Hooptober 2025 Shortlist

1978 Czechoslovak film

A taxidermist decides to murder his wife after having to put up with her after twenty years of hellish marriage.

After a flight back home, Sam Hendrix returns with a doll he innocently acquired along the way. As it turns out, the doll is actually stuffed with heroin, and a group of criminals led by the ruthless Roat has followed Hendrix back to his place to retrieve it. When Hendrix leaves for business, the crooks make their move -- and find his blind wife, Susy, alone in the apartment. Soon, a life-threatening game begins between Susy and the thugs.

Gwynplaine, son of Lord Clancharlie, has a permanent smile carved on his face by the King, in revenge for Gwynplaine's father's treachery. Gwynplaine is adopted by a travelling showman and becomes a popular idol. He falls in love with the blind Dea. The king dies, and his evil jester tries to destroy or corrupt Gwynplaine.

In a Czech town in the seventeenth century, an elderly woman enters a church to accept communion. Her true purpose is to collect the holy host for a midwife who needs it to treat an ailing dairy cow. The woman is caught and is forced to explain her sacrilegious actions. Religious and secular authorities agree that she is in league with witches and may even be a witch herself. This prompts an inquisition where confessions are obtained through threats and torture. A tribunal is held to provide a legal facade. Though the hunt is initially confined to the impoverished fringes of local society, the hysteria soon expands to the point that no one, not even leading citizens, is safe. The ultimate target is a clergyman, Deacon Lautner, who defies the righteous men of the tribunal.
Based on actual trial records from the 1678 to 1695 period, this well made Czech film features excellent performances and strong production values. It is somewhat extreme by 1969 standards.

A police psychologist suspects her former lover of serial murders on the Tokyo subway.

1976 French film directed by Roman Polański

While doing a thesis about violence, Ángela finds a snuff video where a girl is tortured to death. Soon she discovers that the girl was a former student at her college...

Young Polish nobleman Jakub is saved from imprisonment by a stranger. In return, the stranger wants to obtain a list of Jakub’s fellow conspirators. As he follows his mysterious savior across the country, Jakub is affected by the overall chaos and moral corruption; he goes insane and becomes a mass murderer.

1972 film by Andrzej Żuławski

Top model Lilico, having recently undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries, begins to experience troubling side effects. As she desperately tries to retain her perfect image, Lilico descends into a world of nightmares and makes those around her miserable.

1972 film by Juraj Herz

A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.

2017 film directed by Rainer Sarnet

With the Gyaos re-emerging, Gamera's ties to humanity have been severed with his bond to Asagi broken. Nagamine and Asagi investigate while an orphaned girl named Ayana discovers a new creature she names Iris. Nagamine and Asagi must reach Ayana before she takes her revenge on Gamera, who she blames for the death of her family.

Thevan, a folk singer of the Paanan caste, has a fateful encounter when escaping slavery, leading to discover an ancient tradition altering his destiny.

A burning Godzilla, on the verge of meltdown, emerges to lay siege to Hong Kong. At the same time horrifying new organisms are discovered in Japan. These crustacean-like beings are seemingly born of the Oxygen Destroyer, the weapon that killed the original Godzilla.

Jose is a filmmaker putting the finishing touches on his latest production, a schlocky vampire picture. Feeling supremely dissatisfied with his vocation and heroin addicted girlfriend Ana, he arrives back at his apartment to discover a package from his friend Pedro. It contains a reel of super 8mm film, an audiotape and a key to Pedro’s apartment.
Flashbacks show how these two men, both of whom share an extraordinary passion for filmmaking, met at Pedro’s family home where Jose was location scouting. Pedro, who’s never without his super 8mm camera, believes life is only worth anything if it’s caught on film. Furthermore, he’s tapped a hidden power inherent in film images that causes him to experience a mystical state of “Arrebato,” or rapture. Before long Pedro becomes addicted to this sensation, eventually cutting himself off from the outside world and devoting his life to filming himself in bed. His camera in turn grows increasingly powerful as it saps more and more of Pedro’s life force, eventually developing the capacity to turn itself on and off and, more alarmingly, literally erase objects—and, inevitably, people—from existence.
All this is evident on the film and tape Pedro has mailed to Jose, who in the end decides to visit his friend’s apartment. He arrives to find Pedro’s camera set up and running, but its owner nowhere to be found...

Follows ghosts who want to become the spookiest of urban legends and most successful and famous stars in the underworld through their scare tactics and performances amongst the living.

A wheelchair-bound young girl returns to her father's estate after ten years, and although she's told he's away, she keeps seeing his dead body on the estate.