The Halloween season always brings viewers back to watching their favorite horror films, but Hysteria Fest, which runs at Arkadin Cinema & Bar from October 18-22, broadens the scope of what horror fans can expect.
Festival organizer Paul Hibbard says the idea for Hysteria Fest came about as an accident. After taking his own short film, Some Visitors, to horror festivals around the country in 2022, he was looking for a place to screen it in St. Louis. Arkadin offered him a space, and, along with his own film, Hibbard wanted to screen some of the shorts he saw while on the festival circuit. From that first program, Hysteria Fest was born.
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“I began to form a festival without even realizing it,” Hibbard says. While last year only consisted of one sold-out day of programming, this year will spread the scream fest over several days.
Hibbard was inspired by Arkadin’s more niche programming and saw potential for a festival in St. Louis that not only focused on the best in up-and-coming horror, but also turned an eye toward the more niche, international side of horror.
“I saw this market where I could bring these horror films around the world and kind of focus on an international horror film festival here in St. Louis,” Hibbard says.
With that approach in mind, Hibbard plans for each year to focus on a theme based on either a country, region, or specific film movement. To kick things off, this year’s opening and closing night films are pulled from the French Extremity movement, a sub-genre of films from the late ‘90s and early 2000s characterized by graphic violence. This includes an opening night secret screening on October 18, preceded by a conversation about the context of the genre with film critic Justine Peres Smith, and a 15th anniversary screening of Martyrs, one of the most highly regarded films of the genre, as the closing night film on October 22.
In addition to these films, a number of other exciting screenings from up-and-coming horror filmmakers will be on offer. The Once and Future Smash, a film Hibbard characterizes as a Christiopher Guest–style mockumentary that plays with horror conventions, and its companion film-within-the-film, End Zone 2, will play as a double feature on both October 19 and 20. Alice Maio Mackay, an 18-year-old trans filmmaker from Australia who has been called “a fearless heir to the Queer Horror canon,” will be on hand for a virtual Q&A following the screening of her film T Blockers on October 21. There’s also Plantasma, a Brooklyn indie horror film shot during quarantine about a plant that starts growing out of its owner, playing on October 21.
The Hysteria Fest Horror Flea Market will also take over Arkadin’s backlot on October 21, featuring the Deadly Prey Gallery—which specializes in distributing Ghanian horror movie posters—and local artists and vendors such as Glamgoria and Maxine Thirteen.
Hibbard is excited to see how Hysteria Fest can bridge the gap between the art house and grindhouse, and show some of the best of what the genre has to offer with all of the necessary context.
“I wanted to follow Arkadin’s philosophy, where I am bringing in films from around the world that people haven’t heard of and show them off,” Hibbard says. “I never planned to be a fest director, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but it all just kind of came together.”
For tickets and more details about Hysteria Fest, visit arkadincinema.com.
