STEP RIGHT UP! The sixth annual Anomaly - The Rochester Genre Film Festival is here! Join us for 13 programs that promise a thrilling ride through 12 feature films and 24 short films for all 5 days! Try your luck, and experience the best genre cinema from around the world, November 6-10, 2024 in downtown Rochester, NY!
TICKETS / PASSES
Individual Tickets: $12 General Admission
“Early Ghoul” Full Festival Pass: $100
(last chance to purchase: November 5)Full Festival Pass: $120
Discounts available on select films/tickets/passes for students and seniors.
See Ticket Details for more information.
VENUES
Our 2024 Festival Big Top: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1): 240 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14604. PARKING INFO
Thursday, November 7: The Name of the Game is Kill! screening is at The Dryden Theatre: 900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607. PARKING INFO
Other ”Excursion” (Event) locations vary.
Jump to a day: WEDNESDAY 11/6 • THURSDAY 11/7 • FRIDAY 11/8 • SATURDAY 11/9 • SUNDAY 11/10
Click/tap a poster to jump to a film program. • Scroll down for full list of films.
Full Festival Passholders: Pass Pickup & Reception
5:00-5:45pm (directly preceding Timestalker)
Location: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1 Lobby)
Come pickup (and decorate!) your pass, mingle with your fellow film-buffs, and enjoy a baked potato bar before we kickoff opening night! (Passes can still be picked up all festival long.)
Timestalker
An absurd, darkly funny love story throughout time.
A bawdy reincarnation romantic-comedy about the eternal humiliation that is the search for love. Hapless heroine Agnes travels through time as she repeatedly falls for the wrong guy, dies a grim death, and gets reincarnated a century later… before meeting him again and starting the cycle anew. Her only hope in avoiding this violent fate is by finally reaching spiritual enlightenment; but how can she ever wise up when she’s destined to be a fool for love? Some lessons are just too hard to learn in one single lifetime. More details & tickets
UK / 2024 / 1 hr 29 mins
Content Warnings: blood, violence, gore, animal death, death, suicide, stalking, sexual violence and sexual threats, strobe lights, flashing images
PRECEDED BY
23
A self-proclaimed "harmless" stalker has sessions with a psychologist.
Italy / 2024 / 20 mins
In Italian with English Subtitles
Content Warnings: stalking, sexual assault, rape, violence, blood
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
Battle Beyond the Stars
A gem of the 1980’s post-Star Wars space boom in B-movie filmmaking.
With art direction by a young James Cameron, an early score by James Horner (Aliens, Titanic), a screenplay by John Sayles (Lone Star) and co-directed by Roger Corman himself, Battle Beyond the Stars features a game cast — including Richard Thomas, John Saxon, Robert Vaughn, and Sybil Danning — and fun set-pieces, as our heroes scour the cosmos to recruit interplanetary mercenaries to save a peaceful home world from the evil Sador.
Don’t miss the chance to see this cult-classic space opera on the big screen! More details & tickets
USA / 1980 / 1 hr 45 mins
Content Warnings: Rated PG. Torture, minor blood, sexual assault (implied, offscreen).
PRECEDED BY
The Stain
When a neurotic college student notices a stain on his t-shirt, he must contend with supernatural forces to save his clothing... and himself.
USA / 2023 / 3 mins
Content Warnings: blood and more blood
Thursday Pre-Film Potato Excursion
5:00pm-7:00pm (approx.; directly preceding The Name of the Game is Kill!)
Location: Petit Poutinerie (44 Elton St, Rochester, NY 14607)
You know Anomaly loves a potato-themed outing! Meet us for dinner at Petit Poutinerie, purchase some delicious fries and other spud-friendly treats, enjoy drink specials for Anomaly pass-holders, and settle in for a mini-round of movie trivia (or some other game we'll come up with... it's a carnival, we'll figure something out!), before heading over to The Dryden, a block away!
Venue sponsorship thanks to Petite Poutinerie
The Name of the Game is Kill!
Anomaly at The Dryden Theatre!
A desert-sun-blasted thriller of strange hospitality, sinister isolation, and a family that just can't seem to get their backstory straight...
PRESENTED ON 35MM FILM! Returning for the second year in a row to the George Eastman Museum’s Dryden Theatre, to uncover hidden treasures from the museum archive not typically considered for the general program.
