Abel Barrera was homeless growing up in Redding. Gaspar, who was a classmate of Mike Barrera, was homeless and living in a car with his mother before being taken in by the Barrera family. Given this history, the Barreras in 2013 conceived of the Bernal Scream, a free show in the backyard of the family home on Bernal Road in San Jose for low-income families who couldn't afford other haunted attractions.
Our fears turn feral when they have nowhere to go. South Korean author Bora Chung's new short story collection plays with old horror tropes: endless corridors and looped staircases, exits that only lead you deeper, a phone that rings and rings (don't pick up). The kind of stories dare-drunk children trade in the dark. Set in a research facility known only as the Institute, a repository of cursed and haunted objects,
Scary found-footage movies can and do get better than this enthusiastic DIY horror from married-couple directors Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti. Their zero-budget feature is fun for a while, but in the end it's just not scary enough. There is nothing to make jump out of your skin or frighten you out of your senses. Kempt and Toti also star in the film, playing fictional versions of themselves: Rachel and Nick, horror-obsessed film-makers living in Kirksville, Missouri.
Good Boy is a novel concept in the haunted-house genre - it's told entirely from the point of view of a dog, and it's got a surprisingly moving twist in its tail, sorry, tale. Co-written and directed by Ben Leonberg, who is also star pup Indy's owner in real life, it tells the story of Todd (Shane Jensen), a man suffering with an unnamed serious illness, who takes his dog to live with him in his late grandfather's old house in the country.
After having a medical emergency in which he was coughing up blood, Todd takes Indy to his grandfather's house. There isn't much for the pair to do there, other than clean up the house and watch old videos of Todd's grandfather ( Larry Fessenden) with his dog. Indy always stays close to Todd. Todd's sister (Arielle Friedman) tells him over the phone that dogs sense things humans can't.