Roxie Theater to screen 7 horror movies directed by women

The series starts at 9:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 28, with Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 vampire thriller “Near Dark” — which feels like an “Aliens” reunion, with Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen and Jenette Goldstein along for the ride — and ends with the 9 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30, screening of Antonia Bird’s 19th century cannibalism tale, “Ravenous” (1999).

[...] the key to this series is four recent films that might speak to the future of the genre, including an excellent triple feature on Saturday, Oct. 30, that begins at 5 p.m. with “The Babadook,” followed by Hélène Cattet’s “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” (7 p.m.) — a fearless, visually sumptuous tour-de-force homage to Italian giallo horror films of the 1960s and ’70s, such as those by Dario Argento.

Cap that with “Jennifer’s Body” (9:30 p.m.), the 2009 Hollywood flick starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried as high school girls — one of them evil — dealing with the fallout of tragedy in their small Minnesota town.

Directed by Karyn Kusama (“Girlfight”) from a script by Diablo Cody (“Juno”), it’s gory, scary and fun, as it is also a dark comedy that spoofs (and accurately captures) high school angst.

Trashed by critics and considered a box office bomb (although it actually made back theatrically twice as much as it cost and that’s before home video revenue; some bomb), “Jennifer’s Body” is undergoing a critical reappraisal by film fans on the repertory circuit, and for a great reason:

If there’s one aspect to the more recent films in this series, it’s that these stories are character driven, not scare-driven, and feature a terrific, rich central performance by an actress — and that includes actress-turned-director Stewart Thorndike’s 2014 lesbian-themed indie “Lyle” (5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30), which stars Gaby Hoffman (“Transparent,” “Girls”).

Writer-director Jennifer Kent is a former actress (Cate Blanchett was a classmate in acting school), and she clearly knows the value great acting can bring to the horror genre.

Seems like Halloween weekend is a natural fit for the 10-day festival at New People Cinema in Japantown.

The festival opens at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, with a program of Bay Area-produced short films, followed by a feature at 9 p.m., “The Master Cleanse,” a U.S. indie about a downtrodden guy who goes to a spiritual retreat and finds the treatment to be a bit more than he expected.

Bay Area filmmaker Hassan Zee’s 2014 spiritual crisis story, “House of Temptation,” is followed by a revival of Robert Zagone’s 1966 documentary “Drugs in the Tenderloin” — a real-life horror story even then.