Ginger Nuts of Horror is thrilled to be heading to the Nightmares Film Fest 2024, to provide our readers with early access coverage and reviews of the most spine-chilling and thought-provoking horror movies on display. As we embark on this terrifying journey, we aim to delve into the depths of the festival’s lineup and unearth the most thrilling and bone-chilling cinematic experiences. Join us as we venture into the world of Nightmares Film Festival to uncover the next wave of horror cinema that will leave audiences trembling in fear and delight. Check out our reviews of Dooba Dooba, The Soul Eater, and The Invisible Raptor.
Nightmares Film Fest 2024 Review Round-Up Part 2
The Invisible Raptor
An amusement park palaeontologist and a hapless security guard team up to stop an invisible raptor from wreaking havoc on their small town.
Initial release: 2023
Director: Mike Hermosa
A Horror Movie Review by Rachel Willis
Well, it’s safe to say director Mike Hermosa’s film The Invisible Raptor is, in fact, about an invisible velociraptor. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny, gory, and a bit of a love letter to Steven Spielberg.
Dr. Grant Walker (Make Capes) is a washed-up paleontologist who works at the dinosaur theme park Dino World. His spiel for kids includes the uniqueness of raptor coprolite (fossilized poop) and an embarrassing and inappropriate dinosaur rap accompanied by a man in a T-rex costume.
Inhabiting the T-rex costume is Deniel “Denny” Denielson (David Shackelford), who pumps himself up in the bathroom mirror before donning the rex head.
Into this less-than-stellar existence for Dr. Grant walks the aforementioned invisible raptor.
The movie’s humor runs the gamut from subtle to so-silly-you-can’t-help-but-laugh, offering a mix of styles sure to elicit a chuckle or two from just about anyone. The film’s strengths lie in its ability to make fun of itself while also having a good time with an invisible raptor. When your villain is invisible, your gore really shines— and splatters everyone in its vicinity.
As the film reaches its second act, the jokes are fewer and an attempt to add some seriousness doesn’t work as well.
However, Capes is all in for this wild ride, and he and Shackelford work well together as the mismatched duo of dino hunters. The supporting cast, particularly Richard Riehle as the county sheriff and Sandy Martin as a foul-mouthed local version of Col. Sanders, add to the comedy.
If you’re looking for something with the humor of Zombeavers and the whimsy of E.T., The Invisible Raptor is your movie.
The Soul Eater
When the disappearance of children and bloody murders multiply in a small mountain village, an old legend shrouded in sulphur reappears… Commander Guardiano and Captain of the Gendarmerie De Rolan are forced to join forces to uncover the truth.
Directors, Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
There’s a handful of filmmakers who raise anticipation with each new film. For horror fans, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have perched gruesomely within that prized group since their 2007 feature debut, Inside.
2021’s Kandisha was another highlight in a slew of genre films, all boundary pushers, all gorgeously shot, all benefitting from flawed characters in the grimmest of circumstances making tough, often unusual decisions.
Like Elisabeth (Virginie Ledoyen) and Franck (Paul Hamy), both working the same case—unwillingly paired as it seems a murder/suicide connects two separate cases—in a remote mountain village in France.
A married couple potentially implicated in the disappearance of a dozen children has brutally killed each other, each cannibalizing the other and reaching sexual climax before finally expiring. It’s a weird case, grisly, and for each investigator it triggers a painful past.
What the filmmakers conjure—working from a script by first time screenwriters Annelyse Batrel, Ludovic Lefebvre and Alexis Laipsker—is a pervasive paranoia that allows superstitious nonsense to look like logic. It’s a bit of a magic trick, and they pull it off by developing a sense of place that never condescends but uses outsiders’ eyes to see the creepy that’s accepted as natural by locals.
This atmosphere feeds a childlike logic that colors the film, appropriate because so many of the primary characters are children. These bruised souls give the thriller a melancholy darkness that’s hard to shake.
And The Soul Eater is more twisty thriller than the outright horror of the pair’s previous films. Though there’s carnage, blood, and a dark and thrilling finale, the true horror of the story echoes around every sad face and suspicious glance. The imagery is haunting, allowing the film to transcend its police procedural structure to become something more mysterious and troubling.
Dooba Dooba
A babysitter gets more than she bargained for when she meets Monroe. StarringAmna Vegha Betsy Sligh Erin O’Meara.
Director, Ehrland Hollingsworth.
A Horror Movie Review by Brooklyn Ewing
Dooba Dooba feels like something special — like a movie from the 70s or 80s that you borrowed on bootleg VHS from a new kid in your town.
The movie opens as Amna (Amna Vegha) shows up for a night of babysitting and learns that her ward —a sheltered sixteen year old girl named Monroe (Betsy Sligh) — is being watched at all times by in-home security cameras.
Vegha makes it all work. She brings together the absurdity of Monroe’s parents with the reality of this cringy babysitting job.
There are only four characters in the film and each one makes me feel some type of way. The parents generate equal levels of unease, and their interactions with Amna make me want to run out of the room. Monroe is wildly odd, at one point critiquing Amna’s musical endeavors, making me want to climb out the window because I’m so embarrassed for her.
Dooba Dooba’s vintage vibes make it deeply creepy. You feel like you’re watching something secretly, and you want to warn Amna that something doesn’t feel right. If you are a fan of The House of The Devil or The Loved Ones, this will pull you right in. I loved the creative cinematography.
Director Ehrland Hollingsworth is new to horror, but I think he has a new home in the horror community, and I cannot wait to see how audiences respond to this movie. I feel like part of a secret club after being able to see Dooba Dooba and I’m ready to talk about it with the world.
Check out part one of our coverage of the Nightmares Film Fest 2024 here
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