At least that's what Gwen Callahan has discovered when it comes to programming film festivals—not all horror flicks fit into Cthulhu's tentacled purview. As co-director of the HP Lovecraft Film Festival since 2011, Callahan wanted to expand our horror universe—and that's how this week's debut of the Portland Horror Film Festival came to be.
"Each year we receive hundreds of submissions for the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and some of them, while they are great films, just don't quite fit the Lovecraftian or weird genre," Callahan told the Mercury. So she—and festival co-director/husband Brian Callahan—"decided that it was time to have a dedicated horror film festival for all genres of horror, where the focus is on independent films," she continues. "The films we're showing... are things you wouldn't see at the [Lovecraft Fest], but there's definitely overlap in audience appeal. These are smart films by filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of the art form."
This new fest is full of shorts from all over the world that span the horror spectrum—from funny-gross to gross-gross, and from understated eerie to full-blown bizarre. In addition to those oodles of short films, there are two feature-length films, a meet 'n' greet at Sam's Billiards, Q&As, and afterparties. It's basically a two-day grab bag of bloody, spooky genre film.