Misc
P-TOWN AND BLOOD: An Interview with Monster Makeup LLC on Making Horror—And Their Next Film, ‘Queen of the Rats’
Since even before I started writing for Horror Press, I’ve wanted to get a peek behind the curtain on how horror movie productions are made. Not just the films themselves, but the people.
How do you get the perfect storm of people to assemble and film a slasher?
How do practical effects creature features get all of their most important moving parts, the cast and crew, in place?
And with so many people with their own artistic vision, how do they keep from tearing each other’s heads off?
Today, I got those questions answered by the wonderful Monster Makeup LLC, the queer horror film collective that brought you Death Drop Gorgeous and their newest feature Saint Drogo.
What did they say about making these ventures, and their latest feature Queen of the Rats? Venture deeper, intrepid reader…
An Interview with Monster Makeup LLC
Pictured from left to right: Brandon Perras-Sanchez, Ryan Miller, and Michael J. Ahern
Just want to start off by saying, I saw Saint Drogo, and I enjoyed it a lot. Perfectly evokes all the vibes critics say it does, and that finale is gut-wrenching. Excellent stuff, and congrats on realizing that vision.
Michael J. Ahern: Thank you so much!
Christopher Dalpe: That’s awesome! Thank you.
Wayne Gonsalves: Hail, Saint Drogo.
The second thing I wanted to say was, all I could think about after I saw the climax of Saint Drogo was “Imagine just being in the area that day and seeing this crew off in the distance filming THAT”. Your effects are insane, has anybody ever stumbled across you guys shooting these scenes or preparing the effects and just lost it?
Brandon Perras-Sanchez: We had this weird curse placed upon us where no matter how far into the wintry wilderness or national shoreline we would travel, there would always be at least one person lingering around. We were filming the SFX heavy finale with Joe Castro on an extremely windy and freezing beach. Along with these harsh winter conditions, the tide was coming very close to washing away our props and equipment, so we had to relocate everything to the parking lot and film it there. While we were setting up, this group of four, very curious, and intrusive adults started hovering around us. We were polite at first and let them watch, but since we only had one take and opportunity to get this specific shot. Things were intense. One of the nosy spectators kept touching the makeup of one of our actors and asking really stupid questions. Her other friends were right next to us and trying to start conversations while we were about to shoot. We finally gave them the cold shoulder and they eventually got the hint, but I was ready to use one, if not all of them as actual props.
Kevin Bowden: We tried getting film permits so we could shoot in peace, but the film commission never responded so we were at the mercy of tourists coming up to us while shooting. It didn’t help that American Horror Story was also in town shooting so people thought we were part of that production.
Pictured from left to right: Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Michael J. Ahern
Speaking of insane practical effects, the grinder scene from Death Drop Gorgeous is incredible. It felt like the spiritual brother of that very over-the-top “explosion” scene from Frankenhooker and seemed super Henenlotter inspired which is something I love. We need to know, who thought of that for the kill?
BPS: It was from my cesspool of a brain. I am terrified of glory holes and am amazed that someone could just voluntarily put their dick through one without caring about what’s on the other side. We also were very adamant about trying to create kills people hadn’t seen which made my imagination run wild. I probably need to start taking multivitamins again.
CD: This is the kill that started it all really! In the early days, before Monster Makeup was founded, before DDG was even a script, Brandon and I were geeking out and riffing on how we’d love to see a good gay slasher – one that exploited the hook-up culture and sketchy red-flag scenarios that Queers find themselves in commonly. Glory hole, meat grinder…it felt natural.
I’ve been hyping Saint Drogo up to my friends who are gore hounds. To give people who haven’t seen it yet an idea: how much fake blood did you guys end up using in that finale over the course of however many takes it took to get it right?
BPS: When Joe Castro landed in Rhode Island, we immediately went to our house and made a couple of gallons using his secret recipe and at different consistencies, one was watery and one thicker for better drippage. For some reshoots, we bought 2 or 3 more gallons because filming blood is always a crapshoot on how it’s going to splatter or flow and look on camera. Each gore scene took about 2-4 takes, we used every drop we had.
MJA: The finale was shot, I think, four different times in three different locations: twice on location at Longnook Beach, once in the Rhode Island desert (a very strange, former quarry in the state), and once in our backyard.
Pictured from top left to right: Michael J. Ahern, Chris Dalpe, Brandon Perras-Sanchez, and Ryan Miller. Pictured from bottom left to middle: Kevin Bowden and Wayne Gonsalves.
Now let’s talk more about Monster Makeup as a group. I wanted to ask how you guys formed, how did you all come together? When did you really realize “Oh this is the team we want, we’re going to do this”? Was there a moment where it clicked, or did you just hit the ground running?
