Al Nigrin, Executive Director and Curator of the New Jersey International Film Festival, sits down with Vincent Turturro, director and writer of Sonia and Lisa on Mushrooms, for a filmmaker interview at EBTV. Sonia and Lisa on Mushrooms will be screened on May 29, 2026.
The New Jersey International Film Festival returns online and to Rutgers University on the weekends between May 29 - June 7, 2026. Professor Al Nigrin, Executive Director and Curator, provides a video overview of the films being showcase at the 31st annual Festival.
(ASBURY PARK, NJ) -- The ShowRoom Cinema presents Brian De Pal-Month, a three-film retrospective celebrating the stylish, suspense-driven work of visionary filmmaker Brian De Palma. Taking place throughout the second half of May, the series spotlights three of De Palma's most acclaimed thrillers—each showcasing the director's mastery of voyeurism, psychological tension, and bravura cinematic technique.
With his first two films, Caveat and Oddity, Irish writer/director Damian McCarthy established himself as one of the most exciting new voices in horror filmmaking. Hollywood will surely have come calling, but McCarthy has resisted the lure of Tinseltown and stayed put in Ireland, where he can likely remain truer to his vision. Instead, Hollywood has come to McCarthy, with Adam Scott adding star power to McCarthy's third film.
Throughout history, societies have exploited a fear of the unknown to keep the plebs under control. In the medieval Dutch village of director Didier Konings' folk horror Heresy, the surrounding woods are said to harbour an evil force. But just as European adventurers discovered you could sail to the new world without falling off the edge of the planet, our young heroine here finds that salvation awaits her in the forbidden forest.
With his first two films, Caveat and Oddity, Irish writer/director Damian McCarthy established himself as one of the most exciting new voices in horror filmmaking. Hollywood will surely have come calling, but McCarthy has resisted the lure of Tinseltown and stayed put in Ireland, where he can likely remain truer to his vision. Instead, Hollywood has come to McCarthy, with Adam Scott adding star power to McCarthy's third film.
Throughout history, societies have exploited a fear of the unknown to keep the plebs under control. In the medieval Dutch village of director Didier Konings' folk horror Heresy, the surrounding woods are said to harbour an evil force. But just as European adventurers discovered you could sail to the new world without falling off the edge of the planet, our young heroine here finds that salvation awaits her in the forbidden forest.
Following Brady Corbet's Vox Lux and the recent horror sequel Smile 2, David Lowery's Mother Mary is another dark drama centred on a troubled female pop star. It also joins Peter Strickland's In Fabric and the "Weird Tailor" segment of Amicus anthology Asylum to form a sub-genre of horror movies featuring supernatural fabric.
Hitchcock's Psycho is often cited as the first slasher movie but the tropes of that sub-genre go right back to the 1930s. The likes of Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees are essentially descendants of Kharis, the shambling antagonist of Universal's Mummy series of the '30s and '40s. In recent decades Universal has taken their Mummy property out of the horror genre and into the realm of blockbuster action, in a series of hit films starring Brendan Fraser and a flop headlined by the usually reliable Tom Cruise.
Following Hamnet and "Wuthering Heights", Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! is the latest in a line of awful movies inspired by the work of great English writers. It's Mary Shelley here of course, but Gyllenhaal also plucks from James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. Whale cast Elsa Lanchester in the dual roles of Shelley and the titular monster, and Gyllenhaal pulls the same trick here with Jessie Buckley. That's where the similarities end however, as The Bride! has more in common with '70s exploitation flicks and '90s horror comedies than either Shelley's novel or the Universal monster movies it inspired.
