BALTIMORE - Monday is here, which means that the whirlwind that was the third annual New/Next Film Festival has come and gone. Hotel room keys have been returned and Airbnb codes changed, the Charles Theatre is back to their regularly scheduled screenings of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and the block in front of the theatre is no longer (permanently) clouded in cigarette smoke.
A special thanks to the folks at New/Next, including the staff and volunteers, everyone at the Charles Theatre, and all of the artists who shared their work to make this thing happen. I had a fantastic time, as you can see:
Room Temperature (2025)
One night every year a family transforms their home and yard into a haunted house and invites their neighbors to walk through it. What used to be a group effort has increasingly become the dad’s obsessive fantasy that his family is expected to enact.
When I was 16, I worked for a haunted house in a strip mall. It was a good gig for a teenager. I played some sort of plague-infested zombie doctor, and I jumped out and scared people. It wasn’t hard work and I did it with a few friends. The production company ran out of money getting the building up to the appropriate fire code, so I’m pretty sure I got paid in pumpkin-shaped Reese’s instead of dollars. But whatever, I didn’t care, I had fun.
I can see why the family in Room Temperature, the latest film from novelist Dennis Cooper and his cinematic collaborator Zac Farley, likes turning their home (maybe only Dad likes it?) into a haunted house every year. This “home haunt,” as they’re called, charges locals $15 for the chance to walk, or crawl, through their bedrooms and backyard for a chance at being scared. It’s a creative outlet, perhaps they make a few bucks (although considering the overhead and that head count, probably not), and maybe, just maybe, they have more sinister intentions. It’s a slow burn that’s definitely slow and only barely burns, but those off-putting vibes are enough to swing it into horror territory for some people. I don’t have much more to say about Room Temperature, a narrative film I found to be a cross between the Roseanne Halloween episodes, the documentary Hell House, and James Rolfe’s YouTube video “History of Haunted Tours (1993-1998),” brought to life by the performance everybody thinks they’ve been getting in the last three Wes Anderson movies.
Every year at New/Next, a local celebrity or hometown hero is asked to program a revival screening for the Chuck’s largest screen. This year, it was Baltimore breakout star Stavros Halkias, who presented the Arnold Schwarzenegger beat-‘em-up, blow-‘em-up Commando. As you may expect, that screening, playing opposite Room Temperature, was quite popular. I chose not to attend for several reasons: because the Charles just played that film on that screen, separate from New/Next, about a month ago; because I’ve seen and continue to see Stavvy around all the time, and I’ve got it; and partially, I suppose, because my counter-programming hipster tendencies kicked in. When I saw that Room Temperature was still playing to a packed screening, one that hooped and hollered when programing director Eric Hatch name-checked Cooper and Farley in his introduction, I thought I had made the right choice. The crowd seemed to like it, and that’s cool, it was made for them.
Preceded by a short called “The Idea,” based on the short story of the same name by Raymond Carver. I wasn’t able to make one of the short film compilations this year, so I’m glad most of the features started with one.
Dead Lover (2025)
A lonely gravedigger meets her dream man, a flamboyant romantic poet, but their whirlwind affair ends when he drowns at sea; grief-stricken, she uses madcap scientific experiments to resurrect him — with grave consequences and unlikely love.
Saturday night’s midnight movie (well, it actually ended around midnight, but I was tired enough and it definitely gave those vibes) was Dead Lover, the new horror comedy romance from director Grace Glowicki. She wrote the film with her husband, Ben Petrie, and the two co-star in the movie together. While filmmakers are usually present at New/Next screenings to introduce their work or participate in a Q&A afterwards, Grace and Ben were unable to attend because they had just had their first child two days before the screening. I’ve heard worse excuses.
Grace plays a lonely gravedigger desperate to find her one true lover, but she’s having trouble because she smells like total shit. Seriously. The film was presented in “Stink-O-Vision,” with scratch-and-sniff cards handed out to audiences on their way in the door. This is a particular treat for local audiences as Baltimore’s own John Waters (who can usually be spotted around New/Next, but not this year - could it be because he’s afraid to face me after cutting me off in traffic a few weeks ago?) presented his film Polyester in Odorama with similarly disgusting stenches. The stinks ranged from onions to hot dogs to ghost puke, and more than a few of them made me wretch. A few times when we were instructed to scratch, I couldn’t do it. I saw what was happening on that screen, and I sure as hell didn’t want to smell it.
