Festivals: MotelX
MotelX 2025 Review: THE LAST SACRIFICE Has A Few Aces Up Its Sleeve
On Valentine's Day 1945, on a hill in the Cotswolds, England, the 74-year old farmer Charles Walton is found dead. You suspect that a documentary with this premise might be just a true crime doc, but The Last Sacrifice...
MotelX 2025 Review: THE RUN Is Another Stab At The Interactive Movie
The interactive movie has had a history since Bob Gale's Mr. Payback and games like Dragon's Lair and probably even way before that. But it never exceeded beyond a gimmick. That is until the game industry found ways to make...
MotelX 2025 Review: ALMA VIVA Is Another Winning Coming-Of-Age-Horror
Young Salomé has a great bond with her grandmother. She helps her grandmother out with seances, as her grandmother blends her Catholic religion with the older, more paganistic roots of the Portuguese countryside, and provides her services as someone who...
MotelX 2025 Review: Norbert Pfaffenbichler's 2551-TRILOGY Transcends A Depraved Hellscape
Norbert Pfaffenbichler's 2551-Trilogy is something else entirely. Consisting of three films, all running for less than 90 minutes (The Kid is even only 65 minutes long), it is still so heady and heavy that the entirety of it is a...
MotelX 2025 Review: CRENDICES Thrives On Local Superstitions
Crendices, meaning 'superstitions', premièring at the Portuguese horror film festival Motel X, is a very local film. It hails from Madeira, an island that is part of Portugal, and that has local practices that are extremely specific to that region....
MotelX 2025 Review: KARMADONNA Is A Morally Murky Thrill Ride
Aleksander Radivojevic is best known as a co-writer for A Serbian Film. That film is infamous for its brutal portrayal of Serbia, pulling no punches, and becoming so dark the contents of the film became a meme in and off...
MotelX 2025 Review: BUZZHEART Makes Meeting The Parents Horrifying
After a striking opening scene, in which a young man and a young woman connect in a massage parlor after a clandestine handjob, and she invites him over to meet her parents immediately, the credits of Buzzheart start. They consist...
MotelX 2025 Review: ANYTHING THAT MOVES Has Sex And Murder On The Brain
Anything That Moves is that rare thing: a truly bizarre oddity of a film, for better or worse. Best described as a pastiche of sexploitation films, mixed with a serial killer thriller, it is something truly special: a sex-positive film...
MotelX 2025: Lisbon Genre Fest Announces First Wave of TItles
The nineteenth edition of MOTELX, the Lisbon-based genre film festival, is fast approaching - less than a month away, now. Where does the time go? The festival announced the first wave of titles for this year's festival last week or...
MotelX 2024: ODDITY And THE SUBSTANCE Among Award Winners
MotelX has wrapped up this year's edition of the festival. As per usual, the festival had a program packed with local and international talent. In that regard everyone is a winner but when it comes to to the awards handed...
MotelX 2023: Award Winners From This Year's Festival
The seventeenth edition of MotelX in Lisbon, Portugal, has come and gone. For one week festival attendees got some of the best that the festival circuit has to offer. Now that things have calmed down it is time to share...
MotelX 2023: Lisbon's Horror Film Festival Announces Lineup
Next week, the 17th edition of the MotelX, Lisbon's International Horror Film Festival, begins. Over six days and nights some of the best local and international genre titles will be screened. Such titles include Lovely, Dark, and Deep, Raging...
MOTELX 2022: SPEAK NO EVIL And DEADSTREAM Win Feature Film Awards
MotelX wrapped up yesterday in Lisbon, Portugal. On Sunday night the awards were handed out with our particular attention given to the feature films. Christian Tafdrup's Speak No Evil was awarded the Méliès d’argent Award - Best European Feature...
MotelX 2022: BODIES BODIES BODIES Kicks Off This Year's Festival
The sixteenth edition of the MotelX film festival kicks off in Lisbon, Portugal this week. For one week some of the best that the international genre scene has to offer. The festival will open with Bodies Bodies Bodies, the...
MOTELX 2022: Argento's DARK GLASSES And Cervera's HUESERA Among First Titles
Our friends at MOTELX, Lisbon International Horror Film Festival, in Portugal are gearing up for this year's edition of their tremendous event. Today's announcement includes some of the titles playing at this year's festival, a book launch about Portuguese...
MotelX 2021: David Bruckner's THE NIGHT HOUSE to Close Lisbon Genre Fest
Where has the time gone? It felt like it wasn't too long ago that we were sharing news that The Green Knight was going to open MotelX, the annual genre festival in Lisbon, Portugal. And now, we're back once more,...
MOTELX 2021: David Lowery's THE GREEN KNIGHT to Open Lisbon Genre Fest
Last night, our friends at MOTELX - Lisbon International Horror Film Festival announced the first wave of titles for their fifteenth edition. All set to wow an in-person audience with as close a return to form as health guidelines will...
PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN Giveaway: Win a Blu-ray of The Smash Hit Comedy Horror Sci-fi
No better way to start a Tuesday than to give away Blu-rays of Steve Kostanski's hit comedy horror sci-fi PG: Psycho Goreman. Our friends at RLJE Films, part of the AMC Network, have given us two (2) Blu-rays to give...
The Great Festival Rebound of 2020: Let The Anarchists Speak
We are not at Sundance right now. However, we do have Anarchists who are covering the festival lineup. IFF Rotterdam started today and we won't be there either. But, we do have an Anarchist all raring to go and cover...
The Great Festival Rebound of 2020: Chapter One - The Film Festivals
2020 was some kind of year. There were more pressing matters, of course, but as a film site - any film site - we live and breathe by the beat of the film festival circuit. So as the year...
