San Diego's premiere celebration of all things spooky in film, the annual Horrible Imaginings Film Festival, has unveiled their horror and suspense programming, I'm excited. HIFF will show films such as Sion Sono's Tag, SpectreVision's The Greasy Strangler, and LA Film Festival winner Beyond the Gates. But that's just the tip of cinema iceberg.
The seventh annual HIFF will also play several shorts blocks, which are always really enjoyable if you're like me and love seeing little slivers of what's next in film. The shorts blocks this year highlight animation, comedy, creatures and science fiction, supernatural horror, and psychological terror!
In fact, there's so much great programming at HIFF that the festival is extending the fun to a five-day event. Starting on Wednesday, September 7th and continuing through Sunday, September 11th, HIFF will "Usher in the Season of Fear" (yay, Halloween is coming!) at Balboa Park's Museum of Photographic Arts. The festvial will show a mind-bogling number of over 70 international feature and short horror films, as well as present readings with horror authors, and host panels, discussions, performance art, and more.
"Every year, we seek ways to enhance the experience and meet our mission to expand and elevate how we watch, discuss, and reflect on art within the horror genre," said festival founder Miguel Rodriguez. "This will be our seventh year, and it's bigger and better than ever. I think we are closer than ever to meeting that mission statement, including literature, performance art, virtual reality, filmmaker networking and so much more!"
I'm going because as someone who lives and breathes weird cinema, I cannot refuse an excuse to kick off Halloween early! Want to know what you're in for? Check out the HIFF trailer below!
Tickets, passes, the complete schedule, times, films, descriptions, trailers and more can be seen at the HIFF website here.