Misc
What Is Giallo (And Why Does It Matter?)
In this giant-size edition of Horror 101 that opens our year of lectures-that-aren’t-really-lectures, I delve into the subgenre all the Letterboxd cool kids have been talking about. Where did all these black gloves and knives come from? What’s a Dario Argento? You don’t know what it means, and at this point, you’re too afraid to ask. That word most people dread having to explain without spilling into rambling: giallo.
Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you. In this giant-size edition of Horror 101 that opens our year of lectures-that-aren’t-really-lectures, I delve into the subgenre all the Letterboxd cool kids have been talking about. Where did all these black gloves and knives come from? What’s a Dario Argento? You don’t know what it means, and at this point, you’re too afraid to ask. That word most people dread having to explain without spilling into rambling: giallo.
I was like you once, soft, uninitiated. Now my brain has been replaced with a hard drive made exclusively of the best of Italian horror (at the very least the most stylish ones). So today, you’ll learn everything giallo, how it came to be, and why it matters.
What Is Giallo?
An extremely popular subgenre of horror that sprung out of Italian cinema in the 1960s, an exact definition of giallo usually comes with a lot of qualifiers and moving parts that make it hard to explain concisely. The simplest definition? Giallo (plural gialli) is a very stylized subgenre that fuses thriller and horror, usually set in Italy and focused on a sometimes erotic and always extremely violent murder mystery.
Predating the slasher genre as we know it, many giallo plots tend to converge on a familiar path: someone witnesses a murder—or more broadly, anything they weren’t meant to see (cult conspiracies, ill-gotten treasures, etc., etc.), and sets off a chain of very grisly killings by the person or people trying to keep it a secret.
Gialli generally skews the traditional murder mystery formula, as they’re rarely cut and dry, and often subvert the conventional detective story with sudden revelations and twists in the case’s development (logically inconsistent as they may be). The mystery killer is usually given a big reveal in the finale, as well as an explanation of their motives, which may or may not come in the form of a long speech or series of flashbacks. Slap an evocative sentence-long title on it, and boom. Giallo!
Even then, this is a bit narrow to encapsulate the massive scope of giallo and doesn’t touch on the stylistic elements that make the subgenre. Why it looks the way it does is just as important as when and where it came from.
Why Does Giallo Look The Way It Does?
The directorial greats of giallo tended to depict their mysteries with luscious technicolor, hot palettes, and employing some very uncommon camerawork with plenty of zooms and close-ups. Sometimes it evokes sheer terror, sometimes it stuns the senses, but it’s always incredibly stylish, and makes for beautiful cinema.
Giallo’s very vibrant and saturated colors, love of grotesque close-ups (especially on eyeballs), and odd camera angles are easy to write off as a byproduct of the psychedelic boom that enthralled films of the 60s and 70s. But in reality, directors like Argento and Bava derived a lot of inspiration from the surrealist and German expressionist art movements that came before them. The former claims Luis Bunuel as one of his more prominent muses, and homages to Bunuel and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou can be found in more than a few of his films as a result.
In a way, giallo’s style doesn’t bridge the gap between the real and the surreal as much as it demolishes the gap altogether; framing unconventional crime stories through a lens of even less conventional presentation leaves the boundaries of realism very fuzzy, and creates a one-of-a-kind look that trades off verisimilitude for a gorgeous visual language.
Why Is It Called Giallo?
Surprisingly, the name doesn’t come from cinema, but rather from literature. In the late 1920s, Italian localizations of English crime-thriller novels and American pulp detective stories came into fashion throughout Italy. Printed by publisher Mondadori in a signature yellow cover, and giallo being the Italian word for yellow, giallo became synonymous with cheap murder mystery stories packaged in dime novel bindings.
Film scholar Ian Olney points out in his book Euro Horror that as Mondadori expanded into publishing original fiction, a literary style known as the “anti-detective story” cropped up alongside it; this type of novel often decentralized the focus from a hero detective solving the case to showing readers the more sensual and chaotic aspects of a crime spree, with the mystery really only pulling together in the final chapters.
