Ten Nights of Fright on Hollywood Boulevard, Screamfest Opens With a Josh Lucas Thriller and Brings Paris Jackson’s Wounds

The red carpet outside the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres ran from 5:30 p.m. to 7:20 p.m. on Tuesday, October 6, and then the lights went down on Hollywood Boulevard for the first of ten nights of horror. Screamfest, the long-running Hollywood horror and science fiction festival, opened its 26th edition with the world premiere of The Night Driver, a road thriller starring Josh Lucas, David Arquette and Alyssa Milano, according to Hoodline. The festival’s own site promised an opening night party with cocktails and bites after the 7:30 p.m. screening.

The run continues through Thursday, October 15, with the next big night on Thursday, October 8, when Wounds, a horror film starring Jack Kilmer and Paris Jackson, has its world premiere.

The Night Driver Opens the Doors

The Night Driver is the directorial debut of Jeremy Weiss, working from a script by John Cork, MyNewsLA reported. Lucas plays Hurdis Jones, a traveling pharmaceutical salesman who survives an encounter with a violent stranger. The stranger follows him across the country and frames him for a series of killings while he tries to make it home to his wife, Cheryl, played by Milano. Arquette plays Detective Hank Granger, who is asked to help find Jones and clear his name.

There is a slasher pedigree behind the wheel. Sean S. Cunningham, the creator of Friday the 13th, signed on as an executive producer of the film, Hoodline reported. Milano and Arquette were both expected on the opening night carpet, along with Jacob Lynn, Danielle Vasinova and Charlotte Kirk, according to MyNewsLA.

Paris Jackson in the Makeup Chair

Wounds will premiere at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, on Screen 4 at the TCL Chinese Theatre, according to iHorror. Ron Krauss directs from a screenplay he wrote with Ryan Leeder and Joshua Courtade.

The story lives backstage in the horror business. Kilmer plays Caleb Castle, a horror obsessed special effects makeup artist scraping by at a collapsing studio who lands work on a low budget vampire picture. Jackson plays Ginny Brown, a fellow makeup artist he meets on that set. After Caleb witnesses a real murder, he becomes obsessed with using real trauma to sharpen his craft, HorrorFuel reported. Eric Roberts plays Jefferson, and Lambert Houston, Renata Notni, Richie Radichi and Rufus Dorsey are also in the cast.

The film was shot entirely on 35mm, and it is billed as a love letter to independent horror in the spirit of Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg and John Carpenter, iHorror reported. Jackson’s earlier genre work includes American Horror Stories, where she played Maya in the 2021 two part opener. Krauss is best known for Gimme Shelter, his 2013 drama with Vanessa Hudgens and Rosario Dawson. No distributor is attached to Wounds yet, according to iHorror, which makes the Hollywood premiere its first real audition.

The Rest of the Bill

Organizers counted 13 world premieres, eight North American premieres, an international premiere, a U.S. premiere and five West Coast premieres this year, according to Hoodline. The second wave of titles announced in late September, reported by Seat42F, stretches from Spain to Thailand. Crawlers, a North American premiere starring Matilda Lutz, locks down an apartment building with venomous spiders. dATE, a world premiere directed by Scott Milam, stars Olivia Rose Keegan and Maddie Phillips. Rinrada The Influencer, from Thailand, follows an influencer who returns as a digital wraith to hunt her cyberbullies.

The festival is also honoring the cinematographer Peter Deming with a career achievement award. His work spans Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Evil Dead II, three Scream sequels, Drag Me to Hell, The Cabin in the Woods and The Menu, Hoodline reported, and he earned a 2018 Emmy nomination for Part 8 of Twin Peaks The Return.

Director Michael Dougherty is scheduled to attend a special screening of Trick ‘r Treat, his 2007 horror anthology, followed by a Q&A. The program adds a 4K restoration of Season’s Greetings, his 2003 animated short, which won Screamfest’s Best Animated Short award that year and introduced the character Sam, according to Hoodline. The festival is also partnering with Ovation Hollywood on a free outdoor screening of Ghostbusters, the 1984 original.

Closing night on Thursday, October 15, belongs to Christmas at the Kringles, a horror comedy directed by Kevin Lewis. Ron Livingston, Rachel Bilson, Rob Riggle and Thomas Lennon star as part of an ensemble that also includes Donald Faison, Beverly D’Angelo and David Wain, Hoodline reported. A family new to a quiet suburb discovers that the neighbors celebrate Christmas all year, with sinister intentions. The film reaches theaters on October 30, according to Seat42F.

A Prize Decided by Heartbeats

This year the audience may pick a winner without filling out a ballot. The app ScareScore is launching at the festival with what the company calls the first ever Biometrically Decided Best Feature award, according to iHorror. Using the smartwatch a viewer already wears, the app reads heart rate, heart rate variability and movement, recognizes the film on screen and ties each spike to the moment that caused it.

“Horror is the perfect genre to focus on because your body doesn’t lie, and your opinion is not as good as cold hard facts,” ScareScore co-founder JP Ouellette told iHorror.

“You can try and brag that a movie didn’t scare you, but your biometrics tell a very different story,” Ouellette added. Jeffrey Scott Collins, whose film The Caged is among the competing features, told iHorror that the partnership was a very cool opportunity and that he could not wait to see the audience reactions.

Twenty Five Years of Screaming in Hollywood

Screamfest was founded in August 2001 by the producer Rachel Belofsky, who launched it with Ross Martin as a two day event at the old Vogue Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, Hoodline reported. It now runs as a female led nonprofit and calls itself the longest running horror festival in America. Its most famous discovery came in 2007, when it premiered Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity.

That history explains why so many small, practical, made for very little money pictures still come here looking for a buyer. For the city, Screamfest is the warm up act for a long October on the boulevard. The same theaters will hand the red carpet to AFI Fest later this month, as Velvet reported in AFI Fest’s opening night story, and horror fans who want the museum version can find it in Velvet’s look at the Academy Museum’s horror show.

If You Go

Screamfest runs through Thursday, October 15, at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres, 6925 Hollywood Boulevard. Single tickets and festival badges are sold through the festival’s ticketing page, linked from screamfestla.com, where the full schedule and screening times are posted. Industry Days panels for filmmakers, producers and distributors run Wednesday and Thursday this week, according to Hoodline. Wounds screens Thursday at 7:30 p.m. on Screen 4.