This was a stacked year for Overlook, bolstered by a number of films that took a simple idea and pushed it to its conclusion. Horror is at its best when it doesn’t just land the premise, but keeps following that thread to wherever it may lead. Here are our top ten of the festival.
1. Obsession ★★★★★
Directed by Milk and Serial’s Curry Barker, this horror about romantic coercion and monomania follows a wish for reciprocated love that rewrites reality in ways that quickly get out of hand. Morally unsparing, often uproariously funny, and devastating in its conclusion, this is a real contender for horror film of the year.
2. The Furious ★★★★★
Kenji Tanigaki’s brawling revenge thriller follows a mute handyman tearing through a trafficking network after his daughter is taken. A ten-tonne juggernaut of action, driven by pure, punishing momentum, the crowd-pleaser in the tradition of The Raid (with which it shares more than one cast member) The Furious just keeps coming. This was the clear highlight of Overlook’s new non-horror genre sidebar.
3. Hokum ★★★★★
Directed by Damian McCarthy, this haunted hotel mystery follows a hard-drinking, belligerent writer pulled into a story that keeps opening out beneath him. This is a nasty, funny, tightly constructed ghost story, in the tradition of Stephen King – the best haunted house horror of the decade.
4. Boorman and the Devil ★★★★
David Kittredge’s documentary revisits the making of John Boorman’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic. A thoughtful, kind, and ultimately moving look into what it truly means to be creative, and the importance of having artists behind our art.
5. Buffet Infinity ★★★★
Directed by Simon Glassman, this experimental horror assembles fragments of cheap infomercials and public-access television into a creeping cosmic nightmare – just off the highway, with accessible parking! This is boldest horror of the year – funny, freaky, and hard to shake.
6. Leviticus ★★★★
Alex Ullom’s conversion-therapy horror follows two boys targeted by an entity that takes the form of the lover they crave the most. It milks that central idea for paranoia, terror, and sadness, and never lets the audience off the hook – it locates the desire and despair in growing up gay in a small conservative town.
7. Mārama ★★★★
Directed by Taratoa Stappard, this colonial gothic mystery follows a Māori woman navigating a Victorian household built on exploitation. A potent slice of Māori gothic, by the end it lands firmly in the “good for her” universe, and features the best haka scene you’ll see all year.
8. Exit 8 ★★★½
Genki Kawamura’s looping möbius corridor thriller traps its protagonist in a liminal space governed by strict rules. A finely crafted slowburn gem, this computer gave adaptation draws horror fun unnerving details – the longer it goes, the more it gets under your skin.
9. Never After Dark ★★★½
Directed by Dave Boyle, this Japan-set ghost story follows a medium working through a haunting with calm, methodical logic. Like Hokum, this is a classically structured ghost story that draws you in by building great characters and actually giving you a supernatural riddle to solve.
10. The Holy Boy ★★★½
Paolo Strippoli’s religious horror unfolds within a community organised around ritual and belief. Drawing out the ways faith, community, and healing can conceal their opposites, The Holy Boy pushes all the way to an unsettling cosmic conclusion.
All these films played at the Overlook Film Festival, and will be heading to various forms of theatrical, VOD, and streaming release soon!
Whitlock&Pope 