Amid its usual slate of high-profile awards contenders and incisive documentaries, this year’s Heartland International Film Festival has plenty of content to satiate horror hounds, just in time for spooky season. The titles here – several from first-time filmmakers – cover a wide array of horror subgenres, from found-footage to high-concept techno-thrillers to anthology films. 

LAST RADIO CALL

Writer-director Isaac Rodriguez’s Last Radio Call borrows heavily from found-footage genre staples Lake Mungo and The Blair Witch Project in that it follows a grief-stricken widow making a documentary investigating the disappearance of her police-officer husband. The incorporation of body-cam footage is a rather novel one, but ultimately Last Radio Call feels like a mixed bag of random horror tropes that may have worked better as a short film. 

There are some eye-rolling cliches; do we really need to have a Native American character make a one-scene appearance to explain their supernatural folklore ever again? They weigh down its more impressive assets, as Sarah Froelich pulls off a nimble balance of manic determination and crippling heartache as the lead. Clocking in at under 80 minutes, Last Radio Call is a passable found-footage spookshow that never rises to the level of its obvious influences. 

Last Radio Call will screen during the 31st Heartland International Film Festival at:

  • 2:45 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 8, at Living Room Theatres, 745 E. 9th St., Suite 810, in Indianapolis
  • 5:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 10, at the Landmark Glendale 12, 6102 N. Rural St., in Indianapolis

Last Radio Call will also be available to stream online from noon Thursday, Oct. 6 through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16 (all times Eastern) through Heartland’s virtual platform.

Tickets are available at heartlandfilm.org/festival.

FOLLOW HER

Speaking of impressive leads, Follow Her has two of them with Dani Barker and Luke Cook, who together elevate a been-there-done-that riff on a Black Mirror episode into a vicious two-hander about the ways social media enables people to humiliate others for clout. 

Not exactly groundbreaking thematic territory, but much of that can be forgiven when the movie becomes a cat-and-mouse showdown between a fierce and fiery Barker and a deliriously sadistic Cook (taking more than a little inspiration from Christian Bale in American Psycho). Some of the script’s details feel like the stuff of an unrevised first draft (Barker’s character is a vague mix of cam girl and Impractical Joker, and the logistics of her profession fall apart under even the mildest scrutiny), and the score is frequently clunky, but Follow Her never loses momentum thanks to its sharp casting. 

Follow Her will screen during the 31st Heartland International Film Festival at:

  • 5 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 8, at the Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie, 1258 Windsor St., in Indianapolis
  • 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 11, at the Landmark Glendale 12, 6102 N. Rural St., in Indianapolis

Director / producer Sylvia Caminer is scheduled to be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A on Saturday, Oct. 8.

Follow Her will also be available to stream online from noon Thursday, Oct. 6 through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16 (all times Eastern) through Heartland’s virtual platform.

Tickets are available at heartlandfilm.org/festival.

TEINE SĀ: THE ANCIENT ONES

Teine Sā: The Ancient Ones has its Midwest premiere at the festival, and it may be the most crowd-pleasing of the lineup – a Polynesian found-footage flick with five modern-day segments focused around Teine-Sā, an ancient spirit from Pacific Island lore. 

In true Tales from the Crypt style, each chapter is more or less a morality tale where an entitled, bigoted or predatory asshole gets their just desserts by the story’s end. The fun with these things is getting to the payoff, and even when the climax of one story proves underwhelming (the rules regarding the ancient spirits in a couple of the segments are a tad half-baked), you can always look forward to the next segment. 

Unusual (and a welcome change) for the genre is the distinct female perspective from which most segments are told. Teine Sā manages to mine plenty of dangers women face navigating modern society – whether it’s trusting yourself with a male stranger on a Tinder date or just your typical school bullies – while incorporating a unique dose of Polynesian mythology.

Teine-Sā: The Ancient Ones will screen during the 31st Heartland International Film Festival at:

  • 5 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 13, at the Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie, 1258 Windsor St., in Indianapolis
  • 3:15 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 15, at Living Room Theatres, 745 E. 9th St., Suite 810, in Indianapolis

Teine-Sā: The Ancient Ones will also be available to stream online from noon Thursday, Oct. 6 through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16 (all times Eastern) through Heartland’s virtual platform.

Tickets are available at heartlandfilm.org/festival.

DAWNING

Dawning is the writing / directing debut of Young Min Kim, who has worked for several years as a compositor for some of the biggest tentpoles in Hollywood. He has helped compose frames in everything from this year’s The Batman to the Fast and Furious franchise, and his eye for detail pays off big in Dawning, where cinematographer Tim Toda uses every camera trick in the book to keep viewers off-balance. 

After a prologue that feels straight out of Ari Aster’s Midsommar in which a father pulls his truck to the side of the road to commit suicide by handgun, we’re quickly thrown into the perspective of Haejin (Kim Ellis), a trauma therapist drawn back to her childhood home to confront some seriously heavy tragedy that’s weighed on her and her sister for years. Horror movies about trauma are ubiquitous these days, but Dawning is far less interested in jump scares or lazy possession metaphors than it is in exploring the psychic wounds that continue to fester after years of neglect. 

Dawning will screen during the 31st Heartland International Film Festival at:

  • 3 p.m., Friday, Oct. 7, at the Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie, 1258 Windsor St., in Indianapolis
  • 7:45 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 13, at the Landmark Glendale 12, 6102 N. Rural St., in Indianapolis

Writer-director Young Min Kim is scheduled to be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A on Friday, Oct. 7.

Dawning will also be available to stream online from noon Thursday, Oct. 6 through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16 (all times Eastern) through Heartland’s virtual platform.

Tickets are available at heartlandfilm.org/festival.

ANACORETA

Another found-footage entry in the Heartland Horror roster, Anacoreta is also the strangest, saddest and – in its own way – the scariest of the bunch.

Director Jeremy Schuetze’s film makes its world premiere at the festival, and its story follows a young actress (Antonia Thomas) who embarks with her aspiring-director boyfriend (Schuetze) and his friends for a filmmaking project. What comes next isn’t remotely the kidnapping thriller or Paranormal Activity knockoff one might expect from such a premise but instead something far more ambiguous and deeply unnerving. 

Like the found-footage pinnacle The Blair Witch Project, what may or may not be lurking in the mountains is secondary to watching the dissolution of a group of friends who know each other intimately. It’s a refreshingly unconventional take in a well-tread subgenre.

Anacoreta will screen during the 31st Heartland International Film Festival at:

  • 7:15 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 9, at the Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie, 1258 Windsor St., in Indianapolis
  • 5:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 14, at Living Room Theatres, 745 E. 9th St., Suite 810, in Indianapolis

Producer and actor Jesse Stanley is scheduled to be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A on Friday, Oct. 14.

Anacoreta will also be available to stream online from noon Thursday, Oct. 6 through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16 (all times Eastern) through Heartland’s virtual platform.

Tickets are available at heartlandfilm.org/festival.