The Boston Underground Film Festival returns for its 19th year to Harvard Square to kick off New England’s Spring festival season, bringing with it a smorgasbord of phantasmagoria, dark comedy, thrillers, killers, and chillers to the Brattle Theatre and Harvard Film Archive from March 22nd through the 26th. This year’s schedule boasts an eclectic selection of weird, wonderful programming packed with flavors for cineastes of all tastes!
The opening and closing films for this year’s BUFF will be 2016 TIFF Midnight Madness juggernaut Prevenge and ferocious feminist satire Bitch, on the heels of its 2017 Sundance world premiere. The festival is packed with can’t miss films that range genres guaranteed to thrill, chill, and fulfill.
The kid-friendly ‘Saturday Morning Cartoon’ program will return, along with the cereal buffet programmed by renowned curator, author, and Monster Fest Festival Director Kier-La Janisse
Take a look at some of the films coming to BUFF March 22-26. Individual screening prices vary, but you can get a festival pass for a reduced rate at their Kickstarter by March 17. After passes will be available for $180 at the BUFF website
BITCH – East Coast Premiere
Marianna Palka | USA | 2017
Caged in the suburbs of our discontent, a woman (Marianna Palka) snaps and enters a fugue state, consumed by the psyche of a vicious dog. Her philandering, stay-at-work husband (Jason Ritter) must grudgingly assume the role of family caretaker, forcing him to engage with his four children and sister-in-law (Jaime King) as they attempt to strengthen their familial unit and entice mom back to reality. Marianna Palka writes, directs, and stars in her bitingly funny and profound fourth feature.
DAVE MADE A MAZE – East Coast Premiere
Bill Watterson | USA | 2017
Dave (Nick Thune) is an artist who has yet to complete anything of significance in his short career; out of frustration, he builds an elaborate box fort in his living room. When his girlfriend and friends (including Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Busch, and Meera Rohit Kumbhani) enter against his protests, he must save them all from a series of fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and creatures of his own creation. Actor Bill Watterson writes and directs his hilarious and idiosyncratic first feature.
HOUNDS OF LOVE – East Coast Premiere
Ben Young | Australia | 2016
In Ben Young’s tense, chilling feature debut, 17-year-old Vicki Maloney is randomly abducted from a suburban street by a disturbed couple and held prisoner in their home. As she observes the volatile dynamic between her captors, she soon realizes the key to survival lies in driving a wedge between them.
PREVENGE – East Coast Premiere
Alice Lowe | UK | 2016
In her directorial debut, Alice Lowe (Sightseers, Hot Fuzz, Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place) writes, directs and stars in a pitch black comedic tale of vengeance about seven-months-pregnant Widow Ruth and the unborn serial killer that compels her on her homicidal rampage.
SAINT BERNARD – North American Premiere
Gabe Bartalos | USA/France | 2013
Prolific creature designer Gabe Bartalos (Brain Damage, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, Gremlins 2, and the Leprechaun series) crafts a phantasmagoric vision of a classical music conductor descending into insanity with his sophomore feature. Seemingly vanished from a short-lived run on the festival circuit in 2014, BUFF is proud to give this must-see nightmare, and the visionary filmmaker who created it, a proper North American premiere.
68 KILL – East Coast Premiere
Trent Haaga | USA | 2017
Trent Haaga (writer of Deadgirl, Cheap Thrills) returns to the director’s chair following 2011’s Chop with a punk-rock after hours thriller about femininity, masculinity and the theft of $68,000. When Liza (AnnaLynne McCord) asks her boyfriend Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler) to help her rob her wealthy sugar daddy, he can’t say no. Once they step into the man’s home, Chip & Liza embark on a breakneck road trip to hell. Adapted from Bryan Smith’s 2013, a no-holds-barred crime novel of the same name.
THE VOID – New England Premiere
Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski | Canada | 2016
ASTRON-6’sJeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski return with a Carpenteresque saga of brutal, cosmic dread, packed with creatures straight out of hell. In the middle of a routine patrol, officer Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) happens upon a blood-soaked figure limping down a deserted stretch of road in the middle of the night. When he rushes the young man to a nearby rural hospital, he finds that patients and personnel are transforming into something… inhuman. As the horror intensifies, Carter must lead the other survivors into the subterranean depths of the hospital in a desperate bid to save their lives and end the nightmare before it’s too late.
TRINITY – Boston Premiere
Skip Shea | USA | 2016
Award-winning Massachusetts-based filmmaker, writer, artist and actor Skip Shea brings to life a deeply personal and disturbing first feature based on the true story about a moment in the life of a clergy abuse survivor. While at a coffee shop, a man accidentally bumps into the priest who abused him when he was a child, triggering a surreal, PTSD-induced dissociative moment that sends him on a twisted journey through his past.