This year’s selection finds Jack Lord (famous for playing Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-O), as hungarian hitchhiker Sym who gets in over his head. Heading west on a deserted Arizona road, he’s picked up by Mickey (Susan Strasberg), whose Jeep overheats. The two are attracted to each other immediately, so Mickey takes Sym home for the night… but her family is wary, especially when dark secrets start to be revealed. More details & tickets
(Only logged 220 total times on Letterboxd, if that’s a selling point to you!)
USA / 1968 / 1 hr 24 mins
Content Warnings: violence, mental illness, spiders, car violence, abuse (off-screen)
PRECEDED BY
Catamaran
Freya the Jackal and her husband Jericho are top tier assassins vacationing aboard their luxury yacht when they are ambushed by Freya's rival, Darla, and her army of scuba mercenaries.
USA / 2024 / 8 mins
Content Warnings: blood, violence, death
Dead Mail
An analogue, chilly thriller of obsession and devotion.
A blood-stained cry for help desperately jammed into a mailbox outside a madman's house is the thread that ends up tying together an electronics virtuoso, a fervent synthesizer fanatic, and the unorthodox investigators at a small, midwestern dead letter office sometime in the 1980s. As points of view shift and situations turn deadly, the story oscillates and amplifies as it plays its own unique tune. More details & tickets
USA / 2024 / 1 hr 46 mins
Content Warnings: violence, blood, kidnapping, torture, surgery, suicide
PRECEDED BY
Hey Man
Trevor needs to get something off his chest. After a late-night party, he decides to open up to his buddy, Cole. Then the nightmare begins.
USA / 2024 / 12 mins
Content Warnings: discussion of disturbing themes
Chainsaws Were Singing
A gory slapstick horror musical-comedy romance… with chainsaws.
An absolutely bonkers B-movie epic from Estonia, this horror-musical-comedy love letter to exploitation cinema finds new lovers separated from each other by a chainsaw killer. In their search to find each other again, they encounter maniacal locals, a dangerous forest, crazed cults, carnivorous animals, and the constant threat of dismemberment in this wild amalgamation of Monty Python meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets... Les Misérables. More details & tickets
NEW YORK PREMIERE
Estonia / 2024 / 1 hr 57 mins
In Estonian with English subtitles
Content Warnings: blood, gore, suicide, vomit, drug use, strangulation, violence, cannabalism, kidnapping, goo (so much goo), incest
PRECEDED BY
You Wake to Find Yourself Alone in the Woods
A lost Hiker wakes up alone in the woods. Unsure of where he is and guided by an omnipresent and generally annoying narrator, he must find his way home before a masked Serial Killer finds him first.
USA / 2024 / 9 mins
Content Warnings: stalking
Sinister & Spooky Saturday Shorts
Strange, unsettling — and sometimes even touching — bite-sized tales. From students to professionals, these filmmakers showcase a variety of styles and tones, celebrating some of the best short-form genre-filmmaking this year.
(12 short films•2 hrs) More details & tickets
Film still from Never Let You Go
Naualli
A grieving man seeks revenge, unwittingly awakening a mystical creature known as the Nagual.
Mexico / 2024 / 6 mins
Content Warnings: gore, horror goo
Dummy!
An aspiring singer struggles to free herself from her controlling mother - a ventriloquist doll who experienced stardom in her youth.
USA / 2023 / 13 mins
Content Warnings: eating disorder, body shaming, puppet murder, fatphobia
All Kinds of Animals
Experienced hiker Hannah has an unexpected encounter after reaching the summit.
USA / 2024 / 8 mins
Content Warnings: mild violence, implied death
HADO
Javi, an unfaithful, powerful man, drives down a poorly lit, infrequently traveled road by night. He’s returning home from a supposed work trip. In the blink of an eye, one mistake will change Javi’s life forever.
Spain / 2023 / 12 mins
Content Warnings: car accidents, blood, death
Washed Up
A tired model decides to take back control of her life from her sleazy modeling agent.
USA / 2023 / 3 mins
Content Warnings: decapitation
Never Let You Go
A young woman’s traumatic past resurfaces when a mysterious box arrives on her doorstep, setting forth a horrifying reality.