BPS: I met Chris through his sister, another horror fiend, and author, Victoria Dalpe, when I first moved to Providence in 2003. Years later, the three of us were joking about how the gay sex apps could also function as a tool for serial killers, because horny men will skip red flags to get off. A year later, I befriended Mike and told him about this and he said “Let’s make it into a movie!” Next we had a group meeting at a local bar with my boyfriend, Ryan, and one of my best friends, Wayne, and we started formulating a story, which eventually morphed into a screenplay, which eventually became DDG. Each of us brings something unique to the table which is crucial for a team to function.
WG: Brandon and I had known each other for over 10 years at that point, and he was filling me in on these crazy meetings that he was having with Chris and Mike. Chris and I had known each other for a few years, but I was recently introduced to Mike, who was writing plot points for the movie that were scarily reminiscent of things I had experienced or thought, so it was like I had known Mike for years.
MJA: I don’t know if there was a specific “click” but I think with Death Drop Gorgeous, the momentum kept rolling until it was like “oh, I guess we’re doing this!” And then it got to a point where we couldn’t keep referring to ourselves as “the Death Drop boys” and we wanted to formally name ourselves.
CD: Monster Makeup, the formal company, erupted from the ground like a limp-wristed zombie, hand sprung from the grave. We are a bunch of friends, who love horror, music, gore, and GOOD stories. We looked around and said, ‘fuck it, let’s do it ourselves.’ It’s the Captain Planet – “with our powers combined” attitude that I truly believe any amount of success derives from. Now, growing pains happen, of course, but there have been consistent core tenements that we’ve lived by: “Is it horror?” “Is it queer?” And “What are you doing on Sunday?”
Ryan Miller: Brandon and I have been together for about 12 years, so I was around when he and Chris first had the idea for the DDG story. They soon roped Mike into the group due to his excellent writing skills, as well as Wayne who Brandon had been friends with for years. At that point, I had zero background in film, but as I sat around a whiskey-fueled table listening to these guys come up with absurd, hilarious characters and scenes, I immediately knew I wanted to be a part of the process. As a group, we pretty much did collectively say, “Fuck it, let’s do it!” and learned as we went along. I tend to be much more cautious when it comes to dipping my toes into the unknown, so I’m thankful that they had the initiative and punk rock attitude to jump right in and make shit happen. The rest is history!
KB: I came in super late in the Death Drop Gorgeous production. My girlfriend saw that a local slasher needed music so I reached out to them and sent some music I had already produced under the name Limmazene. I believe Ryan asked me if I could score a scene from scratch and the first scene I received was the glory hole kill. I must’ve watched it 100 times laughing my ass off at how awesome it was. I called my girlfriend into the room, “You’ve gotta see this!” I think I scored many scenes before I even met the boys in person. One night Brandon and Ryan picked me up to watch the final cut at their place. It was dark and snowing, and their apartment was dark too. I didn’t even know Brandon was Tony Two Fingers until weeks later because I hadn’t actually seen his face. A month or two later Brandon texted me about my photography and asked if I could meet them for a drink, and that’s when they asked if I wanted to shoot Saint Drogo. I think I said yes before he finished the sentence.
Saint Drogo is a folk horror film, and I always find the subgenre interesting in the context of sharing small-scale stories, these frightening folktales, and spreading them to the world at large, to the global village that is filmgoers. So why was Saint Drogo the saint of choice for telling that sort of story to everybody, what compelled you guys to choose him of all the saints?
RM: From the beginning, we knew we wanted to draw on elements of religion—in this case Catholicism—to highlight the very similar social pressures that exist within the gay community. We all experience the need to belong to something larger, to find our place among our people, and to feel a sense of conviction and purpose. One day, I was browsing a catalog of Catholic saints and their patronages, and I came across Saint Drogo. At first glance, his domain seems to be eclectic and scattered; he’s attributed as the patron saint of unattractive people, the disfigured, the deaf, shepherds, and coffee (among other things). However, if you zoom in on the social aspects, the common thread seems to be that they are outcasts, those that would be ostracized from mainstream society. It’s this feature that initially caught my eye—the comparison to the marginalization that gay people have experienced in modern culture, and the way that cult-like forces might prey upon this to lure others into their fold. There are also other fun references to the Saint Drogo legend that pop up in the film, such as his reported ability to bilocate, his own disfigurement, and the burning of his church cell.
BPS: Saints have such interesting and morbid trajectories towards their canonization, so there is a lot to play with there. We also wanted to make sure we found a saint whose patronage paralleled the themes of the film. Aside from embodying our themes, he was also described as having some sort of growth/deformity on his abdomen and had to hide himself in the basement of a church because his appearance was so jarring. His story is tragic but one that was a perfect vehicle for our cautionary tale.
Pictured from left to right: Michael J. Ahern, Wayne Gonsalves, and Mike Rigney.
Could you tell me a bit about the changes going from Death Drop Gorgeous into making Saint Drogo? Since they are very different films, tonally and aesthetically, what’s the most glaring difference that comes to mind jumping from Death Drop Gorgeous to Saint Drogo? How has the process changed for you the most over that time, and going into these new projects?
