Starring: Rebecca De Mornay, Antonio Banderas, Dennis Miller, Len Cariou, Harry Dean Stanton

Co-hosted by filmmaker Drew Tobia

Criminal psychologist Sarah Taylor (Rebecca De Mornay), normally guarded emotionally, finds her walls coming down after a chance meeting with ponytailed babe Tony (Antonio Banderas). Vacillating between rebuffing his affection and literally sinking her teeth into his rear, she becomes further unhinged when she starts to receive anonymous threats. It’s a rogues’ gallery of potential perpetrators: horny neighbor Cliff (Dennis Miller), abusive father Henry (Len Cariou), potentially multiple personality serial killer Max (Harry Dean Stanton) – or is it possible Tony isn’t a random stranger after all? A movie that intercuts trust-falls with passionate sex, Never Talk to Strangers is a demented erotic thrillers gem in a Toronto-plays-NYC Christmas setting.

Keep track of the erotic thriller tropes with your Nitehawk Diaries Bingo card!

Starring: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Chadwick Boseman, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Mélanie Thierry

Four African American vets battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen squad leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide.

Starring: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Meredith Hagner, Camila Mendes, Tyler Hoechlin

Stuck in a time loop, two wedding guests develop a budding romance while living the same day over and over again.

Starring: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie

Licorice Pizza is the story of Alana Kane and Gary Valentine growing up, running around and falling in love in the San Fernando Valley, 1973. Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film tracks the treacherous navigation of first love.

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jada Pinkett Smith, Neil Patrick Harris, Christina Ricci, Priyanka Chopra Jonas

Plagued by strange memories, Neo’s life takes an unexpected turn when he finds himself back inside the Matrix.

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins

In 1940s New York, down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle endears himself to a clairvoyant and her mentalist husband at a traveling carnival. Using newly acquired knowledge, Carlisle crafts a golden ticket to success by swindling the elite and wealthy. Hoping for a big score, he soon hatches a scheme to con a dangerous tycoon with help from a mysterious psychiatrist who might be his most formidable opponent yet.

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie

Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil’s romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides. The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, reveling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter — all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form — he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson

A childless couple in rural Iceland make an alarming discovery one day in their sheep barn. They soon face the consequences of defying the will of nature, in this dark and atmospheric folktale, the striking debut feature from director Valdimar Jóhannsson.

Starring: Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Josh Lucas, Brendan Sexton III, Paul Guilfoyle

20th anniversary screening

Twenty years ago, director Brad Anderson and a top-notch group of character actors turned Massachusetts’ storied and creepy-as-hell Danvers State Mental Hospital into the setting for Session 9, one of the horror genre’s all-time bleakest and most psychologically terrifying films— no hyperbole at all. It’s the story of an asbestos clean-up crew’s descent into madness and destruction at the hands of the hospital’s supernatural powers, and it’s lost none of its stunning ability to burrow into its viewer’s minds— and, most importantly, scare the hell out of them.

Join Brooklyn Horror for a special 20th anniversary screening, including an exclusive virtual Q&A with director/co-writer Brad Anderson and actor/co-writer Stephen Gevedon.