Occultisch

An elderly heiress is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field, complicated by some teenagers who decide to camp out in a dilapidated building on the estate.

In 1983, financially struggling college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret, putting her life in mortal danger.

In Italy, American writer Sam Dalmas witnesses a murder attempt on an art-gallery owner, Monica Ranieri, a few days before he's supposed to return home. Inspector Morosini, who is in charge of investigating the three previous murderers of the serial-killer, asks Dalmas for help and takes his passport. Dalmas decides to stay with his girlfriend Julia and to help the police in the investigation. The killer threatens Dalmas and Julia by phone and the police overhear a strange noise on the tape. Soon the serial killer stalks Julia and Damas. Who might be the killer?

Sheriff Dan Gillis has a nice life with his wife, the teacher Janet Gillis, in the small coastal and friendly town of Potter's Bluff. When visitors are mysterious killed in the town, Sheriff Gillis investigates the cases carefully and finds that dead people are reanimating and coming back to life. Dan finds a book of witchcraft and voodoo in his wife's drawer and he suspects that she might be practicing black magic. Dan meets the coroner-mortician William G. Dobbs and learns the dreadful and surprising secret.

On Sunday, April 29, 1973, Sergeant Neil Howie with the West Highland Constabulary flies solo to Summerisle off the coast of Scotland. He is there to follow up on a letter addressed specifically to him from an anonymous source on Summerisle reporting that a twelve year old girl who lives on the island, Rowan Morrison, the daughter of May Morrison, has long been missing. The correspondence includes a photograph of Rowan. Upon his arrival on Summerisle, Howie finds that the locals are a seemingly simple minded lot who provide little information beyond the fact that they know of no Rowan Morrison and do not know the girl in the photo. Mrs. Morrison admits to having a daughter, seven year old Myrtle, but no Rowan. As Howie speaks to more and more people, he begins to believe that Rowan does or did live on the island, but that the locals are hiding their knowledge of her. He also begins to see that the locals all have pagan beliefs, their "religion" which centers on procreation as the source of life. That procreation does not necessarily need to be within marriage, and openly flaunts the act of sex, both in private and in public. These beliefs do not sit well against Howie's strict Christian morals, he who regularly attends church, prays, and accepts communion. Everything that happens on the island seems to be dictated by Lord Summerisle, whose ancestors bought the island generations ago. Howie begins to believe that Rowan was murdered, she a sacrifice by the islanders to their higher power to ensure a bountiful apple crop - the main crop of the island - which did not materialize last season. With May Day approaching, Howie not only tries to find out if Rowan was indeed murdered/sacrificed, which includes trying to locate her body, but if there will be another sacrifice on this important day within the cycle of life.

Mary Henry is enjoying the day by riding around in a car with two friends. When challenged to a drag, the women accept, but are forced off of a bridge. It appears that all are drowned, until Mary, quite some time later, amazingly emerges from the river. After recovering, Mary accepts a job in a new town as a church organist, only to be dogged by a mysterious phantom figure that seems to reside in an old run-down pavilion. It is here that Mary must confront the personal demons of her spiritual insouciance.

It's time for Christmas break, and the sorority sisters make plans for the holiday, but the strange anonymous phone calls are beginning to put them on edge. When Clare disappears, they contact the police, who don't express much concern. Meanwhile Jess is planning to get an abortion, but boyfriend Peter is very much against it. The police finally begin to get concerned when a 13-year-old girl is found dead in the park. They set up a wiretap to the sorority house, but will they be in time to prevent a sorority girl attrition problem?

In a little seaside town, thirteen year-old Rynn Jacobs is celebrating her birthday alone on a Halloween night alone. She and her father had arrived from England recently and leased the house for three years from Mrs. Cora Hallet. Out of the blue, Mrs. Hallet's pervert son Frank Hallet visits Rynn and sexually harasses her. Then his mother visits the house and asks for Rynn's father. The girl tells her that he traveled to New York. Mrs. Hallet says she needs her jelly glasses that are stored in the cellar and Rynn asks the impolite woman to go. Later ,Mrs. Hallet returns and opens the cellar door despite Rynn. However, the support of the cellar door hits her head and she dies. Rynn tries to get rid of Mrs. Hallet's car to hide the evidence but she has trouble starting the car so aspiring magician, Mario Podesta, helps her. Rynn immediately trusts Mario and discloses her secret to him. What is Rynn's secret?

After returning to his childhood home, a disgraced children's puppeteer is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured his entire life.

It was the perfect family vacation for composer John Russell and his family when a freak automobile accident claims the lives of his wife and daughter. Consumed by grief, John, at the request of friends, rents an old turn of the century house. Mammoth in size, the house seems all the room that John needs to write music and reflect. He does not realize that he is not alone in the house. He shares it with the spirit of a child who has homed in on John's despair and uses him to uncover decades of silence and deceit. With the help of Claire Norman, the one who aided John in procuring the house, they race to find the answers and soon learn that a devious and very powerful man guards them.

