Boston Underground Film Festival celebrates oddities of cinema

Killer spiders, pregnant nuns, ex-con Juggalos and humanist vampires, oh my. It must be Boston Underground Film Festival season again. From Wednesday, March 20 through Sunday, March 24, the self-described “annual sensory bacchanalia from beyond the mainstream” is back at the Brattle Theatre to celebrate the oddest and most outré of cinematic offerings. Now in its 24th iteration, the festival that started out in the ‘90s as an all-night movie marathon has stretched to five days of screenings showcasing 14 features and 70-something shorts. Covering the whole waterfront of weirdness, BUFF’s Director of Programming Nicole McControversy promises there’s something for everyone in this year’s roster of films that are decidedly not for everybody.

The festival kicks off Wednesday night with “Immaculate,” which is pretty much everything you’d hope for from a gory horror movie starring Sydney Sweeney as a knocked-up nun. This half-kidding “Rosemary’s Baby” riff is the starlet’s second team-up with Boston-bred director Michael Mohan, who helmed her cheeky 2021 erotic thriller “The Voyeurs,” and together they again demonstrate a sly understanding of how to use the actress’ silent-era attributes. (I’m still not sure if Sweeney can convincingly speak dialogue on camera. I’m also not sure if she needs to.) It’s a knowing, but not-quite-campy romp through old-school nunsploitation tropes, culminating in a jaw-dropping final sequence designed to show off the actress’ feral physicality. She crushes it.

BUFF isn’t programmed with specific themes in mind, but when putting together a slate of films, it’s impossible not to see certain patterns emerging. “There’s a lot of dread this year,” McControversy explains. “Everyone is so f---ing afraid of the future, and I think it shows in these films. There’s fear of the future and there’s suspicion and weariness of your neighbors. It’s a total reflection of how I think we’re all feeling in this lovely election year!”

Indeed, the folks next door might not even be themselves anymore according to Zach Clark’s “The Becomers” (March 23). The gross-out genre-bender tells a story of two star-crossed alien lovers infiltrating and occupying human bodies in post-pandemic America, where identity is already a little slippery. Especially when they get to the suburbs and snatch the bodies of some QAnon conspiracy theorists. Are your neighbors acting strange because they’re aliens, or are they just watching too much cable news? BUFF’s Artistic Director Kevin Monahan notes that “returning champion Clark” is the only two-time winner of the festival’s top prize, having previously won for his 2009 “Modern Love Is Automatic” and 2013’s “White Reindeer.” Will “The Becomers” make it a hat trick?

Monahan is also high on “In a Violent Nature” (March 23). Writer-director Chris Nash’s “ambient slasher” restricts us to the POV of a killer preying on dumb teenagers in the woods, and it turns out that the inside of a mad slasher’s head can be a pretty empty place. “It’s a deconstruction of the subgenre,” Monahan enthuses. “The disparate elements that make a slasher movie a slasher movie are all there, but the film pulls them apart and has a lot of fun with them. It’s an incredible commitment to the bit.”

Saturday’s late show is a nightmare for arachnophobes. The French import “Infested” is about a low-income neighborhood overrun with thousands of killer spiders. McControversy says she’s tempted to get into the William Castle spirit and throw fake spiders into the audience mid-movie for “an enhanced, 4D experience,” but doubts that Brattle management would look too kindly upon such a stunt. (I’m just saying, it would be really easy to pull off from the balcony.) Director Sébastien Vaniček was recently hired by Hollywood to helm an “Evil Dead” spin-off. But he’ll have his work cut out for him because zombies aren’t as scary as spiders.

BUFF’s six short film programs each have their own sensibilities. They range from the self-explanatory “Sound & Vision” (March 23) music video showcase to more cryptic titles like “How You Living?” (March 24), which I’m told are “dark comedies inspired by late-capitalism.” The animated collection “Sometimes Always” (March 24) is where you’ll find the festival’s most abstract, experimental entries, while “Trigger Warning 2024” (March 22) lets everyone know exactly what they’re getting into with the midnight shorts. Monahan warns they’re “for people who think they’ve seen everything,” and there’s a firm viewer discretion advisory in the guide for that particular program. But what else would you be expecting at that hour?

Regional filmmakers take center stage in “The Dunwich Horrors” (March 22), curator Chris Hallock’s tenth annual collection of New England shorts. More than a few of the films this year are about isolation or how to deal with apocalypses arriving at the most inconvenient times. (Gee, I wonder if this COVID-weary audience could relate?) My favorite of the selections I was able to see in advance is “Detox,” director Alex Hanno’s very funny story of a smartphone-free getaway gone wrong, culminating in a hilariously plausible depiction of Instagram addicts reacting to an alien invasion.

For more local action, writer-director Joseph Mault’s “Strange Kindness” was shot on Cape Cod and begins in the aftermath of a mass shooting. The wounded assailant gets more than he bargained for when he arrives at the remote home of a prickly cancer patient who isn’t intimidated by a bleeding man with a gun. This elliptical, empathetic movie never quite goes where you’re expecting, in ways both memorable and mannered. (I’m still thinking about it, for better and worse.) “Strange Kindness” is screening on March 21 with “The Thaw,” a chilling, beautifully shot black-and-white short by BUFF regulars Sarah Wisner and Sean Temple, set during a brutal 19th-century Vermont winter when a family’s hibernation plans go bloodily awry.

Programmers aren’t supposed to pick favorites, at least not on the record. But critics can, and this writer was knocked flat by “Femme” (March 21). Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s agonizingly intense psychodrama stars Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as a London drag performer savagely beaten in an alley by homophobic goons. Months later, a chance encounter with his main assailant (“1917” co-star George MacKay) prompts a complicated revenge plan requiring the dancer’s most dangerous performance yet. A genuinely erotic, unsettling thriller boasting an electrifying turn from MacKay, “Femme” isn’t just one of the best films in the festival, it’s one of the best movies of the year. “It’s our gut-punch film,” McControversy says. “We always like to have one that’s a little rough and puts you through the ringer.”

But this year’s BUFF lineup also has a softer side, even venturing into rom-com territory via Kim Albright’s “With Love and a Major Organ” (March 24). Based on the play by screenwriter Julia Lederer, it’s about an analog artist (Anna Maguire) in a digital world where everyone lets an app make all their emotional decisions for them. She gives her heart — literally, long story — to a depressed cubicle drone and what could have been a lethal level of whimsy is undercut by some cutting insights into human behavior. The best title of the festival, by far, belongs to “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” (March 21), which just did all the synopsizing work for me. This deadpan Québécois comedy is so adorable I’d be shocked if Tim Burton didn’t already have a remake in the works starring Jenna Ortega.

BUFF’s biggest surprise this year has got to be “Off Ramp” (March 22), a potty-mouthed road trip comedy following two Juggalos — the oft-ridiculed subculture of superfans devoted to horrorcore rap group Insane Clown Posse — getting into all sorts of trouble en route to their annual gathering/concert/orgy of appalling behavior. You’d never imagine a Juggalo movie could be this sweet, especially since director Nathan Tape doesn’t exactly downplay the obscenity, drug abuse and antisocial antics. (One seduction scene starts with the woman saying, “My farts are very sexual.”) But there’s such a generous spirit of outsider empathy that you can’t help but find yourself rooting for these guys. For all the filth, it’s ultimately a heartwarming movie about misfits and outcasts who have discovered a community they can call their own, making it a perfect fit for a festival like this one.

Boston Underground Film Festival runs from Wednesday, March 20 through Sunday, March 24.