We announce the Official Selections of the category BEST FEATURE FILM of DarkVeins Horror Fest 2020, a festival dedicated to horror cinema and now in its fourth year.
The following feature films were selected from the competition films:
- Bad Candy (USA - 2020) by Scott Hansen and Desiree Connell;
- Stranger (Ukraine - 2019) by Dmitriy Tomashpolskiy;
- Diablo Rojo (Panama - 2019) by Sol Moreno
Below is more info on the three feature films finalists competing for the award BEST FEATURE FILM:
Directed by Scott Hansen (The Possession Experiment) and Desiree Connell, Bad Candy is a fun horror film about Halloween whose story takes place in the small town of New Salem, a place where a little girl has the power to give life to everything she draws by wreaking havoc.
Bad Candy boasts the presence in the cast of Zach Galligan (Gremlins, The Chair) and Corey Taylor, the frontman of Slipknot. The latter replaced Sid Haig after his tragic death in 2019.
Desiree Connell also appears on the film crew as producer and screenwriter while Derek Russo, Ryan Kiser, Kenneth Trujillo, Mike Milligan, Haley Nicole Leary, Bill Pacer and Alexandra Lucchesi complete the cast.
Photography is by Scott B. Hansen and Blake Studwell while the soundtrack is by Chris Dudley.
Wayne Anderson, on the other hand, handled the special effects.
Plot: radio DJs Chilly Billy (Corey Taylor) and Paul (Zach Galligan) spend Halloween night telling their radio listeners the terrifying stories that have occurred over the years on October 31 in the New Salem community. Stories in which children and adults have been slaughtered at the hands of murderers, demons, entities and zombies, all under the leadership of a diabolical Halloween-loving clown.
The trailer for Bad Candy:
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Written and directed by Dmitriy Tomashpolskiy, the surreal Stranger (aka Storonniy) is a science fiction mystery film in which a detective will take an interest in two cases: that of the disappearance of a synchronized swimming team right during a performance and that of a hydrotherapy clinic patient who vanished into thin air while bathing. How are these cases connected? The search will lead the woman to shed light not only on the unsolved cases but also on herself.
The film is a mix of The cure from wellness and The shape of water with reminders to the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
In the cast: Anastasiya Yevtushenko, Darya Tregubova, Maria Bruni, Anna Sukhomlyn, Sergey Kalantay and Mariya Motorna.
The photography of Stranger is by Serhii Smychok
The trailer for Stranger:
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Produced and written by Jota Nájera and directed by Sol Moreno, Diablo Rojo is the first horror filmed in Panama. The film's story is rooted in witchcraft and, more importantly, folklore by giving space to Tulivieja, a legendary character from Costa Rica and Panama who is described as a female ghost, an entity with swollen and turgid breasts (sometimes dripping with milk) that transforms into a monster.
Plot: In Panama City, a bus driver falls victim to a spell. The man ends up getting lost along paths in the woods, dragging his assistant, two police officers and a priest into his crazy and impressive adventure. Together, the four men will have to survive the creatures of the night, using the old vehicle as their only refuge.
The trailer for Diablo Rojo PTY:
