Galaxy of Horrors | |
---|---|
Directed by |
|
Produced by |
|
Music by | Sean Motley |
Animation by | Chris Murch |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | Unstable Ground [1] |
Release date |
|
Running time | 107 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Languages |
|
Galaxy of Horrors is a 2017 Canadian science-fiction horror anthology film consisting of eight short films within larger "wraparound" framing sequences before and after each of the shorts, in which a man (Adam Buller) wakes from a cryogenic sleep pod and is forced to watch the films as entertainment while his life-support runs out. The shorts are by international filmmakers such as Antonio Padovan, Javier Chillon, Benni Diez, and Marinko Spahić, while Justin McConnell directed the wraparound. [2] [3] [4]
Mr. Brown wakes up in deep space trapped in his cryogenic stasis pod. Unable to get out because of a faulty system asking him for a password, he is forced to wait and watch science fiction horror shorts chosen by the computer for his entertainment, even though this is draining the life support system. During the brief intermissions, he tries guessing the password again and again, with events taking a more and more dire turn.
In a future United States, a civil war has poisoned the air and very few people can survive for long without a gas mask. One of the factions manages to infiltrate a compound on the other side with the aim of assassinating the president and liberating one of their own who has a natural immunity to the air and is the victim of torture and experiments.
A man named Dave tries to hide a dead body, but his smartphone's AI, Iris, has developed a sense of ethics and justice, challenging his actions and finding ways to thwart him.
A weary handyman does his best to maintain order and care for his cybernetic "pet project", a strange mix of machine and flesh. But when a pair of thuggish residents threaten a young girl, the line between human and machine becomes blurred.
A man is hooked up to a machine via a large tube attached to the top of his head; he pays for experiences, his senses, and life itself with increasing desperation as the computer system steadily blocks each of his senses after he has an unauthorized thought.
In a future world where women no longer exist, two men have desperately tried to conceive. One of them is in labour and neither is prepared for what is about to happen.
Two men wake a third from stasis in the hope he can fix their damaged ship, adrift in deep space. As he begins work, he realizes things are not quite what they seem.
Minutes after the technical failure of her spacecraft, an astronaut finds herself ejected into space. She tries in vain to call for help. She is slowly running out of air. Little by little, fear grabs hold of her, and she faints. After floating adrift for several hours through the immensity of space, she awakens to find herself facing a strange and sentient entity in the form of a nebula.
Two drug couriers go to an underground club to make a delivery but come up against something not of this world.
The anthology film is the second collaboration between Rue Morgue Cinema and the Little Terrors short films festival, following Minutes Past Midnight. [3] The feature is the brain-child of Little Terrors founder Justin McConnell, who wrote and directed the narrative links between the shorts, and Indiecan Entertainment's Avi Federgreen. [4]
Galaxy of Horrors had a premiere in Toronto at Imagine Cinemas Carlton on 1 March 2017. [21]
The Galaxy of Horrors anthology was released on DVD and special edition Blu-ray in 2017. The anthology was made available through various video on demand options on the IndieCan Entertainment website, [22] on 7 March 2017, [23] and on Amazon Prime. [24]
A number of reviewers found similarities in the film or individual segments with the Black Mirror series, [3] usually as a point in the anthology's favour. [25] [26] Carl Fisher is impressed by the "seriously high production values", remarking that "some of the visuals ... are simply stunning". [27]
Addison Wylie described the "claustrophobic wraparound short" by Justin McConnell as "semi-meta" and "pretty clever"; a bit of Mystery Science Theater 3000 dowsed in Heavy Metal : "The videos play for him – and for us – in a disjointed order; a forgivable trait since Galaxy of Horrors basically throws the audience into immediate abruptness." [25] Carl Fisher called its story "minimal but with a fun payoff." [27] Karina Adelgaard appreciated the intermissions as "little nuggets of comedy" and a "welcome relief" since most of the shorts are very dark. [26]
The next film in the series compiled by Justin McConnell is Blood, Sweat, and Terrors (2018). [28]
Toronto After Dark Film Festival is a showcase of horror, sci-fi, action and cult cinema held annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The festival premieres a diverse selection of feature-length and short-films from around the world including new works from Asia, Europe and North America.
Lisa Morton is an American horror author and screenwriter.
Joe Lynch is an American film and music video director, film producer, cinematographer, and actor.
William Jack Poulter is a British actor. He first gained recognition for his role as Eustace Scrubb in the fantasy adventure film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). He received critical praise for his starring role in the comedy film We're the Millers (2013), for which he won the BAFTA Rising Star Award.
Taissa Farmiga is an American actress. Her numerous appearances in horror films have established her as a scream queen, alongside her older sister Vera Farmiga.
Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead are an American filmmaking duo. Both have served in directing, producing, editing, and acting roles in their projects, while Moorhead is also a cinematographer and Benson is a writer.
Natasha Halevi is an America actress and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. She is known for creating and producing Give Me An A, a reproductive rights horror anthology, as well as directing the wraparound and a segment alongside 16 other female directors of the film. She is a founding director with Fatale Collective, creators of the horror anthology Fatale Collective: Bleed. Her directorial work has been released by XYZ Films, Crypt TV, Midnight Pulp and Screambox. She is known for her acting roles as Anaconda in Kansas Bowling's B.C. Butcher released by Troma, the role of Eliza Taylor's best friend in I'll Be Watching, Cara in Lunch Break Feminist Club, and Alexis Shine in They Want Dick Dickster.
Rachelle Henry is an American actress and filmmaker. She played the role of Sandy Hobbs in the TLC Series Escaping the Prophet and Lissa Golaski in Depth, the film prequel to the Soma by Frictional Games. She is also known for directing and producing short films containing messages of social influence and coming of age themes including Missing,Defining Moments, and Almost Boyfriends.
Entity is a 2014 English-language French short science-fiction horror film directed by Andrew Desmond and co-written by Jean-Phillipe Ferré about an astronaut who is stranded in deep space and has a close encounter with a sentient entity in the form of a nebula. Entity is Desmond's third film, the previous two also being shorts, Doppelganger and Epilogue. The first French short film to have its sound mixed in Dolby Atmos, Entity has been selected for over eighty film festivals and received, among other honours, a Best Visual Effects Award from both the Hollywood Horror Fest and the FilmQuest Film Festival. Reviews have been favourable, particularly for the short's visual effects.
Pathos is a 2009 Italian short science-fiction horror film. It was created by the independent Illusion Video Production company. One of the founders of the company, Fabio Prati, also plays the unnamed protagonist in his first screen role. The short was made in the filmmakers' spare time. Set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic Earth, the film depicts human beings living isolated from one other, slaves of a system of their own invention in control of their senses, thoughts and actions, paying for intense virtual reality "lives" based on a digital copy of human civilisation before its collapse. The short has been compared to the works of Philip K. Dick, and to feature films such as THX-1138, Avalon, Total Recall, and, most frequently, The Matrix.
They Will All Die in Space is a 2015 English-language Spanish short science-fiction horror film written, directed and produced by Javier Chillon, about a starship technician who is awoken from cryo-sleep and is told that the vessel is adrift and lost in the cosmos, and that he is needed to help repair the communications system to call for help, but quickly realises that something has gone horrifyingly wrong. Chillon's third short film was shown at well over 300 film festivals between 2015 and the end of 2019, and has won approximately sixty awards and honours, including Best Short Film from the 2015 Sitges Film Festival, the most important fantastic film festival in Spain.
Die Schneider Krankheit is a 2008 Spanish short science fiction mockumentary film written, directed, and produced by Javier Chillon, with brief animated sequences by Alicia Manero. Chillon's first film was shot on black and white Super 8 film, with a Spanish-language voice-over dubbed over another German one. With credits and most other onscreen text in German, the short film gives the impression of being a West German educational documentary film of the 1950s or 1960s. Its subject is the effect of an extraterrestrial plague brought to Earth by a Soviet chimpanzee cosmonaut after its capsule crash landed near the border with East Germany in 1958. Financed entirely by Chillon himself, the short film was selected for more than 200 international film festivals and received more than 45 awards within the first two years of its release, including a Méliès d'Argent in 2010.
Antonio Padovan is an Italian-born film director, producer, screenwriter, and video artist who lives in New York City, known for his short films Socks and Cakes (2010), Jack Attack (2013), Eveless (2016), and his first feature, The Last Prosecco (2017). His video Japan, Beyond (2012) won the first prize at the Stand for Japan Awards, while Jack Attack was selected by more than fifty international film festivals and won dozens of awards and other honors. He was born and raised in the Veneto region, near Venice, but has called New York's West Village home since 2007, and is the co-founder of the Greenwich Village Film Festival.
Eveless is a 2016 American short science-fiction horror film directed and co-written by Antonio Padovan about two men living in a world without women who attempt to create one with only the limited resources they have gathered. Stars Vin Kridakorn and Greg Engbrecht were also the short's executive producers.
Jack Attack is a 2013 American short holiday horror film about a babysitter, her charge Jack, and parasitic pumpkins, written and directed by Bryan Norton and Antonio Padovan, who were also responsible, respectively, for special make-up and mechanical effects, and set design. The short was selected by more than a hundred festivals internationally and won more than thirty awards, and was selected for two anthology films in the US: Seven Hells (2014), and All Hallows' Eve 2 (2015).
Decapoda Shock is a 2011 Spanish short science fiction action parody film written, directed, co-produced, and with brief animated sequences by Javier Chillon. The film depicts an astronaut infected by an alien crab-like creature, transforming him into a decapod crustacean/human hybrid. Meanwhile, the astronaut's family has disappeared. Both events are the result of a sinister conspiracy, for which he seeks vengeance. As of 2019, Chillon's second film has been selected for more than 300 international film festivals, and received over thirty awards and honours within the first two years of its release, including a Méliès d'Argent.
Javier Chillon is a Spanish director of films and music videos, known for his "bizarre and compelling" short films, "simply unlike anything anyone else is making". Between them, Die Schneider Krankheit (2008), Decapoda Shock (2011), and the English-language They Will All Die in Space (2015) have been screened at over 800 international film festivals and won approximately 140 awards or honours.
Kingz is a 2007 German short action science-fiction horror film created by Benni Diez and Marinko Spahić about two young thugs who go to a nightclub to close out a drug deal only to find something is not quite right about some of the patrons, including the owner ; the ensuing mayhem involves martial arts, swordplay, and gunfighting. The short film was shown at international film festivals and won a Méliès d'Argent in 2009.
The San Francisco Independent Film Festival, known as IndieFest, is an annual film festival, held in January or February, that recognizes contemporary independent film. It is run by SF IndieFest, a nonprofit organization, and based at the Roxie Theater in the Mission District.