Five Reasons to Stay Up for MIFF’s Night Shift

Like a maniacal masked killer in a popular slasher franchise, MIFF’s Night Shift strand has returned once again to remind us that Australia’s biggest film festival also knows how to get gloriously weird after dark.

This year’s lineup is packed with vengeful spirits, horny cops, alien pregnancies, brutalised orifices, gothic axe murders and bloody sex. In other words, a cracker of a program.

Here are just some of the Night Shift titles we’ll be making a beeline for.

MĀRAMA

We’ve been waiting a long time for this one.

While wandering the halls of MIFF last year, we got chatting with one of the producers behind Mārama. They spoke about the film with the kind of infectious enthusiasm that instantly made us think, “Yep… we need to see this.”

Fast forward twelve months and here it is.

Mārama follows Mary, a young Māori teacher lured to a windswept country estate deep in the wilds of Yorkshire by Lord Nathaniel Cole, who offers her a position as governess to his eight-year-old granddaughter. Naturally, all is not as it seems. Before long, it becomes clear that Cole’s past and Mary’s are shockingly intertwined by obsession, violence and murder, sending her spiralling into a blood-soaked quest for revenge and retribution.

Mixing Gothic horror with Māori mythology, Mārama is dripping with atmosphere, filled with dimly lit hallways and possessed by the sort of slow-burning dread that keeps you squirming in your seat right up until the final frame.

If your idea of a good night at the movies involves cursed bloodlines, angry ghosts and a kick-arse heroine who’s not afraid to get into the guts of things (quite literally), we’d suggest making this your first stop.

VICTORIAN PSYCHO

Whether by coincidence or careful curation, MIFF has gifted us not one, but two Gothic horrors set in the windswept wilds of Yorkshire centred around governesses. Clearly someone on the programming team has a type, and frankly, so do we.

If Mārama sounds like your cup of tea, why not pair it with a slice of Victorian Psycho cake?

Maika Monroe stars as Winifred Notty, a mysterious governess who arrives at the remote Ensor House to care for the children of a wealthy family. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Winifred also happens to be a homicidal maniac who attributes many of her murderous urges to an inner demon she affectionately calls “Fred.”

Which raises the obvious question: Is this secretly a prequel to Ate de Jong’s 1991 comedy masterpiece Drop Dead Fred? Has Rik Mayall’s sassy spirit secretly been getting ladies into trouble for hundreds of years?

As Christmas approaches and the body count steadily rises, the staff begin disappearing one by one while Winifred struggles to keep Fred’s bloodthirsty impulses in check. Adapted from Virginia Feito’s acclaimed novel and directed by Zachary Wigon (Sanctuary), Victorian Psycho looks like a gloriously unhinged mashup of Jane Eyre and Lizzie Borden wrapped up in a cosy gothic blanket made out of human entrails.

Honestly, you had us at Maika Monroe with an axe.

SPECIES

Every year we’ve asked MIFF to program a film about student doctors who leak blood from their pores every time they get stressed or horny… and finally, they have delivered.

Welcome to Species.

We caught this one at Cannes earlier this year and it absolutely floored us.

Margot is a young medical intern working in one of the most competitive emergency departments in Paris, where exhaustion, pressure and impossible expectations are simply considered part of the job. But when patients her own age begin arriving with strange symptoms and disturbing physical changes, Margot starts to suspect there’s something far more sinister happening than ordinary workplace burnout.

Unfortunately, the terrifying truth may be much closer to home — as her own body begins undergoing a series of horrifying mutations.

The feature film debut of Marion Le Corroller, Species is a gnarly slice of French body horror that takes the familiar anxieties of modern life — overwork, ambition, competition and the pressure to constantly perform — and pushes them to their most grotesque extreme.

Mmm mmm mmm… chef’s kiss.

MUM, I’M ALIEN PREGNANT

Let’s be honest…

If your film is called Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, we’re buying a ticket before you’ve even finished the sentence.

After an awkward hook-up in her apartment building laundry room, underachieving twenty-something Mary discovers she’s pregnant. Unfortunately, the father is… not entirely human. Now living with her aggressively open-minded mother while battling dismissive doctors, an utterly useless co-parent and a rapidly developing alien foetus, Mary’s pregnancy quickly spirals into an explosion of slime, tentacles and gloriously gooey practical effects.

The buzz around this Kiwi gross-out comedy has been steadily building for months, and we’re thrilled it’s finally crash-landing at MIFF.

Adding to the excitement, it’ll also be released locally by our good mates at Umbrella Entertainment, who continue to prove they have impeccable taste when it comes to wonderfully weird cinema.

Can’t. Fucking. Wait.

OUR EFFED UP WORLD

It’s always exciting seeing Monster Fest alumni continue to level up.

After screening Alice Maio Mackay’s short A Tale of the Laundry Game back in 2019 and welcoming Bad Girl Boogey to Monster Fest in 2022, we’ve watched Alice grow into one of Australia’s most distinctive and prolific genre filmmakers.

Her latest follows Sheri, a grieving slacker whose already messy life gets considerably worse when a glowing green meteorite crashes into her small town and an alien creature begins fusing itself with the locals. With humanity on the line, Sheri, her astronomer father and a ragtag gang of friends — including a video store clerk whose workplace becomes the alien’s new home — must somehow save the world.

Basically, if The Blob, The Faculty and your local video shop had a baby, it would probably look something like this.

Knowing Alice, expect heartfelt queer storytelling, practical creature effects, VHS-era sci-fi vibes and absolutely no interest in playing by anyone else’s rules.

We wouldn’t miss it for the world.

MIFF begins in Melbourne on August 6 and runs to the 23rd but tickets are on sale now and they have a nasty habit of selling out the good stuff fast. With a lineup this glorious, we wouldn’t advise waiting around! Head to the MIFF website, grab your tickets, and prepare to spend a few hours in the dark with some seriously spectacular cinema.