The film itself is a blast, following through on all three of its genres. Shot on scratchy 16mm…on sets…with practical effects - it’s any genre fan’s dream, the kind of movie that Shudder thinks they’re putting out way more than they really are. The filmmaker’s inspirations are clear; there’s plenty of Mary Shelley and Mario Bava, Re-Animator and Cemetery Man, campy enough to make Ed Wood proud and sexy enough to make Elvira blush. I’m not sure how much it would work without the committed performance from Glowicki, who is indispensable to her own movie - even if I didn’t really want to smell her burps.
Preceded by a film called “What Happened to Bobi,” an earnest little short about the filmmaker’s grandmother’s alien abduction and UFO sighting stories. The rest of the family reenacts them all, and it’s both really sweet and really funny. I believe she believes that’s what’s happened to her.
Secret Screening (2025)
We’ll never tell.
Due to scheduling conflicts, I wasn’t able to make it to the festival on Sunday, the final day, until late in the afternoon - but I wouldn’t miss the Secret Screening for anything. Every year, a time slot is opened up for an undisclosed title, with the audience unaware of what it is until the screening begins. Guesses circulate all weekend, but, as far as I’m aware, one has never been correct.
In the first year of the festival, I actually did skip out on the screening (see above for more information on those counter-programming tendencies), and when I saw the film, Sean Price Williams’ The Sweet East, a few weeks later, I regretted not going the first time. It’s a great movie and a highlight of 2023. I made sure to go last year, and the movie turned out to be Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, a movie I think I was too hard on because I was totally unprepared for a Christmas movie in October.
This year’s film was so secret that I still can’t even tell you about it. I’m not being coy or cheeky, I actually can’t say anything because the movie was an untitled, unfinished work-in-progress, and the New/Next crowd was the first audience to see it. We were specifically asked by the filmmaker (I’m still not even sure if I’m able to drop that name) to not say anything about it online, so of course I won’t. I will say that, when the movie is finished and gets released, I’ll be sure to say a few words about it, whether on Letterboxd or right here on Feature Presentation.
Natchez (2025)
NATCHEZ captures an unsettling clash between history and memory in a small Mississippi town; a layered mosaic of people contending with the weight of the past in a place where it is always present. Equal parts amusing and disturbing, we journey through an antebellum tourist destination at a crossroads as it grapples with a deeply troubled history that is so thoroughly ingrained in its present, we’re left to wonder if it’s actually past at all.
This year’s closing night film was Natchez, the latest documentary from director Suzannah Herbert. With a production team filled with New/Next alumni, from cinematographer Noah Collier (whose film Carpet Cowboys premiered at New/Next in 2023) to executive producer Sam Pollard (the Baltimorean has shown films at both previous editions), it was a natural fit to close out the weekend.
Natchez tells the story of Natchez, Mississippi, a tourist destination on account of its Antebellum heyday. Nowadays, garden clubs preserve the town, while amateur historians give tours of their homes and properties (many of which are now bed and breakfasts) during peak visiting season. The town’s white residents, profiting from their “generational wealth” of houses and antiques passed down from their great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, give a predictably white-washed version of the Natchez history. But we all know (or at least you should) that all of that states’ rights crap is nonsense. “You can’t talk about cotton without talking about slaves,” says Rev, a Black reverend/tour guide who gives his customers the true story.
While the town’s white residents think of their garden clubs as “preservation organizations,” people like Deborah Cosey, the first Black member of a city garden club, call them “slaps to the face of the African American community.” They insist on using the word “servant” instead of “slave,” they struggle to explain why they aren’t supposed to wear Confederate uniforms anymore, and they shake their heads at political correctness. They dress up in big hoop skirts, oftentimes family heirlooms, in what feels like Scarlett O’Hara cosplay - though it must be noted that sometimes it feels more like Carol Burnett’s Gone with the Wind sketch.
And that’s because Natchez, in a similar structural setup to American Theater, which played a few days before, starts with the silliest of the town’s behavior. We can giggle at the piano-playing mayor and the seriousness of polishing turtle forks and how some of these people actually believe they wouldn’t have owned other human beings if they lived in pre-Emancipation America. But it isn’t really funny. It’s terrible. When the most obviously racist of all of the town’s racists goes on a racist tirade, you can’t help but think that, for him, it’s only the tip of the iceberg compared to what he could really say.
I came very close to seeing Natchez during this year’s Tribeca Festival, and I honestly can’t remember why not. But I’m glad I didn’t and that I was able to see it for the first time with this New/Next crowd. The audience was responsive (if occasionally performative), the Q&A with Herbert, Collier, and Pollard was interesting and informative, and the film was a wonderful exclamation point on the weekend’s festivities. I’m already looking forward to next year.
Each plot synopsis and all photos are from NewNextFilmFest.com