USA / 2024 / 16 mins
Content Warnings: suicide, blood, body horror, possession, jump scare
Izzy
Izzy slowly realizes that she doesn’t want to admit to societal expectations anymore.
Netherlands / 2024 / 5 mins
Content Warnings: sex, masturbation, intense sound, blood
Pound For Pound
While an amateur MMA fighter struggles to make rent, he receives a mysterious offer that leads him to the dark and cult-like world of the super-rich.
USA / 2024 / 20 mins
Content Warnings: violence
Whittled Down
Carlisle has been trapped in this cabin for a long, long time. There are no doors, and the windows only open to an endless black void. With nothing to do but whittle and wait, a single thought lingers at the forefront of his mind: there's something wrong with that clock.
USA / 2024 / 5 mins
Content Warnings: disturbing imagery
Inked
After Dylan’s father passes away in prison, her attempts to honor his memory become eerily dark when she decides to tattoo her father’s ashes into her skin. But the sentimental tribute quickly turns sinister...
USA / 2024 / 14 mins
Content Warnings: parental death, blood, body horror, insects, body horror WITH insects, needles, goo, blood, vomit
We Joined a Cult
Two friends on their way to a game of kickball find themselves incessantly pressured to join an incompetent satanic cult.
USA / 2023 / 4 mins
Content Warnings: gore, blood
The Chain
A family's life is thrown into chaos when the father doesn't return home one night.
USA / 2024 / 15 mins
Content Warnings: offscreen violence
A fantastical post-apocalyptic adventure for all ages.
A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after its home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. Steeped in the soaring possibilities of visual storytelling, Flow is a feast for the senses. More details & tickets
Latvia, Belgium, France / 2024 / 1 hr 29 mins
No spoken dialogue
Content Warnings: animal endangerment, themes of abandonment
PRECEDED BY
bitter/sweet
Anita, an isolated teenager, is overwhelmed by memories of her late mother, until one day a strange tree appears in her backyard that may help her grief.
USA / 2024 / 8 mins
Content Warnings: grieving a deceased parent
Sound of Love
An exploration of obsession, the senses, and sensuality, where finding the line between social and parasocial becomes all too difficult.
Cleaning worker Moriya seeks solace from his isolated existence listening to the ASMR streams of a mysterious online creator who goes by the name Akiha. Moriya’s fixation on Akiha’s videos threatens to destroy his personal and professional lives, but he still can’t help pursuing some deeper connection. He reaches out to Akiha, and the two unexpectedly develop a relationship, first entirely online and soon IRL. But Moriya’s obsession only grows, and their strange bond soon sends them down a dangerous path that just may consume them both. More details & tickets
NEW YORK PREMIERE
Japan / 2024 / 1 hr 51 mins
In Japanese with English subtitles
Content Warnings: sexual violence, violence, blood, vomit, visceral noises
PRECEDED BY
RAT!
When a disgruntled music journalist accuses a global pop star of queerbaiting, the singer’s devoted fans descend on his remote cabin to wreak havoc and seek retribution.
USA / 2024 / 16 mins
Content Warnings: violence, blood, offscreen animal violence
Dead Talents Society
A haunting comedy about the horrors of influencer culture.
Dying is just the beginning of one young woman’s problems when she learns that the afterlife is a competitive world of celebrity scarers and desperate wannabes. Ghosts can linger in the mortal realm by competing to haunt humans, and so our rookie ghost embarks on a journey to find her own uniqueness under the tutelage of a passionate ghost talent agent and a washed-up diva, in an attempt to avoid failure — a fate in the underworld that is even worse than death. More details & tickets
Taiwan / 2024 / 1 hr 45 mins
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Content Warnings: Blood, gore, jump scares, mention of suicide, vehicle accidents, electrocution, self-harm
PRECEDED BY
Match
Rachel, a bored and insomniac young woman, contacts Zalir through a dating app, a creature who will do the impossible to make their paths cross, forever...
Spain / 2024 / 8 mins
In Spanish with English subtitles
Content Warnings: visceral noises, creepy face, jump scare
Saturday After-Film Party
10:30-12:00am (approx.; directly following Dead Talents Society)
Location: Red White & Brew (147 State St, Rochester, NY 14614)
Join Anomaly for a Saturday-night gathering at one of our favorite bars! Come chat about the day's movies! Snacks provided; drinks and additional food available for sale. Open to all Dead Talents Society ticket-holders and Anomaly Festival Passholders.
