SoHome Horror Pride 2023: A Queer Horror Festival To Remember
SoHome Horror Pride Festival is an extension of SoHo Horror Film Festival, but rather than traveling all the way to Soho to watch some horror, you can watch it all from the comfort of your own home. This year the festival took place over four days to round out Pride Month. Throughout the festival, 12 movies were shown along with 16 shorts, plus a live podcast recording, the re-scoring of Bride of Frankenstein, and a panel discussion about werewolves and queerness. There were a lot of incredible things to watch along with some truly great panel discussions. Here were our favorite parts of this year’s festival.
Feature Films
There were so many amazing movies at the festival that deserve recognition. But the two in particular that stood out for LGBTQ+ representation as well as being filled with women in horror were The Butterfly Queen and Girl Gone Bad (also titled Guiltless). The two movies made their UK debut at SoHome Horror Pride.
The Butterfly Queen creates such a beautiful magical-realism horror world of Labyrinth meets Thelma and Louise sapphic solidarity. Directed by Liam O’Connor-Genereaux, the movie explores the complicated world of friendships, growing up, and the power of art.
Read the full synopsis below:
Five years ago, best friends Casey (Kade Pintado) and Robin (Sophia Anthony) parted ways. Casey wanted to draw cartoons and take over their grandparents’ sheep farm, Robin wanted to leave town and never look back. Now, five years later, Casey and Robin find themselves (against all odds) chasing a teenager through a magical, monster-infested forest, struggling to regain Casey’s stolen sketchbook so that they can get the hell back home. Trouble is, The Butterfly Queen (Despoina) wants the sketchbook as well, and A) she’s clever, B) she’s desperate and C) she makes the rules.
The movie is such a genuine take on the evolution of female friendship, in a creepy folk-horror world where chugging the wrong drink could make you forget your entire life. One of the best moments by far is the way the world runs on art, with a strange, masked creature using Casey’s art to power their car.
Girl Gone Bad / Guiltless is a phenomenal invasion horror directed by Kevin Schultz. With the tagline: Alone, helpless, outmatched, and out weaponed; what’s a damsel in distress to do? Fight like a girl, the movie makes it clear this isn’t your regular final girl horror.
Read the full synopsis below:
When 16-year-old Samantha (Alison Thornton) has the house to herself over the weekend, she plans a romantic night for her and her girlfriend. However, when an intruder makes his way into her home, it’s fight or flight on a night that will change her life.
This movie has the perfect mix of gore, horror, and humor, all while presenting an all-too-relatable teenage queer experience. Samantha sits eating her pizza, the murderer of her girlfriend tied up in the basement, googling how best to dispose of a body. It’s always great to see queer love in horror, but a highlight of this movie has to be a woman actually fighting back in smart, calculated ways.
Shorts
Accompanying each movie shown at SoHome Horror Pride were one or two shorts. There was a strong thematic and narrative connection between the shorts and the movie they’d been paired with. Among the many shown over the weekend, the two that truly stood out were Snatched (2022) and Hen (2023).
Snatched is an American short directed by Michael Shwartz, which is available in the US already on Hulu’s Bite Size Halloween series. For those unfamiliar with the short, it came to fruition as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill was making national news, which inspired Shwartz to create a horror where parents of a kid coming out to them act scarily enthusiastic in response.
Read the full synopsis below:
After 15-year-old Joey (Misha Osherovich) comes out as gay, he must fight for his life when the next morning, after a night of strange lights falling from the sky, he wakes to find his parents expressing otherworldly acceptance towards him.
The twist on something usually conceived as a positive for LGBTQ+ people becomes negative when Joey’s father (Brendan Hines) dons denim shorts and keeps saying “Yasss Queen” while his mother (Tatiana Maslany) leans too deep into stereotypes, insisting he has to go shopping with her. The short is spectacular in narrating this strange ocean of harmful stereotypes disguised as support, and a critique of the way homophobia sees LGBTQ+ support as damaging, which we all know is not.
Hen, an Australian-made short, had its UK debut at SoHome Horror Pride. Directed by Alice Tovey, Hen follows Gem, a non-binary person attending their cis mate’s hen night.
Read the full synopsis below:
Gem and Trisha have been friends since childhood, and Gem is going to be at Trisha’s side on the big day. But their bond is no match for the Three Bridesmaids of the Apocalypse. Under the influence of bad vodka and worse friends, Trisha turns from girl-boss ally to monstrous beast in the space of a Ginuwine remix.
The short presents an accurate portrayal of the pressures people face when they do not fit into the binary. Gem is constantly judged for having boundaries and left out of jokes made at their expense as they are constantly pressured to be ‘one of the girls’.
Panels
Synchronized Cycles: The Werewolf Feminine was a great panel, led by Ghouls Magazine editor-in-chief Zoe Rose Smith along with Ghouls magazine contributors, Alix Turner, Ygraine Bright, and Dr. Megan Kenny.
They began their discussion about werewolves breaking through the gender binary. In werewolf appearances in horror, the focus is rarely on the gender of the human where they began, but more so on what the person has become. In the same way, gender-fluid and trans people want to be seen as who they have always been. This also led to discussions about how monsters of horror often reflect LGBTQ+ people in the way they break through the restrictions of societal binaries.
This went on to the parallels of werewolves and queer people finding it difficult to accept their identities, along with the dynamic of non-werewolves either refusing to accept people for who they are or trying to ‘cure’ them. The panel concluded with how werewolf movies are a demonstration of queerness in horror, and how self-expression is often feared.
SoHome Horror showcased some truly magnificent LGBTQ+ talents across four days. Although pride month is over, there is always LGBTQ+ pride in the horror genre, so do be sure to check out some of the titles mentioned!
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