MJA: Saint Drogo, for me, felt like we had something to prove. During Death Drop Gorgeous, so much of it was learning as we were going, and there is a micro-budget charm that I think lends itself to the DIY energy of the film. So, for Drogo, I think we wanted to showcase what we learned from shooting DDG, and the growth we experienced as filmmakers and storytellers. Sometimes it’s crazy for me to recall that I was 25 when I started writing DDG with these guys, and I’m now 32. We also didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves to a specific kind of horror, and we wanted to make something unsettling and unnerving to challenge ourselves. I feel like it would’ve been the easier route to write another comedy horror.
BPS: As far as similarities, being such a small crew, we wore a ton of hats. Saint Drogo was filmed during COVID, which forced us to have an even smaller cast and crew. Our dream is to eventually have enough staff that we can walk onto set and are only responsible for a single task instead of four or five. Adding Kevin Bowden as our cameraman lifted such a huge weight off of us and we cannot wait to have him on board for our third feature.
As far as differences go, the original DDG script was 140 pages. We learned the hard way that horror scripts are generally around 90 pages; whittling that down was a nightmare that none of us want to endure ever again. When writing Drogo, we wanted to make it as streamlined and succinct as possible. A friend of ours told us that Cronenberg will keep his screenplays at 60ish pages, and we implemented this tip when writing SD, knowing that it would be a more visual, brooding, and tense film. We also wrote the script for our third around the same time, and we kept the same mantra of “neat and tidy.”
CD: From its inception to the big screen- Death Drop Gorgeous was brutal, messy, over the top, ambitious, and hilarious. We barreled into DDG unapologetic and fiercely. This was the first time for many of us working on this kind of scale, and we may have taken the long road to get there, but we discovered and learned so much on the way.
To me, Saint Drogo is a culmination of a lot of those lessons learned. Shorter, cleaner script. Smaller cast. Wildly different and obviously a harsher story but DDG & SD are sister films with a lot to say about identity in the queer community.
RM: From a technical standpoint, one of the biggest differences between the films is the equipment we used. When we started Death Drop Gorgeous, it was a passion project, and we were more interested in the story and vision than the technical specs. There’s definitely some great cinematography, but we shot in HD on an older Canon and learned the best settings as we went along. When we started Saint Drogo, our friend Kevin Bowden, came on board with a Nikon Z6, a BlackMagic drone, and better lenses. This allowed us to shoot in 4K, which forced us to pay much more attention to things like focus, aperture, etc. Following the success of DDG and what we learned in the process, we approached this film with a bit more intention from the very beginning and wanted to make it look as good as possible. The fact that it was shot in a beautiful seaside town in the offseason definitely didn’t hurt, either. Because our script for Saint Drogo was much shorter, it also allowed us to let the visuals breathe and spend more time creating an immersive atmosphere.
Recently, you said your next film was going to be Queen of the Rats, and that it’s going to be a middle point of sorts between Death Drop Gorgeous and Saint Drogo. Which…I don’t even know how to visualize that, but I am excited. Can you give us a little peak of insight into that film, and the creative process of striking that balance?
BPS: When brainstorming ideas for our next film, Chris mentioned Lovecraft and the mafia. I ran with this idea and fleshed out a skeleton and brought it to the crew. And like Uncle Frank coming out of the floor in Hellraiser, the Monsters worked their magic and started adding meat to the bones and before we knew it, we had an amazing script. Mike is our primary dialogue guy/screenwriter, and I think this is his best work.
CD: It’ll be another love letter to Providence!
MJA: We actually wrote Queen of the Rats before Saint Drogo during the summer months of the pandemic. It’s this amalgamation of so many things we all love and it bizarrely works seamlessly. We are sort of describing it as Green Room meets The Sopranos meets Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and it takes place during the early 2000s in the Providence noise rock scene, which was lowkey the Golden Age of Providence. It’s implicitly queer, but that’s a little less the focus this time around for us. We’re playing with themes of greed, gentrification, and community, which I think shares some commonalities with our previous two films.
Pictured: Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Michael J. Ahern. Crew pictured: Kevin Bowden and Ryan Miller.
Is there anything you can tell us about what Queen of the Rats is exactly about, or about the main villain? Will it be a creature, or are we going for something more grounded? What can we expect from it?
WG: Should we spoil the surprise?
MJA: There’s a creature!
BPS: I can tell you it’s going to be a wild one! In a nutshell, it’s about the early 00’s warehouse scene in Providence, RI which was a utopia of artists, musicians, performers, you name it. Weirdly enough, there was a symbiosis between this scene and the mafia (yes, this factual). Toss in a Lovecraftian monster, a noise rock band, and some mafia drama, and you have QotR. Expect our usual level of gore but tenfold, an even balance of humor and darkness, and a lot of familiar faces.
Malfunctions on set, they’re part of filmmaking. They’re inevitable, and sometimes they’re happy accidents. When it comes to practicals as involved as yours, the makeup, what’s the most memorable on-set special effects catastrophe that has happened to you? If you haven’t had one was there ever a concern like that, about a big bloody explosion or something just not coming out looking right?
