GASP! Horror Film Festival 2024 at CULTPLEX
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
After a stellar debut edition last year, GASP! Horror Film Festival returns to Manchester’s CULTPLEX bigger and better, with a full weekend of scary movies from underrepresented voices. Running from Friday 21 – Sunday 23 June, the festival features a combination of eight brand new features and 40 new short films, alongside two mystery screenings and five year anniversary showing of Rose Glass’ acclaimed 2019 religious horror Saint Maud.
As before, GASP! is dedicated to championing diversity within horror cinema, which is why all of the films on show across the festival are either directed, written or produced by people of colour, women, people with disabilities or members of the LGBTQ+ community, or foreign language filmmakers. Of course, increased diversity behind the camera often leads to surprises, fresh takes on old material and exciting new perspectives.
Indeed, the filmmakers featured within the programme explore the full spectrum of horror, from Sean Kurosawa’s Okhotsk of the Living Dead, a no budget, gore filled love letter to cinema, to Julia Marchese’s feminist horror thriller, I Know What You Need — adapted from a Steven King short story in the style of an after school special. There are films that delight in the supernatural with zombies, vampires and witches, alongside more grounded, human terrors. While stylistically audiences can expect everything from giallo throwbacks to new spins on found footage horror.
This year’s edition has also been extended to three days, with Sunday’s programme specifically dedicated to horror films written and/or directed by women. Showing alongside Saint Maud is a “mystery women in horror film”, as well as Brittney Greer’s nightmarish slasher Happy Halloween, and Devanny Pinn’s The Black Mass — a Florida-set serial killer chiller inspired by real events — plus a Women in Horror Short Film Showcase.
