Nicole Pastor in Freelance.

With three weeks to go before Monster Fest 2024 arrives simultaneously in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, we’ve put together your complete list of Australian feature films screening throughout the festival.

Now in its thirteenth year, Monster Fest is an ode to all that is weird and wonderful in the international and local cult cinema palette – horror, science fiction, fantasy, dark drama, black comedy, animation, and much more.

Monster Fest Melbourne runs October 4-12 at Cinema Nova and Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide & Perth from October 4-6 at Event Cinemas (Burwood, Brisbane City, Marion & Innaloo). 

For program details and tickets: monsterfest.com.au/australia

Fear Below

Directed by Matthew Holmes
A rag-tag team of divers attempting to salvage a sunken car from a river are thwarted by a highly aggressive bull shark in Matthew Holmes’ (The Cost, The Legend of Ben Hall) latest underwater horror epic.
This session will be followed by a post-film Q&A with cast and crew.

Fear Below

Scurry

Directed by Luke Sparke
After wowing audiences with his special-effects laden alien invasion Occupation Rainfall (MF 2020), director Luke Sparke returns to his horror roots with Scurry, a claustrophobic nightmare set in an ever narrowing tunnel below a city under attack. Trapped below ground amidst a catastrophic city attack, two strangers must crawl through an uncertain, narrowing tunnel in hope of evading the terror that lies above and behind them. Badly injured and running out of food and water, it isn’t long before the two realise that the horror outside might not be as dangerous as the horror inside.
This session will be followed by a post-film Q&A with cast and crew.

Scurry

States of Mind

Directed by Ché Baker
In 2021 director Ché Baker wowed Monster Fest audiences with the amazing SFX in his award-winning short film VR Grandpa, and now he’s back to do it again, this time with a mind-bending horror that follows a group of psychics as they compete for some serious prize money at a weekend retreat until an exorcism goes horribly wrong and unleashes a terrible evil.
This session will be followed by a post-film Q&A with cast and crew.

States of Mind

Waves of Madness

Directed by Jason Trost
Directed by Jason Trost (The FP) and inspired by classic videogames like Resident Evil and Silent Hill crossed with the spirit of those timeless black and white horror films of 1930s, Waves of Madness is a vivid Lovecraftian action/horror film shot completely from a side-scrolling perspective. A special agent is dispatched to investigate a distress call from an ocean liner, only to find the ship eerily abandoned and haunted by a malevolent force that twists sanity into terror.
This session will be followed by a post-film Q&A with cast and crew.

Waves of Madness

I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago

Directed by Jason Axel Summers
Delve into the life, music, and artistic output of Stu Spasm aka Stuart Gray, the notorious underground rocker who created the most psychotronic group to ever emerge from Australia – the legendary Lubricated Goat! Shot over 20 years, filmmaker Jason Summers assembles a plethora of archival footage, photos, interviews, art and insane live performances and charts one man’s infamous odyssey through the hardcore world of Aussie rock’n’roll!
This session will be followed by a post-film Q&A with cast and crew.

I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago

Freelance

Directed by John Balazs
Melbourne-based filmmaker John Balazs follows up his brutal 2021 revenge thriller Rage with Freelance, a disturbing, nightmarish tale with echoes of Joel Shumacher’s 8MM and Brian De Palma’s Blow Out. When a down-on-her luck video editor takes on a mysterious, well-paying job cutting snuff films, she is haunted by visions of the people in her videos.
This session will be followed by a post-film Q&A with cast and crew.

Freelance

An American Masquerade

Directed by Addison Heath and Jasmine Jakupi
Jasmine Jakupi and Addison Heath make their triumphant return to Monster Fest after their sell out session of The Viper’s Hex at Monster Fest 2018 with their most ambitious project yet – an action-packed road movie across the American west fuelled by nasty sex, illicit drugs and extreme violence. Two failed actors agree to transport a large amount of drugs from Portland to LA in order to fund their return to Hollywood. Along the way they meet a wild array of criminals, perverts and porn stars as they attempt to secure their own version of the American Dream.
This session will be followed by a post-film Q&A with cast and crew.

An American Masquerade

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