Like a macabre pilgrimage, the Overlook Film Festival summons genre film obsessives from around the country and beyond to the party-friendly streets of New Orleans, Louisiana—a city whose one-of-a-kind history with the otherworldly befits the event’s atmosphere.
Dedicated to the late Doug Jones, a longtime festival programmer and esteemed member of the Los Angeles film community, the 2024 edition featured repertory presentations from his personal wish list. Throughout the weekend (April 4-7), festival co-directors Landon Zakheim and Michael Lerman paid tribute to Jones at multiple screenings, highlighting his contributions to Overlook over the years and his devotion to both film and music.
The bulk of the slate, however, was comprised of new titles that premiered at the most recent Sundance and SXSW film festivals, including “In a Violent Nature,” which flips the perspective of the traditional slasher film; “Oddity,” an Irish haunted home flick; the entrancing coming-of-ager “I Saw the TV Glow;” and the Alps-set headscratcher “Cuckoo.”
Attendees were also treated to the world premiere of the consistently amusing vampire flick “Abigail” from “Ready or Not” directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.
But while Overlook fulfills its regional fest duty of bringing fresh scares to audiences that may otherwise struggle to access them, it’s the carefully curated special events that grab one’s attention. This year, animation had a prominent presence thanks to notable guests.
First came a panel on the animated miniseries “Over the Garden Wall,” which this writer had the pleasure of moderating, where creator Patrick McHale and art director Nick Cross shared insight into the origins of the fall favorite, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. McHale screened a short film he created over two decades ago as a CalArts student titled “On Holiday,” which already showed two characters that resemble Wirt and Greg, the show’s protagonists. Already a cult classic for viewers of all ages, the show exemplifies a likely irreplicable risk-taking period at Cartoon Network. Most recently, McHale co-wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winning stop-motion fable “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.”
Austin-based animation maverick Don Hertzfeldt graced Overlook with one of the first-ever public showings of his latest existentialist short film, “Me,” which was reworked from its original intent as a music video. The 22-minute music-driven work features no dialogue—a distinct change from his “World of Tomorrow” trilogy—and comments on the troubling state of the world and our complicated place in it via characters that Hertzfeldt described as resembling Muppets. Despite what some of the imagery might evoke, the filmmaker considers this as a hopeful statement on minding what’s truly relevant about existence.
During the post-screening Q&A, Hertzfeldt revealed he is working with Ari Aster to bring to fruition an ambitious project the former has tried to get off the ground for at least 15 years.
Among the most peculiar programs, there was “Fasterpiece Theater,” which compiled several maligned or bizarre genre films of varied pedigrees, each of them cut down to a few minutes that preserve their most amusing scenes. The feature-length reel included movies as obscure as the softcore porn slasher “Death Boyz Don’t Scream” and as reviled as “Exorcist II: The Heretic” and “Dreamcatcher.” In charge of distilling these duds to their hilarious essence is Bret Berg, the mind behind the live-stream channel Museum of Home Video. Week after week, Berg presents similar mixes of rarities he’s found scouring the internet. Together, the multiple bitesize supercuts make for a full plate of offbeat fun.
For its final day, Overlook dove into the past of genre cinema with a 50th-anniversary screening of Brian DePalma’s musical saga “Phantom of the Paradise.” The event featured an introduction by Ari Kahan, principal archivist at the Swan Archives website and thus the preeminent expert/fan of the film. Kahan detailed the occurrences that hindered the proper release of the film back in the ‘70s—namely a dispute over the Swan Song Enterprises with the band Led Zeppelin—as well as more recent transgressions, such as the subpar color correction done when it was remastered over a decade ago.
To cap off the evening, revered musician and actor Paul Williams, who played the infamous manager and record label owner Swan, appeared on stage in conversation with filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell. The candid chat often veered away from only discussing DePalma’s movie, and instead, Williams retold anecdotes from his storied career in the entertainment business. At one point Jake Shears of the band Scissor Sisters got up from his seat in the audience to congratulate Williams in what became a momentous celebration.
That festivities ended with the 100th-anniversary screening of Robert Wiene’s German expressionist silent film “The Hands of Orlac,” about a pianist whose hands are switched with those of a murderer, with a live improvised score by local band Think Less, Hear More. Watching a production from the early days of the medium makes us both aware that it remains in its infancy compared to other art forms and also of how quickly it has evolved.
Given the current widespread lack of movie theater etiquette, one tends to expect disrespectful behaviors at every theater. But audiences at the festival, almost without fault, refrained from using their cell phones during screenings. Horror fans, at least at Overlook, seemed actually concerned with what was being projected onto the large canvas. Without distractions from devices, we all were immersed in the tension of the narratives. And just as audiences were respectful of nerve-racking moments, they also reacted in appropriately loud fashion when the movie merited it: during the brilliantly gruesome kills of “In a Violent Nature” or the absurdist humorous touches of “Oddity.” It was invigorating. After-hours Halloween-themed parties, eclectic shorts programs, and immersive performances for the most adventurous guests round off this gathering at “America’s most haunted city,” as Overlook dubs New Orleans. It’s commendable that a festival with a specific focus delivers on its niche purpose while also building a larger community by not employing rigidly defined labels. Instead, Overlooks embraces a broader view on genre.