Grimmfest announces May Madness, a startling selection of double bills for the late May Bank Holiday Weekend.
May is on the way. A month with not one, but two Bank Holidays. The Maypoles are going up, the wells are being dressed. Summer is ycumen in.
Or it would be, were the UK not still largely under lockdown.
Yet let’s not forget that “Mayday” is also the international codeword for trouble. It’s a warning of threat, of danger and distress. What could be more appropriate to the season, then, particularly in such uncertain and stressful times, than some cinematic forays into fear and uncertainty, some authentic movie madness, delivered right into the relative safety of your home?
Three double bills, guaranteed to challenge perception, practice deception, and banish dejection.
We’ve a surreal and slyly satiric stab at the gig economy and the underhand exploitative methodology of New Age Capitalism in the UK Premiere of Noah Hutton’s quirky low-fi sci-fi gem, LAPSIS. And an award-winning architect finds himself caught up in the mind games of an eccentric young woman with a pathological love of storytelling, in Kike Maíllo’s slippery, disorientating psychological thriller, A PERFECT ENEMY, also a UK premiere.
Grimmfest favourite Cody Calahan returns, with the English Premiere of the all too appropriately named bloody black comedy, VICIOUS FUN – about as sharp a change in direction from Grimmfest 2020 Audience Award Winner, THE OAK ROOM, as could possibly be imagined. And Daniel de la Vega fuses full-blooded Latin American Catholic Gothic with a sly homage to classic 70s Italian shockers, in the delirious and demented European premiere of ON THE THIRD DAY.
There’s sibling rivalry, Daddy issues galore, and pan-dimensional beings tampering with reality, in the North West premiere of Jason Axinn’s gaudy, gory, action-packed animated comic-book TO YOUR LAST DEATH. Pan-dimensional gamers on the rampage, too, in the UK Premiere of Scott Conditt and Jeremy Tremp’s pitch-perfect retro-80s tongue-in-cheek teen horror actioner, MAX RELOAD AND THE NETHER BLASTERS, in which video games prove to be even more of a gateway to hell than Harlan Ellison once feared.
Simeon Halligan, festival director said: This is likely to be our last fully online gig as UK cinemas begin to open this summer. We wanted to welcome brighter times into our lives and say goodbye to darkness through a mix of fun, crazy, scary and downright weird movies for you all to enjoy on the cusp of summer.’
Grimmfest presents MAY MADNESS ‘Online’ tickets and passes are available now, from www.grimmfest.com.
