The 2024 movie season kicks into high gear this week with the start of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Each year, Sundance is where many of the biggest, most buzzworthy independent films start their journeys to either box office success or critical glory—and, with the festival now being both digital and in-person, audiences everywhere can participate.
Sundance might be best known for its dramatic fare (Oscar winners like Coda and Little Miss Sunshine got their starts there), but it’s also a great place to discover excellent horror, sci-fi, and other genre films. That’s where io9 comes in. In the past, the festival was the proving ground for films like Saw, The Blair Witch Project, Donnie Darko, 28 Days Later, The Descent, and Primer. Last year, Talk to Me, Infinity Pool, and In My Mother’s Skin all premiered at the festival.
So, is this year’s Talk to Me coming out this week? It’s time to see the contenders and, if you want to watch them for yourself, the festival runs from January 18-28 both in Park City, Utah and online. Get more info right here and click through to see the films.
Pedro Pascal stars in the latest film from Captain Marvel directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden in which a mysterious force brings together four different stories in 1980s Oakland. Screening in-person only.
Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun star as a satellite and a buoy who fall in love long after humanity has gone extinct. No, we have no idea how it works either. Screening in-person and online.
Legendary director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp team up for a supernatural film about a family who moves into a new house. Lucy Liu stars. Screening in-person only.
Justice Smith stars in a satire about a group of magical Black people who live to make the lives of white people better. Screening in-person only.
A young actress, played by Scream’s Melissa Barrera, has her life changed when she finds a scary yet kind monster in her closet. Screening in-person only.
A young man is introduced to a creepy late-night TV show by a classmate that shows a world unlike their own. Screening in-person only.
A group of friends gather before a wedding, and a person they haven’t seen in a while brings a mysterious suitcase that turns the party into an “existential nightmare.” Screening in-person only.
Set in Norway, this unconventional zombie movie follows three families who struggle to figure out what it means when their newly deceased loved ones return from the grave. Screening in-person and online.
What if a slasher movie was told from the point of view of the killer? If the victims were off-screen and the main character hunted them? That’s the premise here. Screening in-person only.
From the producers of Talk to Me and The Babadook is a film about an Aboriginal couple who believe a demon is stalking their second child. Screening in-person and online.
Marvel star Sebastian Stan plays an actor who undergoes radical surgery to change his looks, but then decides he wants his old face back. Screening in-person only.
Nick Frost and Alicia Silverstone star in a film about what happens when a ‘90s sitcom family has to battle evil Russians. Screening in-person only.
A documentary about what happens when a billionaire attempts to transfer the consciousness of her dead wife to a robot and succeeds. Yes, we said “documentary.” Screening in-person and online.
Best to let the official description do the talking here: “Past and present collide when an Iranian American trans man time-travels through an LGBTQ+ archive on a dizzying and erotic quest to unravel his own sexual desires.” Screening in-person and online.
A young woman decides to trip on mushrooms and encounters an older version of herself, played by Aubrey Plaza. Screening in-person only.
A documentary about legendary Superman actor Christopher Reeve using never-before-seen footage spanning his entire life. Screening in-person only.
Source: Gizmodo