Complete Program Revealed & Tickets On Sale For MONSTER FEST 2023 Melbourne

With three weeks to go before MONSTER FEST 2023 launches at Cinema Nova from October 12-22, we’re pleased to reveal our Complete Melbourne Program. MONSTER FEST 2023 would not be possible without the support of our Festival Sponsors; Beserk, Umbrella Entertainment, Roar Digital, Lexlab, DeadEndDVD and Red Octopus Screenprinting. Pulse-pounding plotting, merciless carnage and an abundance of gore is served red-hot in filmmaker Demián Rugna‘s WHEN EVIL LURKS, with an estranged father’s race against time to save his family from a demonic infection that’s rapidly devouring a country whole.

Winner of four major awards at the recent Fantasia Film Festival including ‘Best Film’, writer/director Pascal Plante‘s RED ROOMS is an unflinching and deeply unsettling play on our dark fascination with true crime that follows a woman’s obsession with a high-profile murder trial and her compulsion to unlock the truth. Late fees are the least of Nyla’s worries when she returns a stack of tapes to Blaster Video and unwittingly unleashes the characters within the films in Cody Kennedy & Tim Rutherford‘s nostalgic, hilarious and action-packed THE LAST VIDEO STORE.

Subversive, suspenseful and squeam-inducing barely scratches the surface in describing director Ariel Vida‘s TRIM SEASON, that sees a group of twenty-somethings’ dream job turn into an inescapable nightmare on an isolated weed farm. Folklore and festive frights collide in director Magnus Martens‘ THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE BARN, that sees an American family relocate to a remote Norwegian village where they become the target of a gnome uprising.

Filmmaking kin Ben & Jacob Burghart deliver the breakneck-paced neo-western/thriller HEAD COUNT that positions its protagonist Kat (Aaron Jakubenko, GREAT WHITE) in a lethal predicament where he need determine what lead him there for a chance to survive. RESTORE POINT signals the emergence of a new visionary in science fiction cinema, filmmaker Robert Hloz‘s debut feature follows Detective Emma Trochinowska (Andrea Mohylová) who is assigned to find the killer of a slain couple with the assistance of one of the victims who has been restored back to life. Zen meets zany with kung fu galore, laughs aplenty and a sonic assault of Black Sabbath in filmmaker Rainer Sarnet‘s THE INVISIBLE FIGHT that takes Rafael (Ursel Tilk), an orthodox Russian, on a warrior’s journey to become a martial arts master.

Fresh from its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, writer/director Ariane Louis-Seize‘s HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDAL PERSON is loaded with saccharine scares and bountiful charm as a young woman struggles to adapt to the ancient practices of her lineage in this humorous coming-of-age comedy-horror. Maligned by critics and largely unseen by audiences upon theatrical release, director Alec Mills‘ BLOOD MOON found its way to the hearts of genre fans the world over via home video, now 23 years later Monster Fest is proud to present the World Premiere of an all-new 4K Restoration of this unsung Australian slasher classic. Join us on Friday the 13th for a 30th Anniversary Screening of what was to be genre icon Jason Voorhees’ last cinematic outing (though of course he would end up going to space and later machete-to-glove with Freddy), in filmmaker Adam Marcus‘s JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY.

Anthony Penta‘s documentary WE KILL FOR LOVE is a passionate and thorough exploration of a sub-genre in cinema that once reigned supreme on the shelves of video stores and screens of late night television alike but now lost in time, the erotic thriller. Lightning crashes with the passing of legendary martial artist Bruce Lee and the birth of the phenomenon known as ‘Bruceploitation’ in filmmaker David Gregory‘s extraordinary no-stone-left-unturned documentary, ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE.

Satisfy your curiosity for ‘Bruceploitation’ with a Double Feature of THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN and CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER where combined Bruce battles Dracula, James Bond, Emmanuelle, the Godfather, an Exorcist, terrorists and even a bull.

Documentarian duo Steve J. Adams & Sean Horlor‘s SATAN WANTS YOU is a captivating examination of how a psychiatrist and patient’s best-selling memoir, Michelle Remembers, lead to the global ‘satanic panic’ media frenzy of the 1980s.

Long before Michelle Remembers, the Devil’s clutches in pop culture were inescapable, especially in film and television. Join Cinemaniacs Sally Christie, Lee Gambin and Hande Noyan as they take you on a journey through Satan’s various moving image incarnations with WHAT AN EXCELLENT DAY FOR AN EXORCISM: POSSESSION AND SATAN IN FILM & TV. STRANGER THAN FICTION, SHORTER THAN FEATURE is a pairing of two extended shorts; Australian filmmaker Keir Beck‘s gripping backwoods horror HITCHED and British writer/director Sean Hogan‘s atmosphere-drenched folklore horror TO FIRE YOU COME AT LAST produced by Kier-La Janisse (WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR).

Monster Fest continues to curate the finest genre shorts coursing through the veins of the international festival circuit and this year brings the audience two sessions of MONSTER SHORTS with the most gripping, hellraising and downright skin-crawling of these including several fresh homegrown discoveries. Bursting at the seams with gross-out horror, bad taste comedies, sick n’ twisted science fiction and other genres that defy any imaginable categorisation, TRASHARAMA is the offbeat and outlandish shorts program curated by Murder City’s Dick Dale and a rite of passage at each and every Melbourne Monster Fest.

The aforementioned films join the previously announced SUITABLE FLESH, WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS, THE EMU WAR, TIME ADDICTS, MANCUNIAN MAN: THE LEGENDARY LIFE OF CLIFF TWEMLOW and GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI in our MONSTER FEST 2023 program.