This year the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival, a celebration of horror cinema, moved from its home in San Diego to the Frida Theater in Santa Ana in Orange County. In previous years I had attended the full festival, driving to the venue each morning and then back home again late in the evening. With Santa Ana about a 90-minute drive from home and with the expenses of World Con incurred just earlier in the month I felt that this year I could only attend a single day.

The drive up was pleasant enough and there was ample parking near the venue. I must admit that the venue itself, The Frida Cinema a non-profit dedicated to the cinema arts, is a lovely theater. It presents two screens with comfortable seating and a large impressive screen. I was told that the Frida has been trying to woo the festival up from San Diego for a number of years. Unlike the Festival’s previous venue the Museum of Photographic Arts, the Frida sells concessions and for me a movie is always a better experience with popcorn.

The days started with a short film block presenting a number of intriguing, intelligent, and well-made films. While I enjoyed quite a few of them my favorite from this block was Roake about a photographer that made his subjects with a single photo in famous celebrities, but of course there is always a price.

The next block was long form short film. That is short movies that run longer than most short but still far short of a feature length presentation. These tended to be 20 to 30 minutes long and for the stand out presentation was The Quiet Room,  a movie that explored mental health, and our own self-destructive tendencies.

The first feature film of the day was The Returning a movie from Malaysia that dealt with ghosts but literal and figurative that haunted a small town after a terrible tragedy. The feature was preceded by a few more shorts including a haunting animated featurePhototaxisthat explored the myth of the Mothman.

Follow The Returning was a presentation by an academic about afrofuturism and race in horror media. It made me wish I could take his course it sounded very fascinating.

After a dinner break we returned for the final Feature of the evening, Vampire Clay. From Japan this film was easily one of the oddest horror movie I have ever watched. Set in a small art prep school in the countryside with a small class of student s hoping to get accepted into the hyper-competitive big universities their lives are disrupted by a mound of clay that lusts for blood and recognition. Aside from one-third act info-dump that brought the narrative momentum to a halt Vampire Clay was an enjoying if not odd horror movie.

They closed the festival with a screening Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow, but with a 90 minute drive ahead of me I skipped out on that and drove home. Next year I plan to see more of the festival in its new home.