Get your scare on: Dark Red Film Festival to screen 75 horror movies at the NHCC, Guild Cinema

The horror movie genre encompasses a range of subject matters that may incite feelings of fear, shock or disgust.

The Dark Red Film Festival celebrates this genre with three days of screenings at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Friday, Oct. 25, and Saturday, Oct. 26, and the Guild Cinema on Sunday, Oct. 27. Attendees can anticipate a curated selection of eerie, bizarre and spine-chilling films that embody the essence of indie horror and showcase the span of the genre, according to the festival’s website. A full schedule is available at darkredhorror.com.

Get your scare on: Dark Red Film Festival to screen 75 horror movies at the NHCC, Guild Cinema

“We actually ended up selecting 75 short films,” said Tabitha McDonald, of Dark Red Productions, who co-founded the festival with her husband, Mason. “It’s a lot, but we were originally planning to do about 60, and the quality of the films submitted this year was just so good, we decided to figure out a way to incorporate as many as possible. It’s really hard to say no when you just have really great stuff.”

McDonald said there will be about 20 films that were either made in the state or were written, directed or produced by a native New Mexican.

“People are actually out there making stuff for a submission to our festival, which is kind of crazy, only being three years in,” McDonald said. “We’ve had a couple people, who are like, ‘Oh, we made this specifically so we could submit to Dark Red.’”

McDonald is a film producer and her husband, Mason, is an acclaimed writer and director. The couple and a judging panel looks for certain criteria when selecting movies for the film festival.

“The things that we really look for are, did someone take a big swing, whether that’s with the story or the style or (with) the actors that they chose,” she said. “What’s important to us is it stands out, it has something fresh ... That can mean a lot of things because we do accept a pretty wide range of horror, everything from sci-fi horror to slasher to horror comedy.

“We have a panel of seven judges and we kind of tell them what our criteria is, right off the bat, and then screen all the films that are submitted. We kind of go through and narrow it down as best we can, just kind of keeping that stuff in mind. And because we do have a really good group of people on our team, I think we do have a really consistent sort of tone to the festival, even though we do select kind of a wide array of horror films.”

Also part of the event is the Espooky Mercado from 4 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 25, at the NHCC.

“Last year, they did it for the first time, and it was a pretty big hit,” said McDonald. “... It felt like a really kind of perfect partnership (with the NHCC) from the get-go. They’re anticipating roughly 250 to 300 people to attend the mercado alone, which is pretty cool. There’s a ton of different vendors, food trucks, and then our festival will start screenings toward the end of it. People can come and shop and catch some scary movies, which is cool.”

A workshop and panel titled, “What does it mean to be an Indie Filmmaker?” will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 26.

“That is our first time doing a panel or workshop, and we’re kind of doing a combo,” McDonald said. “One of our big goals is to make the festival really accessible to students and also offer some sort of education or opportunities that maybe students don’t always have access to at that stage in their career as filmmakers.”

In addition to the panel, the festival is free for students that have an active student ID.

“The panel is going to be people (who are local) and then we have a few people coming in from out-of-state,” McDonald explained. “Then we’re doing some video questions with people from all over the world talking about the different aspects of what is indie filmmaking? What does it mean to be an indie filmmaker? How do you juggle that with also paying rent, and all those fun things because it is challenging at times and there’s a lot of different ways you can do it. It’s really important to us to show students that you can do it from a variety of different ways. And you should never downplay the fact that you are an indy filmmaker. Opening those doors is important to us.”

McDonald said the horror community in New Mexico is large but close-knit. Since its inception, three years ago, the film festival has not only increased its amount of screenings but has garnered more sponsors who support the event.

“(We are) working on building our community partnerships out even more and people are excited about it,” McDonald said. “It’s really rewarding for us as filmmakers to be able to bring new filmmakers together and meet new filmmakers and meet new collaborators and also just see films that are doing kind of wild things, because that can be really inspiring when you’re trying to create, to see things that are being done at a really unique and interesting level.”