Two Catholic schoolgirls Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton) get left behind at their boarding school over winter break as the other girls leave, where it's rumored that the nuns are satanists. Meanwhile, a disturbed mental patient Joan (Emma Roberts), an escapee, is picked up by a middleage couple (James Remar and Lauren Holly) who drive her on a determined trip to the same school, where the girls must face the supernatural and demonic possession.

There, but for the grace of God, goes Maud, a reclusive young nurse whose impressionable demeanor causes her to pursue a pious path of Christian devotion after an obscure trauma. Now charged with the hospice care of Amanda, a retired dancer ravaged by cancer, Maud's fervent faith quickly inspires an obsessive conviction that she must save her ward's soul from eternal damnation - whatever the cost. Making her feature-film debut, writer/director Rose Glass cannily lures the audience into this disturbed psyche, steadily setting up her veritable diary of a country nurse for an unnerving and ultimately shocking trajectory. Morfydd Clark (also at the Festival in The Personal History of David Copperfield) portrays the sanctimonious Maud with an intense stoicism that belies a disquieting vulnerability, as Maud desperately vies for absolution and solidarity from her embittered patient (an enthralling Jennifer Ehle, also at the Festival in Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies). Glass tenderly captures this relationship with an empathetic gaze that first assumes an ethereal, dreamlike atmosphere - but it isn't long before Maud's dogmatic candor incites an irreconcilable friction that spirals her mind into a suffocating confluence of creeping doubt and paranoia. As Glass tightens the screws on her misguided martyr, well-placed nods are made to religious horror forerunners like William Friedkin's The Exorcist, further contributing to the film's increasingly dread-filled malaise. And when this insidious fever climatically breaks, the consequences are devastating and terrifying in equal measure.

Alice Spages is a withdrawn 12-year-old girl who lives with her younger sister Karen and their mother Catherine. Karen gets most of their mother's attention, and Alice is often left out of the spotlight. When Karen is found brutally murdered in a church before her first holy communion, Alice is thrust into the spotlight of suspicion, but is a 12-year-old girl really capable of such savagery? As more people die at the hands of a merciless killer, Alice's family and the police don't know what to believe.

A troubled couple and their blind daughter come to Italy to visit a 12th Century castle they've inherited. Soon they are plagued by unexplained noises, mysteriously broken objects, and the daughter's claims of an unknown nocturnal visitor to her bedroom. When the housekeeper and a local prostitute and are discovered savagely murdered in the castle's dungeon, John must unlock the castle's secret to save himself from jail and his family from the castle's secret inhabitant.

After a stint in a psychiatric facility Jessica, her husband and a friend move to remote farm they have recently purchased. There they find a young woman by the name of Emily living in the house and they invite her to stay. When Jessica goes for a swim in the lake, she sees a body just below the water's surface. When they go into the village to sell some old furniture, they learn that a woman by the name of Abigail Bishop drowned in the lake and her body was never found. Local folklore has that Abigail is now a vampire roaming the countryside. A mute blond girl leads her to the body of a dead man but the body is not there when Jessica goes for help. Jessica and those around begin to wonder if she is losing her mind.

With Argento's trademark visual style, linked with one of his more coherent plots, Tenebrae follows a writer who arrives to Rome only to find somebody is using his novels as the inspiration (and, occasionally, the means) of committing murder. As the death toll mounts the police are ever baffled, and the writer becomes more closely linked to the case than is comfortable.

In Hollywood, the Big Taters'waitress Sarah Walker is an ambitious aspiring actress that suffers from hair pulling disorder. Sarah does not respect her boss Carl or her job since she believes she will be a great actress and this job is temporary only to pay her bills. She shares an apartment with her roommate Tracy that frequently discloses her secrets to their selfish friends Erin that likes to humiliate Sarah and steal her roles; Danny, who is an aspiring director that likes Sarah; Poe and Ashley that are indifferent to her. When Sarah is invited to an audition of the film The Silver Screen from the company Astraeus Pictures, their auditioners do not show any reaction to her performance. When Sarah leaves the audition, she goes to the toilet room and has an attack, pulling her hair and crying. Immediately after, the casting director invites her to return to the room and repeat what she did in the bathroom for her assistant and she. Sarah is invited again to an audition with the producer and when he insinuates to have sex with her, she refuses and goes home. However her ambition prevails and she returns to his house and has oral sex with him. He tells that she wants to be famous, she needs to die and reborn. When Sarah returns home, she finds that her body is deteriorating and she needs to murder her friends to complete her transformation. What will she do?

Suzy Bannion travels to Germany to perfect her ballet skills. She arrives at the Tanz dance academy in the pouring rain and is refused admission after another woman is seen fleeing the school. She returns the next morning and this time is let in. She learns that the young woman she saw fleeing the previous evening, Pat Hingle, has been found dead. Strange things soon begin to occur. Suzy becomes ill and is put on a special diet; the school becomes infested with maggots; odd sounds abound; and Daniel, the pianist, is killed by his own dog. A bit of research indicates that the ballet school was once a witches' coven - and as Suzy learns, still is.