On the penultimate day of the first annual FearNYC festival, festival goers were treated to another collection of shorts, a few classic films, some fantastic premieres, and the awards ceremony, during which the festival honored the legacy of Wes Craven for his contributions to the horror genre. The day kicked off with a screening of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a truly terrifying silent film about a hypnotist who uses a somnambulist named Cesare to commit murders. Dr. Caligari set the standard for Gothic horror films in the 20's with its eerie set design, haunting score, and ghoulish characters. A very unsettling film that belongs in every horror collection. Dr. Caligari was followed by a series of four short films: Green Lake, an homage to Creature from the Black Lagoon about an ancient Hawaiian spirit that terrorizes a group of twentysomethings after they desecrate sacred waters; Hidden Daylight, a Hitchcock-inspired film in which a man whose girlfriend has been kidnapped by a serial killer visits a blind psychic who can see through the killer's eyes; The Eve, an Italian short about a terrible event that happens on Christmas Eve after a young boy makes a strange request of Santa Claus; and Hindsight, a taut psychological thriller about a suicidal man who has horrific visions of future murders and who tries to lure a murderer into his home. I have never been a fan of Creature from the Black Lagoon, so Green Lake was a miss for me. It included some beautiful shots of remote interiors of the Big Island of Hawa'ii, but the acting wasn't stellar, the monster wasn't scary, and the effects were B-list at best—not in a good way. Hidden Daylight was thrilling and the twist at the end is shocking. A really good psychological film. I didn't really get The Eve when it was first screened; it took a second viewing (it won Best Short Film at the awards ceremony, so we got to see it twice) in order to understand it...kind of. A child gets a visit from "Santa" (who is a social worker) and the young boy asks Santa for the keys to his factory for Christmas so he can turn it into a "disenchantment factory" for all the children around the world who have "lost their way." That part is depressing enough, but it turns out that "Santa" is a murderer who chopped up his wife and included her mangled corpse in the kid's Christmas gifts. Make of that what you will. Hindsight was also really good; what made it scary for me was its commentary on suicidal feelings. I've always found horror films about nonsupernatural stuff much scarier than monsters and ghosts and the like because it gives films a sense of realism, that these things can actually happen. Randy Lao, the director, captured the isolation and horror of being suicidal extremely well. Next up was the NYC premiere of The Dark Tapes, an anthology of four interlocking stories presented as found-footage films. The first story is about a professor at Cal Tech and his TA trying to capture footage of demons that appear while people are sleeping. Rationalizing their attempts using "time distillation" (I'm not sure if that's a real thing), they end up capturing the footage they want, but at a price. The second storyline is a pretty basic ghost story: a family moves into new home, weird stuff starts happening, the family calls in paranormal investigators, stuff hits the fan. In the third story, two girls do a webcam series in which they hold a lottery for footage of themselves having sex. The guy who wins this particular episode gets a lot more than he bargained for. The last storyline follows a young woman who is drugged at a party and is almost raped before her friends save her. Soon afterwards, paranormal activity follows her wherever she goes, and she sets out to stop whatever's stalking her. The stories are scary in their own ways—as four different films. I think the film as a whole loses something when presented as an anthology; there is nothing tying the four stories together, unlike Accursed where the stories all had a unifying link. That, and the fact that the first story was broken up by the other three, which were linear narratives, made it a little confusing. The viewer keeps looking for a link that's not there, but maybe that's the point. Maybe its a testament to the randomness real-life horror; bad things can just happen to people and, despite the paranormal themes of the stories, they all have very real, human elements. The Dark Tapes hits theaters early next year, so snap it up if films about paranormal happenings circulate well in your library. At 7, the audience was invited to stay for the FearNYC awards ceremony, with a special ceremony honoring the late, great Wes Craven as this year's Legacy Honoree. Speeches were made by Joshua Rothkopf, film editor at Time Out New York; Jsu Garcia, who played Rod Lane in the original Nightmare on Elm Street; and Wes Craven's stepdaughter, Nina Tarnawksy, who accepted the award on the family's behalf. After the ceremony, the audience was treated to the NYC premiere of Dead Awake, a film inspired by the work of Wes Craven that follows a young woman who needs to save herself and her friends from an ancient evil that kills through sleep paralysis. There are thousands of documented cases of sleep paralysis in which the victims report seeing a ghost of an old woman sitting on their chest and smothering them, and these case studies not only inspired Wes Craven to make A Nightmare on Elm Street but also inspired the team behind Dead Awake. This real-life parallel makes this film truly terrifying. Strong casting, amazing cinematography, and the link to real-world phenomena makes this a must-have for horror collections. The last film of the night was a screening of the horror classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962) in which a doctor experimenting with transplant techniques keeps his girlfriend's head alive when she is decapitated in a car crash, then goes hunting for a new body. If you're still planning on doing a B-list horror film fest, this film should be on your schedule after Plan 9 from Outer Space. The last day of the festival is tomorrow; take a look at past days here!