Olney believes early giallo filmmakers like Bava intentionally presented their mysteries similarly to the anti-detective stories. Audiences and critics then saw the similarity and popularized giallo as shorthand, explaining how the word became a catch-all for the films to this day.
What Was the First Giallo Film?
It is generally agreed that the genre’s father, Mario Bava, made the first giallo film with The Girl Who Knew Too Much back in 1963.
…That being said, if you go into it expecting the much crazier sights and sounds of giallo as we know it, it will come up pretty short; for me, it just feels too much like the conventional murder mysteries of the era. Barring some slightly expressionist strains in Bava’s directing, I doubt most uninitiated would even recognize The Girl as giallo when put up next to its genre descendants like Torso or Don’t Torture A Duckling.
Movie historian Fabio Melelli asserts that an even better example would be the film he followed The Girl up with, 1964’s Blood and Black Lace. I’m hard-pressed to agree considering this one contains all the elements most associated with the genre and feels a lot more like a true beginning. The tradition’s roots may have taken hold with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, but it flowered its colorful, blood-stained petals with Blood and Black Lace.
Indeed, Mario Bava is undoubtedly the most important of all of these filmmakers for making the genre what it is. He’s followed closely in influence only by Dario Argento, whose fame would go on to break out of giallo stardom into being one of the most acclaimed horror directors of all time.
Argento is possibly the most prolific giallo artist, putting out a whopping 16 gialli in his career, some of which would go on to be critical and cult darlings. Argento’s Suspiria is undoubtedly the most popular giallo of all time despite its debated status (more on that later), followed only by the beloved Deep Red.
Lucio Fulci’s contributions to the genre made him the proverbial bad boy of giallo, a lord of gore often lambasted for the shocking amounts of violence in his films. Regularly making it to the Video Nasties list in the U.K. meant nothing to him; I mean, are you truly a devoted filmmaker if you don’t catch a few charges in the process of making your films?
Bava, Argento, and Fulci formed the big three, often collaborating and considering each other good friends. Despite their often disparate styles, the crew went on to make a catalog of gialli that would change the horror landscape forever.
Are There American Giallo Films?
Giallo’s influence outside of Italy manifested early on in regular appearances in American grindhouses, being served in dubbed forms alongside the rest of the cinema junk food in the U.S. (And who doesn’t love junk food?).
As Italian and American horror cohabitated, American filmmakers began to take pages from their European cousin’s playbooks. The most notable aspect of mystery killers stalking their victims and brutally dispatching them became a popular story in the slasher subgenre’s formative years. This resulted in the creation of not only slashers, but some infrequent and very well-made American gialli as well.
Brian DePalma’s Dressed to Kill is probably the most notable since it saw some solid commercial success, and its story hits all the classic giallo beats. The John Carpenter penned Eyes of Laura Mars, and even more surprisingly, William Friedkin’s ultra-controversial Cruising has been labeled by some as a part of the genre too. We would only see more explicit homages in the following decades as giallo’s time in the spotlight inevitably passed.
Why Did Giallo Fall Out of Fashion?
Like many film trends, giallo was always living on borrowed time. As tastes changed in 80s and 90s cinema, gialli were soon subsumed by the supernatural and slasher films that became more popular in America. This reverberated into European horror fans’ tastes, with Italian audiences losing interest in black-gloved killers and contrived mysteries favoring the quick and dirty ultraviolence of Western monsters like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees.
One major contributing factor to giallo’s gradual dip in popularity was that many of its greatest creatives left it behind to focus on other styles of film. Bava and Fulci were never ones to be pinned down to a single genre. Argento has long been maligned by critics for the slow decline in quality of his giallo works; however, his foray into supernatural horror saw him dip in and out of the genre regularly and deliver unexpectedly good gialli like The Stendahl Syndrome and Dark Glasses reliably late into his career.
