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To say that the Netflix catalog is a hit-or-miss situation is hardly controversial nowadays. As a matter of fact, the same statement can be made about almost all of our giant, non-curated streaming services. It isn't that rare for amazing movies and TV shows to pop up on these platforms, but quite often they tend to get buried under piles of titles that range from okay at best to horrifyingly bad. If you're a horror fan, for instance, you might have missed one of the coolest, scariest, most disturbing films to hit Netflix in quite some time, arguably one of the best to hit our screens this year. After all, to finally come across Luis Javier Henaine's Disappear Completely, one has to dig deep — almost as deep as the movie's main character in his search for a cure to the curse that threatens to turn him into a kind of living corpse,...

The fifth edition of the Santiago Int’l Film Festival’s Morbido Lab announced the six titles participating this year. Variety reports that Coffee Table's Caye Cesas and Eli Roth's former co-writer Guillermo Amoedo will have projects there this year. Mi padre de teror Pablo Guisa Koestinger from Morbido will be there to advise. With him they will bring Director Luis Javier Henaine (Disappear Completely) and our friend Adrian Garcia Bogliano (recently announced Someone's At The Door) to provide mentorship as well. All six participating titlles are in the gallery below. Guisa looks back to predict a bright future for previous pitches from the strand, stating that several past projects are “currently in different development stages while others have become a reality, release...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Titles from Caye Casas, whose jarring film “The Coffee Table” earned a nod from Stephen King, and a comeback project from former Eli Roth co-scribe Guillermo Amoedo (“The Inhabitant”), figure into a six-title slate for the fifth edition of the Santiago Int’l Film Festival’s Morbido Lab.

According to Sanfic co-founder Gabriela Sandoval, the competition was tight this year as the strand “had many more applications than in 2023.”

Morbido founder and CEO Pablo Guisa Koestinger will be on the ground to advise the talent, both established and budding, leading them towards full development and financing for their chilling projects. Director Luis Javier Henaine, who recently released genre highlight and Morbido Fest Bronze Skull Winner, “Disappear Completely” and veteran scribe, producer and director Adrian Garcia Bogliano, whose 2012 Title “Here Comes The Devil” swept the Austin Fantastic Fest, will provide additional mentorship.

This year’s selections center on the fantastic, the...

June is already here, which means that we’re rapidly approaching 2024’s halfway point. While many of the year’s most anticipated horror releases are still on the horizon, it’s been a crowded year so far for new releases, from theatrical to streaming. So much so that the overwhelming selection of releases makes it tough to keep up.

This week’s streaming picks highlight five 2024 horror releases, most of which have quietly flown under the radar. Whether you’re looking to catch up on new titles or revisit recent faves, this week brings everything from found footage creature features to cosmic nightmares.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Disappear Completely – Netflix

Tabloid photographer Santiago (Harold Torres) will go to great lengths to get the perfect shot, tact and morals be damned. His insensitivity even extends to his home life,...

Stars: Harold Torres, Tete Espinoza, Norma Reyna | Written by Luis Javier Henaine, Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes | Directed by Luis Javier Henaine

Photography converts the whole world into a cemetery. Photographers, connoisseurs of beauty, are also – wittingly or unwittingly – the recording-angels of death.

– Susan Sontag

Those words appear at the beginning of Disappear Completely (Desaparecer Por Completo), and seem perfectly appropriate as we see Santiago sitting in his car listening to the police radio. He’s a photographer, and he’s waiting to hear what he’ll be covering next. He doesn’t have long to wait before he’s busy shooting pictures of a cuffed suspect, sobbing victims in an ambulance, and, with the help of a bribe, a woman’s corpse.

Santiago works for a Mexican tabloid, one that very firmly believes the old adage, “If it bleeds, it leads”. And he’s excellent at capturing that bleeding on film, regardless of the cost.

"Could you do a spiritual cleansing on me?" "I can't help you." An official trailer is out for a Mexican indie horror film titled Disappear Completely, the latest film from filmmaker Luis Javier Henaine (of Happy Times and Ready to Mingle). It premiered in 2022 at Fantastic Fest as a work-in-progress, and screened at the Morelia Film Festival, and it won a Bronze Skull at the Morbido Film Festival in Mexico. There's still no US release date set, but with an opening in Mexico this March there's a trailer to check out. After visiting a brutal crime scene, an ambitious and insensitive tabloid crime photographer falls victim to a mysterious illness that makes him lose, one by one, his five senses. He attempts to figure out what is going on and how stop this illness "before the world he knows disappears completely..." Starring Harold Torres as Santiago, with Tete Espinoza, Fermín Martínez,...

