In theory, creating an effective folk horror movie shouldn’t be too difficult; there’s a wealth of myth and lore to pull into making a film that both haunts and mystifies. But in practice, modern scary movies tend to fumble this easy bag with dull writing and worse plots. Writer-director Brit Chainey falls into that same camp with Rabbit Trap, his feature debut that premiered at Sundance Film Festival. The movie tries to capitalize on the wild and weird beauty of Wales to create a folk horror story with a strong emotional tenor, but clever visual tricks and an evocative setting can’t save Rabbit Trap from its own incoherent plot.
Read MoreIn her directorial debut Seeds, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary, Brittany Shyne offers an intimate look at the fate of Black farmers in the American South. Shooting in black-and-white with a single-minded focus on her subjects, Shyne creates what feels like an elegy for a way of living on the brink of dying out.
Read MoreTrain Dreams breathes life into ordinary moments that make up the meaning of one’s life. It’s a welcome reminder during these all too chaotic times, that the journey is not marked by the memories we often think it will be.
Read MoreIn her directorial debut Oh, Hi!—which premiered this year at Sundance Film Festival—Sophie Brooks takes the decline of modern dating and mixes it up in a frothy rom-com.
Read MoreTouch Me is for the weirdos who want to be shocked and confronted with a deliciously campy, sensory overload fever dream that happens to include a few hentai scenes. Oh, and it’s a very horny movie.
Read MoreIn her new film Sugar Babies, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, Rachel Fleit charts the trajectory of a TikTok sugar baby influencer.
Read MoreNext week, two Hyperreal Film Journal writers will pack their parkas and snow boots and jet off to Park City, Utah, for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Our editor-in-chief Alix Mammina and staff writer Andy Volk share their top picks to catch, whether you’re braving the cold in-person or checking in for online screenings.
Read MoreBORDERS|NO BORDERS is the short film competition hosted by Houston Cinema Arts Festival 2024.
Read MoreAs part of our coverage of Houston Cinema Arts Festival 2024, Hyperreal Film Journal viewed a work-in-progress screening of Connor Sen Warnick’s feature debut, Characters Disappearing.
Read MoreWe are joined today by the director of Tendaberry, a year-spanning, character-driven epic that chronicles the life of a young woman navigating living in New York after her boyfriend returns to Ukraine to be with his ailing father.
Read MoreThe Seed of the Sacred Fig entwines the real threats of a brutal theocracy with the fictional story of one family’s struggle under its absolutist rule.
Read MoreWe sat down with Norita producers Sarah Schoellkopf and Melissa Daniels to discuss their connection to Nora Cortiñas and the feminist message at the heart of the film.
Read MoreFrom the outset, Get Away perpetually winks at the audience. The comedy comes from a family’s obliviousness to numerous foreboding signifiers of doom, though Frost’s script goes back to that well so much it starts to run dry by the second act.
Read MoreElizabeth Sankey weaves an intricate tale of female persecution and its relation to postpartum depression, soaked with the tears of her own harrowing experience in a psychiatric hospital after her own breakdown. The documentary works as an expose of her institutionalization intercut with iconic witches throughout film and television history and the confessions of other suffering mothers.
Read MoreDespite its titular (and occasionally apt) shallowness, Tolga Karaçelik’s entry at Tribeca is a great ride that manages to find moments of poignancy.
Read MoreEight days, 267.12 miles walked, 10 interviews conducted, 29 articles written, dozens of films watched, and an untold amount of fast food consumed. The Hyperreal Film Journal stayed busy during SXSW 2024.
Read MoreTold exclusively through iPhone footage, laptop cameras, and text exchanges, Patricia Franquesa’s My Sextortion Diary plays out more like a thriller more akin to films like Missing, Searching, and UnFriended than the traditional talking head documentary.
Read MoreThe first feature-length film from Rocket Jump (Freddie Wong and Matthew Arnold), We’re All Gonna Die has some rough edges but is at its greatest when it finds the balance between emotional and comedic.
Read MoreSing Sing is a magician’s best trick from a filmmaker still early in his career.
Read MoreNicole Daddano and Adam Wilder’s short animated film The Bleacher makes the viewer a voyeur in a dark and gritty world, centered around a laundromat where a regular has some very dirty laundry to do indeed. HFC sat down with Nicole and Adam to discuss all the strange turns the film takes and shifting from live action to animation.
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