BPS: The worst one was when we were filming the opening kill in DDG with the poisoned cocaine. I had made an appliance out of paper towels, latex, and acrylic teeth. We wanted to create the illusion of his nose and upper lip dissolving so we had the actor fill his mouth with fake blood and tossed in a couple Alka-Seltzers. So Mike Murphy, the actor, “dies” and starts drooling out the foamy blood and then starts saying “Hey guys, this is burning my face.” We ran over and washed all the gore off and removed the appliance. Apparently, latex and Alka-Seltzer have an adverse reaction. He ended up actually dying an hour later, but as Kevin our cameraman would say, “That’s showbiz!”
Just kidding! Mike is alive and well.
Another scary moment was between me and Ninny Nothin (Young Gloria) during the scene where she guts Tony with the electric meat carver. So, I’m wearing the silicone stomach that Victoria Elizabeth Black created which was loaded with intestines, blood and slime. We originally had a piece of plexiglass that was slid in between my actual stomach and the prosthetic. It wasn’t looking good on camera, so we decided to nix the plexi and go commando. We informed Ninny: “Don’t go in too deep!” This made her extremely nervous, and it took some convincing, but she said she’d do it. Was I terrified? Holy fuck yes, but if you’re not going to bleed for your art then what the fuck are you even doing? Luckily, I wasn’t disemboweled, and Ninny wasn’t charged with manslaughter.
RM: I second all of the above. I’ll just add that during Tony’s gutting, Brandon was also extensively wrapped in Christmas lights, so now we have live electric wires, liquid blood, and a crazed drag queen with a turkey carver carefully trying to avoid said wires. I was a nervous wreck behind the camera for most of the scene.
WG: I really hit Audrey Heartburn’s (Ava Unit) head on the vanity in Death Drop Gorgeous. It’s in the bloopers on the Death Drop Gorgeous DVD.
MJA: Shooting the climax of Saint Drogo felt like one big catastrophe. The weather was not cooperating, hightide was insane. The rock at the end of the movie actually washed out to sea, and we had to go in and grab it before it floated away.
Pictured from left to right: Brandon Perras-Sanchez, Mike Rigney, and Katerina Pederson.
We all watch the classics, Carpenter’s essential works, and the movies that legends like Tom Savini and Screaming Mad George have worked on for great special effects. What are some obscure practical effects movies you think most people don’t know about that they should watch? What’s a lesser-known must-watch for you?
BPS: The Demon’s Rook! There’s an interesting and adorable story behind this movie too – required viewing. Also for all you gore hounds, any Brian Paulin and James Bell films are all barf-inducing, and they both do all the SFX themselves. Others I love: The Dead Next Door, Black Past, Nikos the Impaler, Violent Shit, Deadly Spawn, Street Trash, The Kindred, Xtro, Basket Case 2 and 3, The Church, Demon Wind, Little Necro Red, The Burning Moon, Beyond The Black Rainbow, Warlock 1 and 2, Laid To Rest.
CD: Oh! We just did a TikTok about this. Personally, I love how unhinged and insane the special effects are in the 80’s remake of The Blob – skin dissolving, acid burning, and goo; every kill is so over the top.
Daydream with me a bit. No reins, no questions asked, just unlimited funding, whatever you need to make it. What kind of effects would you have if you had that? Are there any dream projects where you would just need an unfeasible crazy amount of money to realize a creature or a concept?
MJA: One of my favorite genres, if not my favorite, is fantasy horror. Pan’s Labyrinth is probably my favorite movie next to Lord of the Rings. I’d love to create a fantasy horror epic with some amazing creature designs.
CD: Hauntings and demonic possessions! I love that shit, but I’d love to tell it from a very Monster Makeup perspective. A car chase. Head explosions. A hoard of monsters crawls out from the ground. Underwater monsters. Something in space. I’d love to do it all.
BPS: This Pandora’s Box of a question! And all of these answers will involve HEAVY practical effects. My current dream project is Queen of the Rats. I have two other screenplays that I have novelized, The White Bishop (a period piece, nautical, body horror, novelized with the help of Splatterpunk terrorist Aron Beauregard) and recessive NATURE (a horror fantasy that takes place in the 80’s with a lot of folklorish creatures and monsters.) Both would need a hefty budget (these books will be available soon!) I would also LOVE to remake Neon Maniacs, Curtains, or Spookies.
RM: I’ve always loved monsters that incorporate human bodies and appendages into themselves, such as the disgusting orgy mass in Society (1992) and the ravenous alien parasite in Slither (2006). I’d love to be a part of creating insane special effects like that—in fact, we already have some related ideas, so if there are any sugar daddies listening out there, please give us money!
WG: I’d really like to get thrown through a glass window.
***
And there you have it folks! It was lovely getting to know Monster Makeup LLC, and I hope you all got to learn a little something about your new favorite indie horror team. For more interviews like these, follow us on social media to keep up with Horror Press.
