on view in the feature presentations, and a number of genre shorts blocks will be screened as well. For tickets and badges, hit up the official sites of the festival and The Brattle.
The feature lineup is:
BOY KILLS WORLD (Closing Night Film)
Moritz Mohr/Germany, South Africa, USA/2024
A dystopian fever dream action film that follows Boy, a deaf person with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, he is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.
FEMME (New England Premiere)
Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping/UK/2023
Follows Jules, who is targeted in a horrific homophobic attack, destroying his life and career. Some time after that event he encounters Preston, one of his attackers, in a gay sauna. He wants revenge.
HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDAL PERSON (New England Premiere)
Ariane Louis-Seize/Canada/2023
A young woman vampire is unable to kill to meet her need for blood, but may have found a solution in a young man with suicidal tendencies.
IMMACULATE (pictured above; East Coast Premiere/Opening Night Film)
Michael Mohan/USA/2024
Cecilia, a woman of devout faith, is warmly welcomed to the picture-perfect Italian countryside where she is offered a new role at an illustrious convent. But it becomes clear to Cecilia that her new home harbors dark and horrifying secrets.
IN A VIOLENT NATURE (East Coast Premiere)
Chris Nash/Canada/2024
An ambient horror slasher that methodically depicts the enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness. (See review here)
INFESTED (New England Premiere)
Sébastien Vaniček/France/2023
Residents of a rundown French apartment building battle against an army of deadly, rapidly reproducing spiders.
OFF RAMP (East Coast Premiere)
Nathan Tape/USA/2023
A couple of lovable, degenerate Juggalos must sojourn through America’s hellish underbelly to The Gathering of the Juggalos, the one place on earth they feel accepted.
OMEN (New England Premiere)
Baloji/Belgium, Congo/2023
After spending years in Belgium, a young Congolese man returns to his birthplace of Kinshasa to confront the intricacies of his family and culture.
SLEEP (New England Premiere)
Jason Yu/South Korea/2023
A young, expectant wife must figure out how to stop her husband’s nightmarish sleepwalking habits before he harms himself or his family.
STRANGE KINDNESS (World Premiere)
Joseph Mault/USA/2024
STRANGE KINDNESS is a film about isolation, the shocking acts of violence that have come to punctuate our American dream, and what empathy might look like at its further limits. While the film’s content is political its treatment of themes is far more mythological in nature.
THE BECOMERS (New England Premiere)
Zach Clark/USA/2023
A body-snatching alien comes to Earth, reconnects with their partner, and tries to find their way in modern America.
TIGER STRIPES (Massachusetts Premiere)
Amanda Nell Eu/Malaysia/2023
An 11-year-old girl is carefree until she starts to experience horrifying physical changes to her body.
WITH LOVE AND A MAJOR ORGAN (New England Premiere)
Kim Albright/Canada/2023
In an alternate world where hearts are made of objects and suppressing emotions is self-care, a lonely woman rips out her own heart for the man she loves, only to discover that he has run away with it.
