ATLRetro

Buried Alive Film Festival (BAFF) brings both new and Retro cinema scares to the historic Plaza Theatre for its 16th annual outing this weekend, Friday Sept. 29 through Sunday Oct.1, 2023. Over the years, the festival founded by Gorehound Productions has never failed to impress with a mix of independent features and groundbreaking shorts from all over the world. Tickets are available for individual films and short blocks here, but we recommend going all in for the $80 all-inclusive festival pass! Why? Well, where the HELL do we start and how the HELL do you choose?! If you’re not DEAD SET on attending, check out the festival trailer featuring Professor Morte and the practical FX masters of Silver Scream FX Lab NOW!

Festival Insider Tip: The curated short blocks are BAFF’s pièce de résistance! Year after year, the film selection committee outdoes itself in unearthing some of the highest quality, zaniest, creepiest horror shorts by filmmakers ranging from local talents to creators from all over the world. Expect to be surprised and blown away because anything from anywhere may show up on the big screen from hellacious humor to spine-tingling scares, from old-school Gothic to the craziest Bizarro, from atmospheric supernatural to pushing the envelope of skin-crawling bloody gore-fantastic.

FRIDAY SEPT. 29

SINEMA CHALLENGE (6 PM). Local indie filmmakers randomly selected a horror genre from a deck of Cards Against Humanity and had 13 days to make a movie! The results are always a riot but also a chance for some of Georgia’s most talented film creators and crews to go all in with no Hollywood rules. Be the first to see these wacky and innovative shorts made especially for BAFF.

I’LL CRUSH YA’LL (Os Reviento, DIR: Kike Narcea, 8 PM), the opening night feature, is a bloody bare-knuckle horror/action comedy from Spain about a retired boxing champion and his dog defending his family farm from wave after wave of gangsters. A hit at Fantastic Fest, let’s just say the trailer is just as over the top as you’d expect if you’re a BAFF regular!

SHORT BLOCK 1 (10 pm),  The first program of BAFF’s curated horror shorts from around the world includes surprises at a farewell ceremony to a dead sister, voracious hunger, a possessed office printer, terror in Mumbai’s decaying red light district, insect love, and more! Stick around for filmmaker Q&As after the screenings.

SATURDAY SEPT. 30

If you can only do one day of BAFF, get ready to camp out at the Plaza ALL DAY Saturday.

YOKAI MONSTERS; SPOOK WARFARE (DIR: Yoshiyuki Kuroda, 1:30 PM) Professor Morte and the Silver Scream Spookshow present one of the wildest Yokai movies of all time. For the uninitiated, the Yokai are strange supernatural entities from Japanese folklore known for wacky shapes and trickster humor which you hope is on your side. This is the second of a trilogy and a not-to-miss chance to see it on the big screen with the Spookshow experience as the cherry on top! Here’s a trailer to the trilogy because after seeing Spook Warfare, you’ll want to see the rest.

SHORTS BLOCK 2 (4 PM). The second program of our curated horror shorts from around the world includes a lovely glittering earworm, an offbeat Dublin-based short about a hard-to-please dad, cobwebs in the…gulp…throat, something provocatively titled Titsferatu, boogie-ing ghosts at a high school dance, and more! Stick around for filmmaker Q&As after the screenings.

FEATURE: FAT FLESHY THINGS (DIR: Various, 6 PM). This anthology film made entirely by alumni of the BizaroLand Film Festival tells the tales of eight hapless souls infected with a monstrous sexually transmitted parasite that holds eldritch powers over its host’s mind! Teaser trailer here. Preceding the feature is a short to be insane fun short film, CONTENT: THE LO-FI MAN, by BAFF favorite Brian Lonano and BAFF co-founder Blake Meyers!

SHORTS PROGRAM 3 (8 PM). The third program of BAFF’s curated horror shorts from around the world features a horrifying VD, fire, a kaiju-sized robotic creature, an eventful evening in the life among death of a mortuary artist, puppetry, a haunted Spanish library in 1979, and much more! Stick around for filmmaker Q&As after the screenings.

FEATURE: DEMON’S ROOK (DIR: James Sizemore, 10 PM). 10th anniversary screening of a festival-awardwinning indie horror classic which FearNet called “a virtual love-letter to early 80s Italian zombie cinema”! A young boy named Roscoe finds a portal to another world where he is taught magic by an elder demon known as Dimwos. Dimwos raises the boy into manhood, revealing to him many secrets. Trailer here!

SUNDAY OCT.1

FEATURE: SEX DEMON (DIR: J.C. Cricket 1975, 1 PM). An ultra-rare chance to see a long-lost underground “queer horror” cult classic on the big screen! According to the Plaza’s Website: “All hell breaks loose when John’s last-minute anniversary gift inadvertently causes his younger lover Jim to become possessed by a SEX DEMON who wreaks havoc on New York’s gay cruising spots. Openly inspired by both THE EXORCIST and its Blaxploitation cousin, ABBY, J. C. Cricket’s SEX DEMON is a ferocious mix of the erotic and the grotesque that’s primed and ready to shock audiences again after being lost for the past forty years. In the words of Gay Scene critic Bruce King, ‘the squeamish may not want to watch, but if you do, you won’t forget it!’”

SHORTS PROGRAM 4 (3 PM). The final installment of curated horror shorts from around the world features the terrifying ultimatum “stop moving until you die,” a hallucinatory nightmare road trip, a Vietnam vet turned into an ultra-violent test subject, a “silver gleaming death machine,” a man obsessed with starring in his own snuff film, and more! As always, stick around for filmmaker Q&As after the screening.

FEATURE: SPOOKT (DIR: Tony Reames, 5 PM). Fresh from its world premiere at Fright Fest in August, Spookt is the highly anticipated first full-length feature by television director Tony Reames, whom BAFF 2019 attendees may remember  for fan-favorite short PLAYTIME’S OVER. When paranormal investigator Claire and sceptic Rachel join forces to discover the truth behind a missing girl and the infamous Dr Byler, beliefs are tested when unexplained occurrences begin to happen, centring around the notorious Gibson house. Check out the Red Band trailer here!

BAFF AWARDS (7 PM). After all the screenings, find out which shorts and features won the BAFF Awards, chosen by this year’s judges and audience votes.