Sponsored by Red White & Brew
Snacks sponsored by Lunchador Podcast Network
The Severed Sun
An atmospheric folk horror creature feature.
An isolated, patriarchal church community in rural Britain is ruled over by a charismatic figure known as The Pastor. But when The Pastor’s daughter murders her abusive husband, she in the process unleashes a malevolent force: a beast with shimmering white eyes and a taste for evil men. As the beast leaves a trail of gruesome carnage, suspicion and paranoia grip the village and a brutal witch hunt leads the community to spiral further into darkness. More details & tickets
UK / 2024 / 1 hr 20 mins
Content Warnings: blood, violence, sexual assault
PRECEDED BY
The Thaw
In 19th century Vermont, a young woman's parents drink sleeping tea in order to survive the harsh winter, but an early thaw leads to unexpected results.
USA / 2023 / 17 mins
Content Warnings: vomit, animal death, emotional abuse
A dark fantasy about resilience in a girl’s juvenile detention center from a Guatemalan auteur.
When 13-year-old Rita runs away from home in an attempt to escape her abusive father, she ends up in a state-run institution for troubled girls in Guatemala City. It’s a place somehow even worse than the one she fled, filled with violence and assault. There, Rita finds herself at the center of an uprising by the seemingly-magical groups of girls who reside there, and are sick of being exploited.
Inspired by a tragic true story, Rita is a harrowing fairytale reminiscent of early Guillermo del Toro, acting as both a stark condemnation of a broken, unjust system and a powerful tribute to the resilience, strength, and humanity of this story’s real-life inspirations.
From Director Jayro Bustamante (La Llorona, on Criterion). More details & tickets
Guatemala / 2024 / 1 hr 47 mins
In Spanish with English subtitles
Content Warnings: discussion of and attempted sexual assault of minors, violence, child abuse, child sex trafficking, discussions of abortions, immolation
PRECEDED BY
Coléoptère
Grégoire Samsa is a solitary building caretaker who undergoes a dramatic physical and psychological transformation while seeking love and acceptance.
France / 2023 / 15 mins
In French with English subtitles
Content Warnings: violence, domestic abuse, goo, blood, body horror
A Samurai in Time
A sweet, heartfelt love letter to Japanese period dramas and finding one’s purpose - even across space and time.
A dark and stormy night in Edo-period Japan: samurai Kosaka Shinzaemon prepares to face off against his enemy when a lightning strike knocks him unconscious. Kosaka awakens to find he’s been transported to the present day film set of a samurai “jidaigeki” (period drama). Mistaken for an extra, his natural abilities get him work on more productions as a “kirareyaku,” a swordsman who specializes in being killed spectacularly on screen, while off-screen he navigates the strange world of the 21st century. More details & tickets
PRECEDED BY
VHX
A collection of home movies languish on a shelf, longing to be watched again. Little do they know, there’s a fate far worse than being forgotten.
USA / 2024 / 5 mins
Universal Language
A touching alternate reality, cultural fusion fable.
In a mysterious and surreal interzone — somewhere between Tehran, Iran and Winnipeg, Canada — characters try to free money from an ice block, lead tourists through local historic sites, quit theirs jobs to visit their mothers, reunite with old friends and new acquaintances at a Tim Hortons, and — yes — even visit the finest turkey butcher in town. Space, time and identities interweave in this incredibly unique and surreal comedy of misdirection from director Matthew Rankin (The Twentieth Century, Anomaly 2020). More details & tickets
Canada / 2024 / 1 hr 27 mins
In Persian, French, and English with PARTIAL English subtitles
Content Warnings: coarse language, mature themes, off-screen animal death
PRECEDED BY
Reciprocity Failure
When fantasy is confronted by reality, the barriers between the two realms break down, and all that remains is disillusion.
USA / 2023 / 3 mins
Content Warnings: blood
Closing Night Pizza Party
9:00-10:00pm (approx.; directly following Universal Language)
Location: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1 Lobby)
Our annual tradition! Following our Closing Night Film, stick around for a free, laid-back pizza party celebrating the conclusion of this year's festival! Open to all ticket-holders of Universal Language and all Festival Passholders.