For those hoping to see more Monster Makeup LLC, they’ll be showing Saint Drogo at Denver Film’s CinemaQ (get tickets here!) Friday, August 11th, as they begin the festival circuit run of their movie.
Hail, Saint Drogo!
From October 16 to 25, horror fans, filmmakers, writers, and artists gathered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for ten days of film screenings, panels, live podcast recordings, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies lectures, an artisans’ market, networking opportunities, and parties. It was Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s milestone 10-year anniversary. While there were, of course, first-timers in attendance, the majority, it seemed, have been going to the Festival for years—a testament to not only the expertise of the organizers and programmers, but to their dedication to the horror community as well.
How Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Began
Justin Timms, Founder and Festival Director, created Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in 2016. At the time, he had been working as an editor and post supervisor, bouncing back and forth between FilmRise and a video production company that made internal videos for major companies, like Pepsi. BHFF was initially intended to be a side project to satisfy his lifelong interest in the horror genre.
“I’ve always been into horror. They’ve always been the movies that I wanted to see,” he said. “The types of movies that I love weren’t playing festivals in New York, so I just had this crazy idea that I could start a film festival.”
So, that’s exactly what he did. One of the first people to join the team was Director of Programming Matt Barone. He and Timms followed each other on Twitter, and when Timms posted about the festival, Barone, whose love of horror began when his father showed him Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein when he was six or seven years old, reached out. Barone had been writing about music, reviewing horror films, and covering film festivals for a number of years, and was interested in pursuing a path in festival programming. Since this was BHFF’s debut on the scene, he took on the task of reaching out to filmmakers to create the festival lineup. That first year, BHFF opened with Dearest Sister by Laotian filmmaker Mattie Do, closed with Child Eater by Erlingur Thororddsen, and also featured We Are The Flesh by Emiliano Rocha Minter as the centerpiece film and Without Name by Lorcan Finnegan and Garret Shanley, which won the Festival’s award for Best Cinematography.
Pictured above, Tori Potenza and Joseph Hernandez. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
A Decade of Growth and an Expanding Programming Vision
Ten years in, BHFF has grown exponentially, from a weekend-long stretch of screenings to a fully-formed film festival spread over ten days. It’s also established a reputation of excellence and receives hundreds of submissions each year, requiring a team of screeners in addition to programmers. Programming a film festival is a major responsibility—one that Senior Programmer and Director of Community Development Joseph Hernandez takes very seriously.
“You are a curator that has a huge influence on filmmakers that are seen or not seen, films that that are being recommended and placed in the public eye,” Hernandez said. “You have a true power in guiding trends, [including] which kinds of filmmakers are being represented in the overall landscape. [It’s a] huge, huge responsibility that I don’t take lightly.”
From Early Horror Fans to Key Festival Programmers
Like Barone, Hernandez has been with the Festival since the beginning. He had been working with the Tribeca Film Festival on the theater operation side of things and wanted to shift to a more film-focused role. A horror fan since his preteen years through Goosebumps books and Scooby Doo (with early childhood exposure to classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th that led to “a recurring Freddy Krueger nightmare”), reaching out to Timms to get involved with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival seemed like the perfect starting-off point. That first year, he was a screener and also introduced films, moderated Q&As, and helped with venue management. After that, he was promoted to programmer.
“As I learned what the role truly entailed, I was able to grow this whole [new] appreciation for what film festivals do and what their function truly is,” he said. “You get to see firsthand the difference that you’re making. You see how excited and happy [the filmmakers] are. You see all these audience members coming up to them and praising their work. I think a lot of filmmaking is behind closed doors, and it can be a very lonely experience. [For some, this is] their first opportunity of not just showing their work, but also being able to take that victory lap, when they get to finally put that movie in front of an audience. What we do is life changing for a lot of artists, and that makes a lot of the work and sleepless nights so much more worth it.”
Pictured above, NYC horror icon, Xero Gravity, and film critic/playwright Sharai Bohannon. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
How Programming Shapes Filmmakers and the Genre
Hernandez is also an actor and filmmaker, and says that his experience as a programmer has helped him grow creatively.
“The best thing that any young filmmaker can do is watch as many films as possible. It could be bad films; it could be good films. You’re going to learn something from every viewing,” he said. “You’re developing those film analysis muscles that really help you to pick apart why something works in a film and why it doesn’t. It’s such a great classroom. I watch like, 1,000 movies a year for Brooklyn, and that just keeps me growing and sharpening those muscles and tools.”
Curating a Diverse and Audience Focused Horror Lineup
Of the actual process of programming, Hernandez stresses the importance of building a program for a wide audience.
“Each film you select doesn’t have to be something that is going to be unanimously liked, but there should be films in your program for every kind of viewer. This goes back to our responsibility as programmers. You have to be selfless. You can’t build a program just to your tastes.”
Hernandez notes that one of the Festival’s objectives is to demonstrate how vast the spectrum of horror is. If you ask him, it’s the key to bringing more people in.