Disappear Completely

Film festivals are busy events and it’s impossible to see everything interesting at the time, so I count myself very lucky, in the aftermath of it screening at Fantastic Fest 2022, to have had the chance to catch up with Luis Javier Henaine’s Disappear Completely (aka Desaparecer Por Completo). The story of crime scene photographer Santiago (Harold Torres), who begins to lose his senses one by one after falling prey to a witch’s curse, it may not sound strikingly new or exciting, but it’s a class act, put together with rare skill and with strong underlying themes which will extend its appeal far beyond the horror genre. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to speak with the director, if only to thank him for the experience, so I was delighted that he was interested in doing an interview, and he began by telling.

Headed by Alberto Müffelmann and Gerardo Gatica, Mexican indie production house Panorama Global has boarded Luis Javier Henaine’s feature “Desaparecer del todo,” a Moonlight Pictures production co-produced with Pablo Zimbron’s Varios Lobos.

The supernatural thriller, based on true events, explores witchcraft in Mexico through the eyes of a tabloid crime photographer.

Varios Lobos and Panorama previously co-produced Henaine’s popular comedy “Ready to Mingle,” and it’s a relationship Müffelmann was eager to rekindle.

“It is not just a business thing either,” he elaborated. “We understand one another well in a creative manner as well as for the economic and financial aspects. We work hand-in-hand. I think we’ve grown together. They came to us as a smaller company, but they are growing at the same time that we are.”

Also announced at Los Cabos, “Moonwalker,” is co-directed by Rodrigo Guardiola (“Zoé: Panoramas”) and Gabriel Nuncio (SXSW player “Cumbres”) of production house Bengala,...

Los Cabos, Mexico — Gerardo Gatica and Alberto Muffelmann’s Panorama Global, the company behind Alfonso Ruizpalacios’ “Museo,” are partnering with its co-screenwriter, Manuel Alcalá, and Mauricio Katz, screenwriter of “Miss Bala,” and Netflix “Maniac,” on futuristic thriller “Frogtown.”

As talent become one – if not the – key competitive issue in the world’s new film-tv landscape for every company from Netflix downwards, the deal sees Panorama, fast emerging as a Mexican movie powerhouse, teaming with two of Mexico’s top writing talents. “Frogtown” will mark both the writers’ directorial debuts.

Alcala co-won a Berlin screenwriting Silver Bear with Ruizpalacios for “Museo”; Katz co-wrote “Miss Bala,” produced by Canana, wrote and executive produced Netflix original series “Maniac,” and is a co-creator on one of the biggest upcoming TV series from continental Europe, the Sky-Canal Plus “ZeroZeroZero,” starring Gabriel Byrne and Andrea Riseborough, and from the creative team behind “Gomorrah.”

“Manuel and Mauricio...

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has unveiled its 2015 line-up which includes films representing 54 countries, 23 world premieres and 53 U.S. premieres. The U.S. premiere of Niki Caro’s McFarland USA will close out the 30th fest. Based on the 1987 true story and starring Kevin Costner and Maria Bello, the film follows novice runners from McFarland, an economically challenged town in California’s farm-rich Central Valley, as they give their all to build a cross-country team under the direction of Coach Jim White (Costner), a newcomer to their predominantly Latino high school. The unlikely band of runners overcomes the odds to forge not only a championship cross-country team but an enduring legacy as well.

The festival runs from January 27-February 7.

Below is the list of World and U.S. Premiere films followed by the list of titles by sidebar categories.

World Premieres

A Better You, USA

Directed by Matt Walsh

Cast: Brian Huskey,...

A self-acknowledged "showcase for Academy Award frontrunners," the Santa Barbara International Film Festival is often overlooked for the actual films that earn it festival status. An amalgamation of international discoveries and ’merica’s circuit highlights, the Sbiff curates a week of best-of-the-best to pair with their star-praising. The 2015 edition offers another expansive selection, bookended by two films that aren’t on any radars just yet. Sbiff will open with "Desert Dancer," producer Richard Raymond’s directorial debut. Starring Reece Ritchie and Frieda Pinto, the drama follows a group of friends who wave off the harsh political climate of Iran’s 2009 presidential election in favor of forming a dance team, picking up moves from Michael Jackson, Gene Kelly and Rudolf Nureyev thanks to the magic of YouTube. The festival will close with "McFarland, USA," starring Kevin Costner and Maria Bello. Telling the 1987 true story of a Latino high school’s underdog cross-country team,...