Unfortunately, the sun has set on giallo as a popular trend, but that still hasn’t stopped it from echoing through pop culture. Films like Adam Brooks’ and Matthew Kennedy’s The Editor still pay tribute to the genre decades later, as do the works of Argentinian director Luciano Onetti with modern gialli like Deep Sleep and Abrakadabra.
Even midrange box office hits like James Wan’s Malignant borrow from the giallo greats, partaking in their aesthetic, presentation, and off-kilter plots. That is to say, if you couldn’t restrain giallo by country, how could you ever think to restrain it by time?
It’s giallo now, giallo forever.
What Giallo Should I Watch First?
Now, there is no correct answer to this.
But in my humble opinion, Opera. It is Opera. Aesthetically, performance-wise, the mystery of it, the film synthesizes into an exceptionally fun time. It returns to the surrealist origins of giallo through Argento’s direction in a delightful way. Opera also has one of my favorite shots in all of horror (you’ll know what it is when you see it). Watch it.
…But I am nothing if not thorough, so here are some case-by-case recommendations for other giallo you can watch first based on what you like.
A Giallo Watch Guide
• Watch Blood and Black Lace first if you want to get the quintessential giallo experience. It is the genre codifier, and not for no reason. Bava’s camerawork in this is inhumanly smooth, the lighting and framing is an evergreen class in setting the tone of a film, and the mystery killer here is quite possibly the scariest in the genre just for how brutal and rough every attack feels.
• Watch Deep Red first if you care mainly about the cinematography and brutal kills because it is amazing on a technical level. Still, if you care about the mystery killer’s reveal, you might be disappointed: it’s easy to figure out before the movie has even really begun if you have working eyes. That being said, it has the best soundtrack of all gialli, and is mandatory viewing just for that, so you will have to watch it eventually.
• If you want a bay of blood in your giallo film watch…well, A Bay of Blood. It’s very, very nasty, and the very meanspirited voice and characters make it a satisfying precursor to the slasher genre. I know a lot of people out there consider this the ur-slasher, and I agree. Most of the 80s slasher filmmakers owe Mario Bava a lot for their style.
• If you gravitate towards the more crime-drama aspects of giallo and like a very investigative crime film, you can’t go wrong with Death Walks on High Heels. It makes for a very engaging mystery, and it manages to do that while staying comprehensible! Try The Psychic if you want something similar but with more of a slow-burn pace.
• And if all you care about is an insane ending, go with Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Seriously, you will never be able to predict that final scene.
…So. Is Suspiria Giallo?
Oh right, the “more on that later” is “more on that now”.
Some only consider films giallo if they’re straightforward, Italian murder mystery stories with no supernatural elements. Others are more neutral and consider it giallo as long as it contains the spirit of the genre, allowing it to bend rules and tonal borders. Even Fangoria put out an article last summer with a pretty bold title fighting against its classification as such.
That being said, even films like Deep Red touch the supernatural: that film’s plot is incited by a legitimate psychic reading a crowd and accidentally finding the killer. Psychic phenomena are such a staple of giallo that there’s even a proper term for giallo with more supernatural elements: giallo-fantastico, coined by film scholar Kim Newman.
So yes, I would say Suspiria is giallo. It is a very conventional giallo mystery with some grisly murders, and until the supernatural elements show up, it’s indistinguishable from its contemporaries.
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A special thanks to writers Ian Olney, Arrow Film’s own Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and also everyone involved in Federico Caddeo’s wonderfully informative documentary All the Colors of Giallo. They provided much of the vital info it took to write this article, so check their stuff out. You can watch that documentary for free here by the way.
And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between!
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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‘Snakes on a Plane’: A First-Time Watch Review
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Slappy Was the Blueprint: How the Dummy from Goosebumps Became A Horror Icon
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‘Truth or Dare’: Who Did it Best?
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The 11 Most Disturbing Horror Movies Ever, According to an Actual Horror Fan
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