Rated: R    Runtime: 98 min.
SPRING SLAUGHTER ON 16TH STREET
April 22 – May 6

As a respite from the fluff clogging your cinematic sinuses this time of year, the Roxie humbly offers you a decongestant – two of the most pulverizing and polarizing features making the rounds: Red, White & Blue and Stake Land. One is an ultra-nihilistic exploitation shocker that might necessitate a post-screening shower. The other is a visually stunning road trip through a post-apocalyptic America pockmarked by packs of rabid vampires, polygamous survivalist cults and jaded nuns. Spring has sprung. Try not to get any on you.

STAKE LAND
Friday, April 29 – Thursday, May 5

When an epidemic of degenerative vampirism strikes, humans find themselves on the run from vicious, feral beasts. Cities are tombs and survivors cling together in rural pockets, fearful of nightfall. After the wholesale slaughter of his family, teenaged Martin (Conor Paolo) is taken under the wing of a grizzled vampire hunter known only as Mister (co-writer Nick Damici). The two embark on a journey through the locked-down towns of America’s heartland, moving towards a rumored safe haven. Along the way they recruit fellow travellers, including a nun (Kelly McGillis) caught in a crisis of faith and a pregnant teenaged country singer (Danielle Harris). This ragtag family unit cautiously moves north, avoiding major thoroughfares that have been seized by a fundamentalist militia that interprets the vampire plague as the Lord’s work. Drawing on post-apocalyptic action frenzies realized by George Romero and George Miller and crossed with the brutal lyricism of Cormac McCarthy and even Terrence Malick, Stake Land is an exciting and visceral adventure/horror experience. Dir: Jim Mickle, USA, 2010, Digital, 98 min.