“I think it’s very easy for someone to say, ‘Oh, I don’t like horror’, while their idea of horror is just a gory slasher film. That is a misperception that I blame on the marketing of the ’80s, when we had that huge slasher sequel boom, and that just became the mainstream definition of what a horror film was,” he said. He cites Silence of the Lambs as a case study on how this narrow definition of horror has led to mainstream audiences misunderstanding what horror is. “Horror doesn’t even have to be scary. Horror could be funny, it can be psychological, it could be so many things. We try to show that within our program, and that’s kind of what gave birth to our Head Trip section. These are films that are very much on the margins, but do fall into the Venn diagram. I think that’s another way that we can help the horror genre to survive and persevere: by showing that it encompasses so much more, and getting rid of that narrow stigma.”
Representation, Inclusivity, and Marginalized Voices in Horror
Beyond honoring the full scope of the genre, representation and inclusivity are always top priorities at BHFF. It’s reflected in not only the consistently diverse lineup, but in highlighted sections, like this year’s spotlight on Black horror and the annual “Slayed” block for LGBTQ+ short films. Nearly 50% of this year’s program was also woman-directed.
“There’s so much horror coming out nowadays because it’s having a big resurgence, which is awesome, but we’re getting so many prequels and reboots and requels,” writer, film critic, and programmer Tori Potenza said. “There are just so many great indie films out there coming from marginalized voices [so it’s] really important to highlight [them]. It feels like [the Festival has] always been ahead of the curve there.”
Championing Diversity, Queer Voices, and Inclusive Horror
It’s a sentiment shared by Hernandez, as well as by writer and emcee Xero Gravity, who is also deeply involved in BHFF:
“Everything else around us changes, and this is the little pocket that we have that stays consistent,” she said. “Something that I love about Brooklyn Horror is that we’re very adamant about queer liberation and giving queer voices their own spot, [and] there was also a slate specifically for Black horror. There’s a lot of pandering in the outside world, and [maybe] 5% of it is genuine. But this is something that’s very consistent with with Brooklyn Horror—these people just fucking get it, and that’s the great thing about having an intersectional community. When I’m up there introducing films or doing Q&As, I look into the audience and I see an array of people. I see white people, I see Black people, I see disabled people, I see queer people scattered amongst the audience. [BHFF] really recognizes the diversity of their audience and don’t use that as a pandering, but [instead] use that as ‘Okay, these are the people who we have in seats, and we should make sure that they feel welcome.’”
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Filmmakers Share Their Incredible Experiences
Of course, BHFF isn’t just exciting for fans—it’s also thrilling for filmmakers, especially if they’re presenting work. Filmmakers Jasmine Osean Thomas and Ksusha Genenfeld came this year because their short film, Candy, was selected for the “Home Invasion” shorts block. This was the first time that Thomas, the writer and director, came to the Festival; it was the second time for Genenfeld, the cinematographer.
“I’d been following Brooklyn horror for a while because I know the quality of work that they support is unbelievable and very diverse,” Thomas said. “When I got in, it was like fireworks. I’m a die-hard horror fan. I’ve been since I was a little kid. So to get into something like this, where the genre is so celebrated, and to be amongst my people was so great. The work at this festival is just a different quality and caliber that should be celebrated forever. I’m just so honored to be part of this. And beyond that, the way that the festival supports filmmakers locally, but also brings in filmmakers, like to the Women In Horror networking event, sets it apart from any other film festival I’ve been to. It’s about community, it’s about horror, and it’s about celebrating not just your own film, but everyone else’s films.”
“I feel like it’s always the best time ever. I always meet new people and new filmmakers, so it’s always exciting to come back and be here,” Genenfeld added.
More Than Just Horror: Lectures, Parties, Markets, and Live Events Too
BHFF doesn’t only feature films, though. In addition to the scheduled screenings, there are also always additional events, like academic lectures held with Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, parties, live podcast recordings, and this year, an artisans’ market.
“It can’t just be all about the movies,” Hernandez said. “We need to provide a variety of events and activities to diversify our offerings. You can get burnt out if you’re just going from movie to movie to movie, but if you’re buffering in between, doing something completely different, that’s a lot of fun. Then you can catch your second wind and go see another movie. It really helps the whole festival experience. We never aspire to be a screening series. We want it to be a full-fledged festival.”
Creating Dedicated Spaces for Women and Queer Horror Fans
In recent years, one of the events has been a mixer for women in the horror community, spearheaded by Potenza and Caryn Coleman, the founder of the organization The Future of Film Is Female. Potenza recalls that the realization that a women-specific event came when she was in the middle of a conversation with another woman during a BHFF happy hour, and a man interrupted them to “explain” the monstrous feminine.
“That felt like a really big sign that we needed our own space—women and queer folk outside of the cis, straight, male-dominated space,” Potenza said. She teamed up with Coleman, and they started to organize happy hours and meetups in the off-festival season.
