‹ Back

The Last Kernels from Popcorn Frights

By. Professor Horror

                                               

 

Popcorn Frights popped, sizzled, and crackled this year, serving up a buffet of cinematic delights as irresistible as a fresh tub of movie popcorn dripping with butter. Sixty features deep, the lineup was a full concession stand of salty, sweet, crunchy, chewy, and everything in between. Hopefully everyone walked away full, but as any true moviegoer knows, there’s always room for just one more bite, one more kernel, one more guilty-pleasure snack. Festivals, like popcorn bags, always leave those stray treasures at the bottom: the kernels you almost miss but end up being the most satisfying crunch. For those still lingering in the theater lobby with a sweet tooth or a craving for something savory, consider these last festival bites to savor on your way out. A few kernels worth crunching before the ushers sweep up, the lights rise, and we all head home.

                                                                

 AMERICAN CRYPTID

Directed by Erynn Dalton, AMERICAN CRYPTID is the type of regional folk-horror tale that proves family feuds never really die…they just mutate. Here, the Morrises and the Carvers rival the Hatfields and McCoys in their ability to hold a grudge, except one family is human and the other is cryptid. It’s a setup that could have veered into camp, but Dalton steers it into the terrain of generational horror as we see violence so ingrained in the soil that no distance, time, or even forbidden love can cut through it. What really works are the film’s twists and the way it reimagines how folklore migrates alongside families. When people relocate to new countries, they don’t just pack their clothes and heirlooms, but they carry their myths and monsters too. AMERICAN CRYPTID taps into that idea, showing how stories of the uncanny don’t stay locked in the old country but take root in new soil, adapting and growing with each generation. These aren’t just local scares, but they’re inherited terrors, sharpened by migration and passed down until they erupt in claws and teeth.

                                                                

CROSSWORD

CROSSWORD is the kind of slow burn that lingers long after you’ve left the theatre. Director Michael Vlamis builds the story around James, a man paralyzed by grief after the accidental drowning of his daughter. While his wife finds ways to cope by channeling her mourning into children’s books that keep their child alive on the page, James remains stuck, unable to move forward. In desperation, he turns back to his old love of crossword puzzles, only to find the grids don’t soothe him but seem to mock his loss. The clues echo his pain, the words fill with unbearable absence, and soon hidden messages begin to surface from the boxes themselves. Vlamis resists the easy lure of bloodshed or jump scares, instead layering his film with silence, ritual, and claustrophobic stillness. The puzzles become both a metaphor and a haunting presence, as if grief itself is scripting its own answers. At first, I didn’t fully appreciate the film, expecting it to take a more murderous turn, but the longer I sat with it, the more I came to value its quiet, resonant depiction of grief. Like a Sunday crossword, it demands patience, but its quiet revelations strike deep, turning simplicity into something hauntingly profound.

                                     

MERMAID

MERMAID swims into Popcorn Frights with all the neon sleaze and saltwater grime you’d expect from Tyler Cornack, the mind behind Butt Boy and Tiny Cinema. Johnny Pemberton stars as Doug, a Percocet-addicted Florida man circling the drain: fired from cleaning aquariums at a strip club, estranged from his family, and ready to end it all by speeding his boat into the Gulf. Instead of death, Doug finds Destiny: a wounded, feral mermaid he drags back to his bathtub in a haze of delusion and misplaced purpose. What follows is less Splash and more sunburnt nightmare, a twisted fairy tale filled with mermaid vomit. Robert Patrick pops up as a leathery loan shark, while the supporting cast of Florida eccentrics makes the film feel equal parts crime caper and creature feature. The mermaid herself is a triumph of practical design (scaly, grotesque, and worlds away from Disney romance) but the film often chooses melancholy over massacre. That restraint works in flashes, grounding the story in Doug’s desperation, though at times you can’t help but wish Cornack had unleashed more full-throttle mermaid mayhem. Still, the mix of Florida kitsch, heartfelt sadness, and sudden violence makes MERMAID stick, a pastel-and-blood-soaked love letter to obsession, delusion, and the monsters we think will save us.

                                     

FUCKTOYS

Finally, no Popcorn Frights round-up would be complete without FUCKTOYS…a title that guarantees it’ll be rattling around your brain for a while. But make no mistake: this isn’t some throwaway kernel stuck at the bottom of the bag. It’s the sweet-and-salty mix-in, the surprise candy-coated treat that keeps the bucket interesting. Written, directed, and starring Annapurna Sriram, FUCKTOYS is a riotously camp horror comedy that plays like a glitter bomb went off in Trashtown, USA. Sriram stars as AP, a part-time sex worker and full-time disaster magnet convinced she’s cursed. When a delirious tarot reading (delivered with scene-stealing gusto by Big Freedia) reveals that the only way out involves a lamb sacrifice and $1,000, AP sets off on an odyssey with her ride-or-die bestie Danni (Sadie Scott). What follows is a fever dream of fetish cops, strip-club mafias, unholy rituals, and candy-colored chaos, where every neon-soaked frame feels like a love child of John Waters and Gregg Araki. Shot on grainy 16mm and lit with unapologetic praise for sex workers, FUCKTOYS is as outrageous as its title suggests, but beneath the trash and kink is a beating heart: a story of friendship, survival, and refusing to be defined by curses, labels, or society’s beige expectations. It’s messy, it’s fearless, it’s hilarious, and it’s the kind of cult classic in the making that horror festivals exist to champion. Like that last handful of popcorn studded with M&Ms, FUCKTOYS is sticky, addictive, and absolutely the right note to end on.