Wake in Fright was lost for decades. A print turned up in a Pittsburgh warehouse in 1994. Nobody had been looking very hard
Listen NowWake in Fright was lost for decades. A print turned up in a Pittsburgh warehouse in 1994. Nobody had been looking very hard
New Zealand horror did not start with Peter Jackson. Death Warmed Up won a Paris festival three years before Bad Taste. The country's genre cinema before the rupture, and the Māori story it kept missing.
A Sydney Film Festival special. Two films, three filmmakers, and the strange, brutal, beautiful cost of making the kind of genre cinema nobody respects.
In 1981, the Australian government introduced a tax rule and accidentally funded the most prolific horror decade this country has ever produced. Patrick. Long Weekend. Thirst. Roadgames. Razorback.
July 2023. Two brothers from Brisbane made a horror film for four and a half million dollars. It made ninety-two million at the box office. Something had changed. The last ten years of ANZ horror — Talk to Me, Relic, Lake Mungo, Hounds of Love, The Moogai, Mārama — and what shifted.
New Zealand got a film industry almost by accident. Under a prime minister who would have hated most of what it made. And for the first decade of that wave, Māori filmmakers didn't have cameras. Bad Taste. Braindead.
Over 3,400 titles and growing every week. Features, shorts, TV movies, straight to video oddities. Every piece of ANZ horror we could find, catalogued and waiting.
Come in and browse, run a search, or ask Ricky. He has been behind this counter since before you were born and he has opinions. Strong ones.
Enter the Video VaultStrange Country is the definitive record of Australian and New Zealand horror cinema. If you made an ANZ horror film, we want it in the database. Feature, short, anything in between.
Every submission gets a personal review. We watch screeners. We write proper entries. No algorithm. No bulk approvals. Just someone who actually gives a damn.
Submit Your Film →The big internationals. The dedicated horror nights. The outsider freakshows that run on no money and pure love of cinema. We found them all.
Across Australia and New Zealand, sorted by country, type and month. If it screens genre film on this side of the world, it is in here.
Browse Film Festivals →Every university, TAFE, private college and polytechnic offering filmmaking courses across Australia and New Zealand. From AFTRS to a weekend workshop at Docklands Studios.
Filter by country, institution type, or search by city. Whether you are just starting out or looking for postgraduate study, it is all in one place.
Browse Film Schools →From small indie outfits doing it on nothing to the companies behind the films that put Australian and New Zealand horror on the international map. These are the producers, the studios, the people with skin in the game.
Nine companies, their full filmographies, and everything we could find on what they are working on now. If you are serious about this genre, you should know these names.
Browse Production Companies →New episodes, exclusive content, and deep cuts from the ANZ horror archive. Free to join.
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