“Once the festival came, it seemed like a really easy way to add in an event specifically for this particular population of genre fans that clearly love it and attend. The programming staff here seemed down to do it. [There are] so many women and queer folks that are filmmakers and writers or just fans, and we all just hang out. The energy that comes off of that many women and queer folks in one space…I think we could rule the world if we harness that energy for a specific use.”
The Future of Film Is Female and Its Connection to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Coleman created The Future of Film Is Female in 2018 as an off-shoot of the Nitehawk Shorts Festival, which she had started in 2013.
“It was born out of all the relationships that I had with the shorts filmmakers from that, of all genders, and particularly out of the 2016 election,” she said. “We opened the 2016 Shorts Festival the day after the election, thinking that it was going to go a very different way. I thought about my position as a film programmer and what I could do to help get marginalized voices heard and seen.”
Coleman also launched a biannual The Future of Film Is Female film series at MoMA, and in 2022, co-curated a 10-week horror film series at MoMA called “Messaging the Monstrous” with Ron Magliosi and Brittany Shaw.
“It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said. “My whole life was a 10-week horror series that looked at horror films made from 1960 forward, with the premise that horror has meaning. So we did 10 one-week subgenres ranging from eco horror to Women Make Horror to slashers, unpacking the damage or the success that slashers have done in the horror genre. And we had guests come. It was about 115 films in total, features and some short films.”
Coleman’s Role at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Coleman has been involved with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival for years. She’s been a jurist, a programmer…and was instrumental in bringing the Festival to Nitehawk because at the time, she was Nitehawk’s Director of Programming.
“I’ve known Justin [Timms] for a while, so there’s always been a little bit of crossover,” she said. “Two years ago, I was a programmer for the Festival, and then, with Tori thinking about how to gather the troops in terms of women in horror, and how to create more of a community space for them, both for the festival and then outside of the festival, because I do a lot of horror programming outside of Brooklyn—horror all year round!—and how we can continue to be together and supportive, but also just celebrate films together. That’s the best part about seeing movies: talking about them before and afterwards.”
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
How Nitehawk Williamsburg Became BHFF’s Home Base
There’s no shortage of audience togetherness at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Everyone interviewed for this article had nothing but glowing accolades for the way that this organization has fostered a strong sense of community among horror fans and creators. One of the ways this is achieved is surprisingly simple: having the Festival centralized in one location. The first Brooklyn Horror Film Festival was spread across multiple venues. Now, thanks to Coleman, it’s held at Nitehawk Williamsburg, an intimate triplex with a lobby bar, as well as a bar on the lower level called Lo-Res.
“The fact that we get to fully be here at Nitehawk is the dream,” Barone said. “This is where you can build a community. People can hang out, have drinks, and talk. It used to be [where] you [had] to see a movie [and] get on a train [to] see the next movie. We’ve evolved now to where we can just do it in one central area [and] neighborhood. It’s the ideal setup.”
A Festival That Feels Like Family
Toby Poser and Zelda Adams, two members of the iconic Adams Family filmmaking team, returned to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival this year to present their latest feature, Mother of Flies. In previous years, their films Hellbender and Where the Devil Roams screened at the Festival. Matriarch Poser says that the venue helps to encourage intimacy and community.
“We have the bar downstair and the bar-slash-lobby upstairs with all the great physical media. It’s like a big horror hug the minute you walk in,” she said. “And it’s so because of this intimacy that you meet everyone, you talk, and it’s just a beautiful thing.”
Adams, Poser’s daughter and co-writer, co-director, and co-star of Mother of Flies (along with John Adams, her father/Poser’s husband), was also excited to return to Festival, especially because of the sense of community at BHFF.
“After our first [time] submitting our film and luckily getting in, we experienced the fantastic community here,” she said. “Everyone loves horror so much and is so supportive, too. And it’s such an intimate theater, so it feels like a special viewing experience. The Q&As are also really kind and exciting, too, and the events they host with Brooklyn Horror are fantastic as well. It’s really great bringing Mother of Flies to the festival today, because I feel like we’ve cultivated even more of a community, and it’s nice because people get to come to the same theater and see how our films have changed so much since our first film here, and maybe how our story has changed and how we’ve grown as filmmakers.”
A Sound Designer’s Love Letter to the Horror Community
Another artist who revels in the community atmosphere of BHFF is sound designer Genna Edwards. She first came to the Festival in 2023 for the premiere of Cannibal Mukbang, which she worked on with writer-director Aimee Kuge, who also serves as BHFF’s Communication’s Manager.
“That was my first time at this festival, and it rocked my fucking world,” Edwards said. “I had never experienced such love and joy. You’re just in a room constantly with other horror freaks. I feel like people who aren’t in the community kind of look at us in a weird way, but when you’re in a room with all these folks who understand what all of this means, it’s just different, and I felt that instantly. Every year, I try to be here because it’s the best and they also program incredible work.”
Year Round Horror Events That Strengthen Community
A major thing that sets Brooklyn Horror apart from other film festivals is that it expands beyond a yearly event, and has become a central knot within the New York City horror community. Hernandez is largely to thank for that. In addition to programming the Festival, he regularly organizes advance screenings for new horror films, always followed by casual get-togethers at nearby bars to talk about the film, make friends, and network.
“I love what we do with the Festival. That is our main event of the year, but I quickly realized that a year in between editions is way too long, and community building is so important to what has gotten Brooklyn Horror to be what it is. There’s no reason why we need to limit that to one week a year,” he said. “So I really wanted to start providing stuff year round to keep the community engaged with each other, to keep it growing. At this point, it’s just been partnering with different studios to get early screenings of new horror films, and then after the screenings, just designate a place where everyone can meet afterwards and talk and catch up with each other, pick apart the film, talk about what’s going on in their lives, and just providing a safe space for the community to look forward to once or twice a month and stay connected.”
Why BHFF Is One of the Warmest Communities in Horror
Genenfeld described the horror community, particularly when it comes to BHFF, as “the warmest community in the film industry.”
“Everyone’s just so welcoming and everybody is really excited to connect, which I feel like is not very often seen,” she said. “So that’s really special about this festival.”
Having a community is vital, no matter who you are or what you’re interested in. For people interested in horror—something that is still misunderstood, maligned, and stigmatized—having a community of likeminded people can be a lifeline. New York has always had horror fans and horror-related events, but according to Barone and Hernandez, there hadn’t really been a solid, consistent community until Brooklyn Horror. BHFF and the off-season events—which have plenty of crossover with The Future of Film Is Female—have facilitated countless friendships and collaborations, not only strengthening the horror community as a whole, but empowering and affirming fans, artists, and writers on an individual level. For Hernandez, it’s helped him become more confident and comfortable going out and meeting people.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s Impact on Creativity and Collaboration
For Edwards (and many others), the Festival has been a game changer both socially and professionally.
“You wait all your life to find people who care about the same things you do, especially if those things aren’t normal or socially acceptable, and then I came to this festival, and there were a bunch of other people who were like, ‘Yo, I want to see a decapitation on film. The nastier the better!’ I can finally be myself here and be as out about all of this stuff as I want to be—and people don’t look at you like a freak. They just accept you. And then we all make work together. I’ve worked on so many films with a bunch of the people in this community, and it only seems to keep happening, which I’m so freaking grateful for.”
Pictured above, the crew behind BHFF! Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Returns in 2026
At the time of this writing, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is already hosting an off-season event—an advance screening of Sisu: Road to Revenge with a meet-up at a bar called The High Note. The festival run may have ended, but the organization operates year-round. It fills a need for horror fans. Not just the need for the latest films, but the greater need for solidarity, community, and friendship.
The horror genre may be awash with blood, guts, family tension, psychological distress, aliens, monsters, and human depravity. But the horror community? That’s all heart.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival will return to Nitehawk Cinema October 15 – 22, 2026 ! Early bird discounts are now available for film badges and film submissions!
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, the Holiday season has REALLY kicked off. We’ve covered our fair share of Holiday horror from underappreciated gems like Christmas Bloody Christmas and Dial Code Santa Claus to Black Christmas and Krampus! In the hopes of spreading some Holiday cheer (and fear!), the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, has decided to bring the cloven-foot killer that is Krampus into your homes! But this isn’t your ordinary Krampus…this Krampus is chock full of special features and gift wrapped in 4K!
If you haven’t seen Krampus, then what are you doing with your life? For those unfamiliar, Krampus follows a large family gathering of frustrating people who all get snowed in three days before Christmas. One by one, the family gets picked off by Christmas-themed creatures. Sometimes, the holidays truly are killer.
Enter Our Holiday Giveaway!
How to Enter:
Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM!
Step 2. LIKE the giveaway post!
Step 3. TAG A FRIEND who you think Krampus should visit!
The winner will be announced on Monday, December 15th and notified via direct message. If the winner does not respond within 24 hours, we’ll randomly select another winner.
WHAT YOU’LL WIN
What’s included in Krampus: The Naughty Cut? Let’s unwrap it and look:
- Audio commentary with director/co-writer Michael Dougherty, and co-writers Todd Casey and Zach Shields
- NEW interviews with Michael Dougherty, Visual Effects Artist Richard Taylor, Actors Allison Tolman, David Koechner and Emjay Anthony, Co-Writer/Co-Producer Todd Casey and more…
- Alternate ending
- Deleted/extended scenes
- Gag reel
- Krampus Comes Alive! – Five-part featurette including Dougherty’s Vision, The Naughty Ones: Meet the Cast, Krampus and his Minions, Practical Danger, and Inside the Snowglobe: Production Design
- Behind the scenes at WETA Workshop: Krampus
- And more!
So head over to our Instagram, follow our account, like our giveaway post, and tag a friend who you think Krampus should go visit!
Good luck!
**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**
**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**
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